A French priest who has started an international movement giving children the best possible start in life by establishing a tangible relationship with Christ in the Eucharist was in Perth and Bunbury earlier this month to spread the love.
Bridget Spinks spoke exclusively to him
While kneeling before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament one afternoon in 1995, Fr Antoine Thomas csj felt a tap on his shoulder and heard the words of a mother of three tiny children: “Father, can you help my children to adore Jesus?”
He did, and then she asked for more help so Fr Antoine started a little parish group of young adorers in Paris.
This grew into Children of Hope, the Eucharistic Adoration ministry that brought Fr Antoine to Perth and Bunbury from 8-17 November on his way to found a local congregation of his order, the Community of St John, in New Zealand.
Fr Antoine said that in the 21st century, it is so important to teach children from five to 15 years old to adore Jesus in the Holy Eucharist because we need to consider what Jesus asked.
“Jesus Himself said to the Samaritan woman in the Gospel of John Chapter 4, ‘the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will adore the Father in spirit and in truth’,” Fr Antoine said.
“God is Spirit and it is in Spirit and Truth that we need to adore.
“Because he has sent and is sending the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that was in His human soul, to move Christians – those who accept belief in Him – to give God what belongs to God, which is Adoration and which is very forgotten today,” he said.
When Fr Antoine moved to Illinois to serve as chaplain for two universities in 1995, he started a family adoration prayer group on Sunday afternoon as soon as he arrived.
While based in America for these last 15 years, Fr Antoine has toured 40 of the 50 United States of America with Children of Hope.
He has also travelled to Romania, Canada, Haiti, Nicaragua and Singapore to help start the Eucharistic Adoration movement. Earlier this month, he was in Cebu, Philippines helping lead Adoration there.
His tour to Perth and Bunbury earlier this month – which included Catholic Youth Ministry in Highgate and parishes in Glendalough, Beaconsfield, Langford, Pemberton and St Mary’s Cathedral – was exclusive. He visited no other Australian State or Territory this time around.
He estimates that he has led 25,000 children to adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
During his visit to Perth and Bunbury, Fr Antoine led several primary and high school students in Eucharistic Adoration.
He is driven by the belief that catechism classes alone will not properly form this generation of children to have a personal relationship with God through Jesus.
“I don’t know how teaching another class of catechism in the classroom without a time of prayer with the catechist can be fruitful; it’s one more class,” he said.
“What I do is not teaching catechism in the Church. It is a time of encounter, of real encounter with Jesus where He is the most substantially present,” he said.
In a typical Eucharistic Adoration session, which Fr Antoine leads in schools, there are three times of silence, three meditative songs and three helpful words of guidance during the session, “to help them realise both the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and His infinite love for each one of them.”
It usually lasts half an hour, and sometimes Fr Antoine will process with the Blessed Sacrament among the children, bringing Jesus close to them.
During these times of Adoration, Fr Antoine will ask questions in such a way as to lead the children to discover the answers.
“The first thing I try to do with children is make them realise that we only have one life; that they have a soul, a spirit; and since God is Spirit, as revealed in St John, it is in spirit that I can adore the presence of God in my soul, in the soul of others, and that makes me respect other people, because they are creatures of God,” he said.
“I speak slowly and I ask them, if you die today, what will happen to your soul? Are you sure to see God face to face? Do you believe you are going to be in the presence of God? When I ask a lot of questions like that, they listen very carefully.
“We’re so busy every day that nobody asks them the crucial questions. But I do, all the time. That’s why they respond,” Fr Antoine said.
Once the children grasp that God exists and is their Creator, Fr Antoine leads them to think about how they can enter into a relationship with Him by putting it at the level of friendship.
“Would you like to have friends?” he asks them. “Would you like to have very good friends? Do you ask a friend to be loyal, to be true? Well, Jesus is your best friend. Do you visit Him often? Do you visit your best friend once a year? Once a month? Once a week?”
They all say more.
“If I said to you, Jesus is your best friend, how often do you visit Him? Once on Sunday only? If you do go to Mass every Sunday,” he said.
He asks them to ponder whether Jesus is their true friend. Yes or no. “Why did Jesus come down on earth? Why did He come to be in a tabernacle, locked in without anybody to visit Him?” he asks the children.
“Teaching them about the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is, of course, number one, chronologically.
“But it’s not enough to make it appealing to them. Why did Jesus invent the mystery of the Eucharist? Was He obliged to? He saved us by the cross.
“Why did Jesus, in addition to dying on the cross, leave us the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist?
“Those questions are really hitting the mark with adults and teachers I can see everywhere.”
Fr Antoine said the movement is called Children of Hope because hope is the fruit of adoring Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.
At the natural level, the presence of a friend is what consoles and comforts us, he said.
“So at the supernatural level, if I truly believe that Jesus is here, why don’t I see some hope? He listens to me. But of course it’s conditioned by the faith. It’s in the dark, I’m very aware of that. It’s not something sensitive – there’s no hug.”
“If I said to you, Jesus is your best friend, how often do you visit Him? Once on Sunday only?”
– Fr Antoine Thomas
Fr Antoine insists on developing the habit of visiting Jesus in the tabernacle and encourages them to ask their parents while they’re out shopping to swing by the chapel to pay a visit.
“You don’t want to leave Jesus alone in the tabernacle, locked in all day long in His room, right?” he said. “They get the point. It all depends on how you set things up so that they can agree. So that it comes from them. I just set it up. There’s a whole approach there.”
Fr Antoine said that the Children of Hope is a movement to convey a spirit; the spirit of love for the Holy Eucharist, the spirit of adoration.
“It’s more a network of Christians enthused for the cause they are promoting. Anyone can join through the website. It allows anyone in the world to start this on their own without asking permission,” he said.
There are CD and DVD resources available on website www.childrenofhope.org.
This way of leading adoration is put at the service of parishes and Catholic schools.
“I do not want this to be men’s work but God’s work. Someone starts a movement in the Church, yes, but as an instrument of the Holy Spirit,” he said.
“I do not possess Children of Hope; I don’t want to be the director or president. No, I want to be a child of God who wants to share with families and children His love for the Holy Eucharist. So that the children of the world can be exposed to that love of Jesus for them without being entangled in all kinds of board and committee meetings – that’s all human.”
Fr Antoine added that the Children of Hope “is not my thing; the last two Popes requested it”.
In 1996, Pope John Paul II urged priests, Religious and lay people to “continue and redouble their efforts to teach the younger generations the meaning and value of Eucharistic adoration and devotion”.
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI also recommended that “children be taught the meaning and beauty of spending time with Jesus, and helped to cultivate a sense of awe before His presence in the Eucharist” in their catechetical training, and especially in their preparation for Holy Communion.
This call from the last two Popes as well as the apparitions of the Angel of God to the three children of Fatima in 1916 motivates Fr Antoine to teach children how to adore Jesus.
“The Angel of Fatima taught the children on the first apparition to adore God as Creator, ‘O my God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love you’. There was nothing in front of the angel, he just prostrated down. On the third apparition, he said, ‘Most holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,’ but he has in his hands a bleeding host and a chalice that he left suspended in the air.
“He came close to the children and he bowed down with that Eucharistic prayer. Then he took the host, still bleeding, with the chalice, went to Lucia and gave Communion to Lucia, then gave Communion to the two other children and then disappeared.
“So I also try to spend a lot of time leading children in adoration everywhere, because of the Angel of Fatima sent by God to teach the children Eucharistic Adoration. And I don’t see in the Catholic Church people who do that, and I ask myself why?” he said.
Fr Antoine also wants to move children, parents and catechists to adore together and to make them realise that Eucharistic Adoration is “the principle of family unity and peace in the family. If families come to adore together, every week, things will get much better in the family. That’s for sure”.
As the fifth child born in a family of six to very prayerful Catholic parents in Paris, Fr Antoine said he was never exposed to Eucharistic Adoration as a child. It did not really exist much in the Catholic Church 40 years ago, he said.
He was brought up on the lives of the saints and highly recommends parents buy them for their children, especially St Dominic Savio for the boys, and St Bernadette, the children of Fatima, St Therese of the Child Jesus, St Theresa of the Andes and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati.
He had an adventurous spirit – he did not always want to be a priest but was attracted by the missionaries in Africa and the North Pole. For many years as a young adult he was passionate about hang gliding, ski mountaineering, rock climbing, wind surfing and tennis. He spent two years in a special military school in the Alps for mountaineering and had three business degrees.
“I was so passionate about gliding sports to a point that I couldn’t envisage my life not practising those gliding sports,” he said.
But after several retreats where he asked God, ‘What do you want me to do with my life? What do you expect from me?’, Fr Antoine was led to the Community of St John in 1985, and in 1992 he was ordained in Paray le Monial, France.
The children’s adoration ministry exploded in popularity in 2000 when Fr Antoine went on TV. This time, another mother had advised EWTN about Children of Hope. After the TV appearance on te EWTN programme Mother Angelica Live, Fr Antoine received over 1,000 letters from grandparents, teachers, catechists and schools who were all enthused by the idea of bringing children to Eucharistic Adoration as if it was something extraordinary, he said.
Many people wanted a copy of a video he showed on air. It was one he had produced with a cameraman about Children of Hope.
He began to duplicate it locally to handle the requests from schools, parishes, Eucharistic congresses and families.
“So that’s the story behind the multiplication of the five loaves and two fish. I was that little boy who gave Jesus just a little bit of time, a little bit of talent with the guitar, though I’m really not a good guitarist,” he said.
“But I love the Eucharist and I gave Him my time and He multiplied it all over the world; and here I am in Perth for the second time in six years.”
This month, Fr Antoine will move to New Zealand. For 17 years the diocese of Christchurch has been asking the Community of St John to minister at the University of Canterbury, “just to have a monastic presence in the diocese”.
Fr Antoine volunteered for the mission. He and two other members of the Community of St John will live at St Therese of Lisieux Catholic Church in Riccarton and will take care of the parish as well as the chaplaincy of the University.
Fr Antoine said he knew that if God called him to something, it would be as a missionary and it would be a call to share his faith and love of Christ with the maximum number of people possible.
“And He more than fulfilled my desires,” Fr Antoine said.