First Eucharist is an exciting and awesome sacrament. The Holy Family Community focuses this weekend on making First Holy Communion celebrations personal, parish-community oriented and family-centered. This sacrament is a celebration of children being welcomed to the Table of the Lord for the very first time, and formally being welcomed into its faith community. It connects each child to the presence of Jesus Christ and allows them to experience yet another step of deeper commitment to the Catholic Christian way of life. The Sacrament of Eucharist is a sacred meal of thanksgiving, a memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection. The Second Vatican Council teaches us that “the other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesial ministries and works of the apostolate are bound up with the Eucharist and are directed toward it.”
The Eucharist is the center and high point of the Church’s sacramental life. The celebration of first communion is a time for all of us to think about the communion we share at every Mass. It is a time for us to pause and think about how we receive the presence of Jesus under the form of consecrated bread and wine, as well as the witness we give to those around us. We are all invited this weekend to reflect on our new communicants and recognize the ways we are fed and feeding others. May we see and experience the giving and receiving, the mutuality in our hospitality, and in the sharing of our lives and culture. May the Holy Spirit flow between us in feeding and being fed by one another.
Feeding and being fed are big themes in the Gospels. There are many stories of Jesus enjoying people’s company and receiving their hospitality. Feeding and being fed are a profound metaphor for our own relationship with God and each other. We experience this coming together of spiritual and physical bread in the center of our worship, the Holy Eucharist. To be church is to come hungry for an encounter with God, to gather in community and to be fed. We are also called to feed each other. We feed each other through our hospitality, service, ministry, love, and support. We come and are fed by God and by each other in a flow of both giving and receiving. Jesus said to his disciples and followers, “I am the bread of life.” To feed another is to say, “I have something you need.”
However, being fed can be much harder than feeding. To be fed, to open our hands, is to express our own need and our vulnerability. This does not come easily for many of us. But it’s not good to just be the giver. That kind of one-sidedness doesn’t work anywhere for an extended period of time in any healthy relationship.
When we are gathered as a faith community, in worship, in the company of familiar faces, being fed in body and spirit is central to our worship life and our relationship with God. Our presence says the church is not just for people who have faith all figured out. We come back week after week for the body of Christ so that we can be the body of Christ, though imperfectly, in the world. Without that sustenance, both from one another and from the Eucharist, we would spiritually starve.
The Catholic church, while not perfect itself, feeds us through Christ. Let us welcome our First Communicants who come to church this weekend and next dressed in their special clothes, smiles, and in the company of their loving parents, family, and friends. Let us pray for these children who will be nourished around the table of the Lord for the very first time. It is a very happy moment for the people of our parish community who have watched these children grow and helped foster their friendship with Jesus.
A big thank you to all of you parents for being the first teachers of the faith to your children. They learned their faith from you before anybody else, as you taught them to make the sign of the cross and to say their prayers. During these early years, you have helped them so much to know about their faith and develop a friendship with Jesus. For many years to come, you have the awesome responsibility that what you say and do will influence your child’s faith. The priests, staff, teachers, and faith community of Holy Family stand with you to support you over these important years of formation. Today, we honor your families who are united in Jesus, the one who nourishes us fully. On behalf of Fr. Terry and myself, we are proud of all our First Communicants and congratulate them on their hard work done in preparation for this special day.
(Fr. Rich Jakubik, Holy Family’s Associate Pastor, is writing this column while Fr. Terry is away.)