first communion 2010

“Jesus, the Bread of Life”

An Anchor Supplement on First Holy Communion

First Communion Supplement2 May 7, 2010

The fathers of the Second Vatican Council taught that the sacrifice of the Eucha-rist is the “source and the summit of the Christian life” (Lumen Gentium 11): the source, because it is the starting point from which everything in the Christian life should flow; the summit, because it is the end toward which everything in the Christian life should go. The Eucharist is the beginning and the goal of the Chris-tian life because the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, who must be the “alpha and the omega,” of any life that is authentically Christian. For this reason, the training of people to live a truly eucharistic life is one of the

most important things that the Church does. Just as the Church as a whole draws her life from the Eucharist, so, too, she seeks to form individual Catholics to draw their life from the same divine font. One of the principal ways she fulfills this mission is through the attention given to children preparing to receive Jesus in holy Communion for the first time and to continue to receive him with love the second, third, fourth, next and last times. Such training — done at home by faithful families, in Catholic schools, Religious Education programs and by the Church as a whole through the liturgical pedagogy of the Mass — often does not make head-lines, even in Catholic papers, probably since it is so routine that its importance can too easily be over-looked. But every edition of this paper could justly begin with a front-page headline, “Jesus Christ visits St. Mary’s on Sunday,” or “The eternal Son of God gives his Body, Blood, soul and divinity to faithful at St. John’s,” or “The Word of God still dwells among us in the tabernacle at St. Joseph’s.” This supplement is an attempt to give attention to the most important event that happens in south-eastern Massachusetts on any given day, and to the preparation of the next generation to recognize, esteem, worthily receive and live in union with it. We hope that it will rekindle “eucharistic amazement” among all Catholics in the diocese, no matter how young.

Sincerely in Christ,

Fr. Roger J. LandryExecutive Editor

On the cover:

Alanna Marie Levasseur receives first holy Commu-nion from Father Hugh J. McCullough, pastor at St. Joseph’s Parish, Fall River.

(Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

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“Jesus, the Bread of Life”An Anchor Supplement on

First Holy Communion

Layout and Design:Kenneth J. Souza

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First Communion SupplementMay 7, 2010 3

By Father Roger J. Landry

The first time a believer receives the flesh and blood of the eternal Son of God in holy Communion ought to be one of the greatest occasions in that person’s life. The amount of preparation, waiting and longing that normally accompanies one’s first Communion only makes the reception more special still. But what makes one’s first Communion a truly blessed event is not the adjective but the substantive: not the “first” but the “communion.” Because of whom we receive, the second, third and 1,452nd communions should always be as special. The Church teaches that the commu-nion we enter into with the Lord Jesus is not meant to last only as long as it takes our body to digest the sacred host; rather, our communion is supposed to continue in all our actions throughout the day. In short, the reception of the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist is meant to lead to a truly eucharistic life, one in which Jesus in the Eucharist becomes the source, summit, root and center of a person’s existence. This reality, which the Church puts be-fore all believers, is modeled in a particular way for young first communicants by some great young saints in Church history. Today we briefly look at four of them and propose them as ex-emplars to the young Catholics of our diocese.

Blessed Imelda Lambertini (1322-1333)

There’s a prayer that’s been made popular among Catho-lics in which they ask the Lord for the grace to receive him in holy Communion that day with the same love with which they received him in their first Communion, with the same love with which they hope to receive him at their last Commu-nion, and with which they would want to receive him if that were the only Communion of their life. The three parts of this beautiful prayer came all together on May 12, 1333 for an 11-year-old girl in Bologna, Italy called Imelda Lambertini.

When Imelda turned nine, she begged her parents to allow her to go to the school at the Dominican convent in her city.

There she endeared herself to everyone by her great piety, goodness and zeal. She fer-vently desired to be able to receive Jesus in holy Communion like the Sisters and several of the older students, but this was six centuries prior to St. Pius X’s lowering the first Communion age to the “age of rea-son,” or about the age of eight. Prior to that 20th-century change, many young people received the Lord for the first time during their teen-age years, in some places as late as 18. In place of being able to receive Jesus in holy Communion, she used to go to the chapel to adore him and she would make many “spiritual communions” throughout the day and especially when others were receiving him at Mass. She was always asking those who were older and able to receive Communion what the experience was like. She used to pepper them with the question, “Tell me, can anyone receive Je-sus in his heart and not die?” That ques-

tion would turn prophetic. On the vigil of the Ascension, she was praying in church after Mass. The Sisters were preparing to leave the church when some of them were startled to see a strange light, what appeared to be a small sacred host, hovering in the air above her head as she was kneeling before the tabernacle. They ran to get the parish priest. Knowing of her burning desire to re-

First Communion Saints

See “Saints” page 4


ceive holy Communion and taking this theophany as a sign from heaven that she was ready, the priest gave her Jesus in holy Communion. To her enormous joy, she devoutly received her long awaited for the first time. And the last and only time. Soon after receiving holy Communion she fell first into what seemed like an ecstasy of love. She had a most serene and an-gelic smile on her face. And with the Lord within the temple of her body, her soul ascended out of her body with the Lord into heaven. While all the Sisters were praying with her in thanks-giving, they watched her slowly sink to the floor. They thought that she had simply fainted. But she had died out of love for Christ in the Eucharist, with her face transfixed by a smile that has never worn off. Her body remains incorrupt seven centuries later and lies in a church in Bologna. In 1826, Pope Leo XII declared her blessed and proclaimed her to be the patroness of first communicants.

St. Gemma Galgani (1878-1903)

Gemma was born in Camigli-ano, Italy in 1878, the fourth of eight children. Her mother used to take her to Mass with her and passed on to her a great love for Jesus in holy Communion. Around the time of her moth-er’s death when she was seven, Gemma began to have intense experiences of prayer. Her father sent her to be educated at the convent of the Sisters of St. Zita in Lucca. Under the guidance of the sisters she developed a great love for the passion of the Lord, for the Blessed Virgin Mary, and for Jesus in the holy Eucharist. She begged her parish

priest to allow her to make her first Communion. “You are too young,” he replied. She said to him, to the Sisters and others, “Give me Jesus and you will see how good I will be: I will not sin again. I shall be quite changed!” Eventually her desire became all consuming and her wise pastor recognized, “There is no al-ternative but to admit her to holy Communion; otherwise we will see her die of grief.” During her retreat in preparation for first Communion, the preacher, Father Raphael Cinetti, often repeated, “He who eats of Jesus will live of his life.” She commented later, “These words filled me with much consolation and I reasoned with myself: Therefore when Jesus comes to me I will no longer live of myself because Jesus will live in me. And I nearly died of the desire to be able to say these words soon, ‘Jesus lives in me.’ Sometimes I would spend whole nights meditating on these words, being consumed with desire.” On the feast of the Sacred Heart in 1887, when she was nine, she received the love of her life within for the first time. She said innocently to one of her friends afterward, “I feel a fire burning here,” and pointed to her breast. “Do you feel like that, too?” She couldn’t fathom that there was anything exceptional in her own experience. Lest she ever take receiving Jesus in holy Communion for granted, she made certain resolutions, which showed her deep and precocious spiritual wisdom. The first two were specifically about the Eucharist: “I will receive confession and Communion

each time as thought it were my last, and I will visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament often, especially when I am afflicted.” Her love for Jesus in the Eucharist only grew the more she received the Lord as if it were the last time. She would write later to Jesus in prayer, “What would become of me if I did not dedicate all my affections to the sacred Host? Oh, yes, I know it Lord; that in order to make me deserve paradise in heaven, you give me Communion here on earth!” She would call the Eucha-rist “the school of paradise where one learns how to love.” In a passage that would be good for all communicants, first and veteran, to contemplate, she wrote to her priest spiritual director. “Oh, what precious moments are those at holy Com-munion! Communion is a happiness, Father, that seems to me cannot be equaled even by the beatitude of the saints and an-gels. They admire the face of Jesus, and are certain of not com-mitting sin or of being lost; and I admire those two things, and I should like to be of their company, but I too have reason for exulting, for Jesus enters everyday into my heart. Jesus gives me all of himself!”

St. Tarcisius (246-258)

St. Tarcisius was an altar boy during the ferocious anti-Christian persecution of the Roman emper-or Valerian. The Christians would meet each morning in a hidden part of the catacombs to celebrate Mass and then normally a deacon would take the Eucharist to those Chris-tians condemned to die in prison. After the death of Pope St. Sixtus and several of the deacons with him, there were no deacons left to transport the Eucharist as viaticum to the Christians on death row, so they entrusted the task to the young altar boy who had long shown fidel-ity and courage. As he was heading up the Ap-pian Way, a group of pagan boys

met him. They asked him to join their games but he politely declined. They noticed he was carrying something. They had some sense that he may be a Christian and they thought that he might be carrying the Christian “mysteries,” so the small mob of boys started to gang up on him to get him to show them what he was carrying. Tarcisius knew the boys and that they would treat the Eucharist sacrilegiously, so he refused to allow them to get their hands on the Eucharist, even as they beat and kicked him until death. The Roman Martyrology wrote, “At Rome, on the Appian Way, the passion of St. Tarcisius the acolyte, whom pagans met carrying the sacrament of the Body of Christ and asked him what it was he was carrying. He deemed it a shameful thing to cast pearls before the swine, and so was assaulted by them for a long time with clubs and stones until he gave up the ghost. When they turned over his body, the sacrilegious assailants could find no trace of Christ’s sacrament either in his hands or in his clothing. The Christians took up the body of the martyr and buried it with honor in the cemetery of Callistus.” A little over a century later, Pope St. Damasus wrote a poem about this boy martyr of the Eucharist, saying that, like St. Ste-phen, he was willing to suffer a violent death at the hands of a mob rather than give up the sacred Body of the Lord to “raging dogs.”

Saintscontinued from page 3


His life points to a reality that all those who receive and give holy Communion are called to remember: the Eucharist is not a thing but someone, and St. Tarcisius, the “boy martyr of the Eucharist” indicates the true value of Jesus in the Eucharist. Most times, thanks be to God, we will not be killed in order to receive or protect Jesus in the Eucharist, but St. Tarcisius shows all of us how we’re called to live and even die for the one who died out of love for us.

St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897)

St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the Little Flower, is the most famous of the four saints we are profiling in this brief article. She lived a relatively hidden life as a Carmelite nun in Lisieux, France, from the age of 15 until 24. After her death of tuberculosis at the tender age of 24, her spiritual au-tobiography, “The Story of a Soul” written under obe-dience, became an interna-tional sensation. It brought to the attention of Catholics across the world St. Ther-

ese’s “little way” of sanctity. She recognized that not everyone can be like the roses and the lilies in the garden, the spectacu-larly beautiful flowers that everyone notices. She was content to be a “little flower,” knowing that her existence, too, pleased enormously the divine Gardener.

Like Blessed Imelda and St. Gemma, she, too, longed to re-ceive Jesus earlier than what was typically permitted at the time. What she wrote in her autobiography about the day of her first Communion at age 11 is one of the most beautiful pas-sages on the joy of holy Communion ever written. “At last the most wonderful day of my life arrived,” she wrote, “and I can remember every tiny detail of those heavenly hours: my joyous waking up at dawn, the tender, reverent kisses of the mistresses and older girls, the room where we dressed — filled with the white ‘snowflakes’ in which one after another we were clothed — and above all, our entry into chapel and the singing of the morning hymn ‘O Altar of God, Where the Angels are Hov-ering.’ “I would not tell you everything, even if I could, for there are certain things that lose their fragrance in the open air, certain thoughts so intimate that they cannot be translated into earthly language without losing at once their deep and heavenly mean-ing. “How lovely it was, that first kiss of Jesus in my heart — it was truly a kiss of love. I knew that I was loved and said, ‘I love you, and I give myself to you forever.’ Jesus asked for nothing, he claimed no sacrifice. Long before that, he and little Thérèse had seen and understood one another well, but on that day it was more than a meeting — it was a complete fusion. We were no longer two, for Thérèse had disappeared like a drop of water lost in the mighty ocean. Jesus alone remained — the Master and the King. Had she not asked him to take away her liberty, the liberty she feared? She felt so weak and frail that she want-ed to unite herself forever to his divine strength. “And her joy became so vast, so deep, that now it overflowed. Soon she was weeping, to the astonishment of her compan-ions, who said to one another later on: ‘Why did she cry? Was there something on her conscience? Perhaps it was because her

mother [who had died] was not there, or the Car-melite Sister she loves so much.’ “It was beyond them that all the joy of heaven had entered one small, exiled heart, and that it was too frail and weak to bear it without tears. As if the absence of my mother could make me unhappy on the day of my first Communion! As all heaven entered my soul when I received Jesus, my mother came to me as well. Nor could I cry be-cause you [her older sister who was a Carmelite, at whose command she was writing the autobiog-raphy] were not there, we were closer than ever be-fore. It was joy alone, deep ineffable joy that filled my heart.”

First Communicants of 2010

These four child eucharistic saints are just some of the many who have been led through Commu-nion with the Lord on the altar here on earth to an eternal communion with him around the celestial throne. Let us pray that the children throughout the Diocese of Fall River making their first holy Communion this spring may imitate their love for Jesus in the Eucharist, follow their example in liv-ing eucharistic lives and be spurred on to become, themselves, eucharistic saints for children of fu-ture generations.


Above: Taysha Ann Teixeira blesses herself after receiving first holy Communion from Father Hugh J. McCullough, pastor at St. Joseph’s Parish, Fall River. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

Top right: First communicants at St. Joseph-St. Therese Parish, New Bedford, process in for Mass. (Photo by David Levesque)


Left: Father J. Hugh McCullough, pastor at St. Joseph’s Parish, Fall River, asks first communicants questions about their faith before receiving Jesus for the first time. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)

Bottom left: First communicants at St. Joseph-St. Therese Parish, New Bedford, sing a special hymn expressing their joy in receiving the Body of Christ. (Photo by David Levesque)

Bottom right: First communicants at St. Francis Xavier Parish, Acushnet, sing a special song to the Blessed Mother after receiving the sacrament. (Photo by Kenneth J. Souza)


On October 15, 2005, at the close of the Year of the Eucharist, Pope Benedict XVI spoke in St. Peter’s Square with several children who had received their first holy Communion during the past year. Their conversation follows.

1. Andrea

Dear Pope, what are your memories of your first Communion day?

I would first like to say thank you for this celebration of faith that you are offering to me, for your presence and for your joy. I greet you and thank you for the hug I have received from some of you, a hug that, of course, symbolically stands for you all. As for the question, of course I remember my first Commu-nion day very well. It was a lovely Sunday in March 1936, 69 years ago. It was a sunny day, the church looked very beauti-ful, there was music. There were so many beautiful things that I remember. There were about 30 of us, boys and girls from my little village of no more than 500 inhabitants. But at the heart of my joyful and beautiful memories is this one — and your spokesperson said the same thing: I under-stood that Jesus had entered my heart, he had actually visited me. And with Jesus, God himself was with me. And I realized that this is a gift of love that is truly worth more than all the other things that life can give. So on that day I was really filled with great joy, because Je-sus came to me and I realized that a new stage in my life was beginning, I was nine years old, and that it was henceforth im-portant to stay faithful to that encounter, to that Communion. I promised the Lord as best I could: “I always want to stay with you”, and I prayed to him, “but above all, stay with me.” So I went on living my life like that; thanks be to God, the Lord has always taken me by the hand and guided me, even in difficult situations. Thus, that day of my first Communion was the beginning of a journey made together. I hope that for all of you too, the first Communion you have received in this Year of the Eucharist will be the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Jesus, the begin-ning of a journey together, because in walking with Jesus we do well and life becomes good.

2. Livia

Holy Father, before the day of my first Communion I went to confession. I have also been to confession on other occasions. I wanted to ask you: do I have to go to confession every time I re-ceive Communion, even when I have committed the same sins? Because I realize that they are always the same.

I will tell you two things. The first, of course, is that you do not always have to go to confession before you receive Com-munion unless you have committed such serious sins that they need to be confessed. Therefore, it is not necessary to make one’s confession before every eucharistic Communion. This is the first point. It is only necessary when you have committed a really serious sin, when you have deeply offended Jesus, so that your friendship is destroyed and you have to start again. Only in that case, when you are in a state of “mortal” sin, in other words, grave [sin], is it necessary to go to confession be-fore Communion. This is my first point. My second point: even if, as I said, it is not necessary to go to confession before each Communion, it is very helpful to con-fess with a certain regularity. It is true: our sins are always the same, but we clean our homes, our rooms, at least once a week, even if the dirt is always the same; in order to live in cleanli-ness, in order to start again. Otherwise, the dirt might not be seen but it builds up. Something similar can be said about the soul, for me myself: if I never go to confession, my soul is ne-glected and in the end I am always pleased with myself and no longer understand that I must always work hard to improve, that I must make progress. And this cleansing of the soul which Jesus gives us in the sacrament of confession helps us to make our consciences more alert, more open, and hence, it also helps us to mature spiritually and as human persons. Therefore, two things: confession is only necessary in the case of a serious sin, but it is very helpful to confess regularly in order to foster the clean-liness and beauty of the soul and to mature day by day in life.

3. Andrea

In preparing me for my first Commu-nion day, my catechist told me that Jesus is present in the Eucharist. But how? I can’t see him!

No, we cannot see him, but there are many things that we do not see but they exist and are essential. For example: we do not see our reason, yet we have reason. We do not see our intelligence and we have it. In a word: we do not see our soul and yet it exists and we see its effects, because we can speak, think and make decisions, etc. Nor do we see an electric current, for example, yet we see that it exists; we see this mi-crophone, that it is working, and we see lights. Therefore, we do not see the very deepest things, those that really sustain life and the world, but we can see and feel their effects. This is also true for electricity; we do not

Pope Benedict XVI Speaks to First Communicants


see the electric current but we see the light. So it is with the risen Lord: we do not see him with our eyes but we see that wherever Jesus is, people change, they improve. A greater capacity for peace, for reconciliation, etc., is created. Therefore, we do not see the Lord himself but we see the effects of the Lord: so we can understand that Jesus is present. And as I said, it is precisely the invisible things that are the most profound, the most important. So let us go to meet this invisible but powerful Lord who helps us to live well.

4. Giulia

Your Holiness, everyone tells us that it is important to go to Mass on Sunday. We would gladly go to it, but often our parents do not take us because on Sundays they sleep. The parents of a friend of mine work in a shop, and we often go to the country to visit our grandparents. Could you say something to them, to make them understand that it is important to go to Mass together on Sundays?

I would think so, of course, with great love and great respect for your parents, because they certainly have a lot to do. How-ever, with a daughter’s respect and love, you could say to them: “Dear mommy, dear daddy, it is so important for us all, even for you, to meet Jesus. This encounter enriches us. It is an impor-tant element in our lives. Let’s find a little time together, we can find an opportunity. Perhaps there is also a possibility where grandmom lives.” In brief, I would say, with great love and re-spect for your parents, I would tell them: “Please understand that this is not only important for me, it is not only catechists who say it, it is important for us all. And it will be the light of Sunday for all our family.”

5. Alessandro

What good does it do for our everyday life to go to holy Mass and receive Communion?

It centers life. We live amid so many things. And the people who do not go to church, do not know that it is precisely Jesus they lack. But they feel that something is missing in their lives. If God is absent from my life, if Jesus is absent from my life, a guide, an essential friend is missing, even an important joy for life, the strength to grow as a man, to overcome my vices and mature as a human being. Therefore, we cannot immediately see the effects of being with Jesus and of going to Communion. But with the passing of the weeks and years, we feel more and more keenly the absence

of God, the absence of Jesus. It is a fundamental and destruc-tive incompleteness. I could easily speak of countries where atheism has prevailed for years: how souls are destroyed, but also the earth. In this way we can see that it is important, and I would say fundamental, to be nourished by Jesus in Commu-nion. It is he who gives us enlightenment, offers us guidance for our lives, a guidance that we need.

6. Anna

Dear Pope, can you explain to us what Jesus meant when he said to the people who were following him: “I am the bread of life”? First of all, perhaps we should explain clearly what bread is. Today, we have a refined cuisine, rich in very different foods, but in simpler situations bread is the basic source of nourish-ment; and when Jesus called himself the bread of life, the bread is, shall we say, the initial, an abbreviation that stands for all nourishment. And as we need to nourish our bodies in order to live, so we also need to nourish our spirits, our souls and our wills. As human persons, we do not only have bodies but also souls; we are thinking beings with minds and wills. We must also nourish our spirits and our souls, so that they can develop and truly attain their fulfillment. And therefore, if Jesus says: “I am the bread of life,” it means that Jesus himself is the nourishment we need for our soul, for our inner self, because the soul also needs food. And technical things do not suffice, although they are so important. We really need God’s friendship, which helps us to make the right deci-sions. We need to mature as human beings. In other words: Jesus nourishes us so that we can truly become mature people and our lives become good.

7. Adriano

Holy Father, they’ve told us that today we will have eucharistic Adoration. What is it? How is it done? Can you explain it to us? Thank you.

We will see straightaway what adoration is and how it is done, because everything has been properly prepared for it: we will say prayers, we will sing, kneel, and in this way we will be in Jesus’ presence. But of course, your question requires a deeper answer: not only how you do adoration but what adoration is. I would say: adoration is recognizing that Jesus is my Lord, that Jesus shows me the way to take, and that I will live well only if I know the road that Jesus points out and follow the path he shows me. Therefore, adoration means saying: “Jesus, I am yours. I will follow you in my life, I never want to lose this friendship, this communion with you.” I could also say that adoration is essen-tially an embrace with Jesus in which I say to him: “I am yours, and I ask you, please stay with me always.”

Address of the Holy Father at the Conclusion of Meeting

Dear boys and girls, brothers and sisters, at the end of this very beautiful meeting I can only say “thank you.” Thank you for this feast of faith. Thank you for this meeting with each other and with Je-sus. And thank you, it goes without saying, to all those who made this celebration possible: to the catechists, the priests, the Sis-ters; to you all. I repeat at the end the words of the beginning of every liturgy and I say to you: “Peace be with you”; that is, may the Lord be with you, may joy be with you, and thus, may life be good. Have a good Sunday, good night and goodbye all together with the Lord. Thank you very much!


On August 6, 2008, during his brief summer vacation, Pope Benedict XVI met with the priests, deacons and seminarians of the Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone. In a question and answer session af-ter a brief talk, one of the priests asked Pope Benedict for words of guidance about raising young kids in the faith. Here’s the ex-change.

Father Paolo Rizzi: Holy Father, I am parish priest and lecturer in theology at the Higher Institute for Religious Sciences. We would like to hear your pastoral opinion about the situation concerning the sacraments of first Communion and confirma-tion. Always more often the children, boys and girls, who receive these sacraments prepare themselves with commitment to the catecheti-cal meetings but do not take part in the Sunday Eucharist, and then one wonders: What is the point of all this? At times we might feel like say-ing: “Then just stay at home.” Instead, we continue as always to accept them, believing that in any case it is better not to extinguish the wick of the little flickering flame. We think, that is, that in any case, the gift of the Spirit can have an effect beyond what we can see, and that in an ep-och of transition like this one it is more prudent not to make drastic decisions. More generally, 35 years ago I thought that we were begin-ning to be a little flock, a minority community, more or less everywhere in Europe; that we should therefore administer the sacraments only to those who are truly committed to Christian life. Then, partly because of the style of John Paul II’s pontifi-cate, I thought things through again. If it is possible to make predictions for the future, what do you think? What pastoral approaches can you suggest to us? Thank you.

Pope Benedict XVI: Well, I cannot give an infallible answer here, I can only seek to respond according to what I see. I must say that I took a similar route to yours. When I was younger I was rather severe. I said: The sacra-ments are sacraments of faith, and where faith does not exist, where the practice of faith does not exist, the sacrament cannot be conferred either. And then I always used to talk to my parish priest when I was archbishop of Munich: Here too there were two factions, one severe and one broad-minded. Then I too, with time, came to realize that we must follow, rather, the example of the Lord, who was very open even with people on the margins of Israel of that time. He was a Lord of mercy, too open — according to many official authorities — with sinners, welcoming them or letting them invite him to their dinners, drawing them to him in his communion. Therefore I would say substantially that the sacraments are naturally sacraments of faith: When there is no element

of faith, when first Communion is no more than a great lunch with beauti-ful clothes and beautiful gifts, it can no longer be a sacrament of faith. Yet, on the other hand, if we can still see a little flame of desire for Communion in the faith, a desire even in these children who want to enter into communion with Jesus, it seems to me that it is right to be rather broad-minded. Naturally, of course, one pur-pose of our catechesis must be to make children understand that Com-munion, first Communion, is not a “fixed” event, but requires a continu-ity of friendship with Jesus, a jour-ney with Jesus. I know that children often have the intention and desire to go to Sunday Mass but their parents do not make this desire possible. If we see that children want it, that they have the desire to go, this seems to me almost a sacrament of desire, the “will” to participate in Sunday Mass. In this sense, we natu-rally must do our best in the context of preparation for the sacraments to reach the parents as well, and thus to — let us say — awaken in them too a sensitivity to the process in which

their child is involved. They should help their children to follow their own desire to enter into friendship with Jesus, which is a form of life, of the future. If parents want their children to be able to make their first Communion, this somewhat social desire must be extend-ed into a religious one, to make a journey with Jesus possible. I would say, therefore, that in the context of the catechesis of children, that work with parents is very important. And this is precisely one of the opportunities to meet with parents, making the life of faith also present to the adults, because, it seems to me, they themselves can relearn the faith from the children and understand that this great solemnity is only meaningful, true and authentic if it is celebrated in the context of a journey with Jesus, in the context of a life of faith. Thus, one should endeavor to convince parents, through their children, of the need for a preparatory journey that is expressed in participation in the mysteries and that begins to make these mysteries loved. I would say that this is definitely an inadequate answer, but the pedagogy of faith is always a journey and we must accept today’s situations. Yet, we must also open them more to each person, so that the result is not only an external memory of things that endures but that their hearts that have truly been touched. The moment when we are convinced the heart is touched — it has felt a little of Jesus’ love, it has felt a little the desire to move along these lines and in this direction — that is the mo-ment when, it seems to me, we can say that we have made a true catechesis. The proper meaning of catechesis, in fact, must be this: to bring the flame of Jesus’ love, even if it is a small one, to the hearts of children, and through the children to their parents, thus reopening the places of faith of our time.

Raising kids in the faith


First communicants receiving the Bread of Life for the first time include faithful parishioners from, clockwise from top left, St. Francis Xavier Parish, Acushnet; St. Joseph’s Parish, Fall River; and St. Francis Xavier Parish, Acushnet.(Photos by Kenneth J. Souza)


Anchor photo/Kenneth J. Souza

Prayer at a Child’s First Communion

Lord Jesus Christ, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, you left us the out-standing manifestation of your limit-less love for us.

Thank you for giving our child the opportunity to experience this love in receiving the sacrament for the first time.

May your eucharistic presence keep him/her ever free from sin, fortified in faith, pervaded by love for God and neighbor, and fruitful in virtue, that he/she may continue to receive you throughout life and attain final union with you at death.

Amen.

first communion 2010

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