PREPARING YOUR CHILD FOR FIRST COMMUNION
- Philip Brennan, O Carm

The ONE THING we’ve all got in common is that we’ve all got a heart for God and we’ve all got a heart for young people. In fact if you get a heart for God it is very difficult not to get a heart for young people because young people have a very special place in the heart of God – we see this throughout the scriptures where he seems to like to choose the young and inexperienced over and above the wise, mature and old.

As First Holy Communion day draws closer, ask God to help you make DISCIPLES of your children and to teach you ways which may help them grow & mature in their relationship with Jesus, our Bread of Life.

Before we go any further let’s just take a moment to pray:

God of every good gift, we ask you to send your Holy Spirit upon us, so that the living flame of faith within our hearts may burn brightly and give light for all to see, especially for our children, who learn so much from our example. May our love and appreciation of your greatness deepen more and more and may we be real sources of inspiration to our children as they take this further step on their Christian journey. Help us to be conscious of the presence of your Son Jesus, our brother, our saviour and our Bread of Life. May he lead us in our faith and brings it to perfection, for he lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

Some of you may have seen the film “Cityslickers” with Billy Crystal. He plays this guy in his 30s whose haunted by the suspicion that life is somehow just passing him by, and he goes and talks to the older and wiser character played by Jack Pallance , and Jack asks him if he would like to know the secret of life and so of course Billy Crystal says “yes” and Jack Pallance just says “It’s this” – and holds up his index finger, and Billy Crystal looks a bit shocked and says “the secret of life is your finger?” Jack looks a bit frustrated and says “No. The secret of life is – ONE THING. It is to pursue ONE THING with all of your heart. This hits Billy’s character really hard because he’s there with a very fragmented life, not because he’s irresponsible but actually the opposite, he’s trying to be the perfect Father, the perfect husband, the perfect employee, we could add to the list the perfect Christian, the perfect teacher, the perfect priest….maybe you feel this sense of duty and all the things you’ve got to do …… But God says to us “Seek first the Kingdom and all these other things will be given you as well” ….. ONE THING.

Jesus told a parable about the man who sold everything else in order to get the pearl of great price. There’s the story about him when he visits Martha and Mary’s house, and Mary of Bethany sits at Jesus’ feet listening to him, while Martha is peeling sprouts in the kitchen. And then Jesus says “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things but only ONE THING is needed.”

Perhaps Jesus is saying that to you as you prepare for your child’s First Holy Communion day. Perhaps our tendency is to buy into the predominant culture and overly focus on the material aspects of the day. But ONLY ONE THING is needed. To focus on the spiritual significance of it all.

I’ve got a friend called Paul. He’s one of my best friends – he comes from a very broken family in London, and his testimony is amazing, I haven’t got time to tell you how he recovered from overdosing on drugs and all that stuff….but when his dad died of cancer a couple of years ago, Paul went up to visit his dad’s girlfriend, the girl that his dad had been living with when he died, and she said: “O Paul, would you like to go and just take something that belonged to your father to have to remember him by” and Paul got quite emotional and said “yea, I’d love to do that” – he’d never had a good relationship with his Father, and he went up to the bedroom because he wanted to have a piece of clothing and he went in the wardrobe and found this really lovely and he thought “that’s what I’m gonna have” so he took this jumper and he’d wear it and whenever he wore it he’d feel this real closeness to his dad – it was very significant, it meant a great deal to him, and a few months later he bumped into his dad’s old girlfriend, and Paul happened to be wearing the jumper, and she took one look at him and said “what are you doing wearing my jumper?” All that time he’d been having all those sensations of “this is my dad’s old jumper” and actually it belonged to his dad’s girlfriend whom he didn’t know at all! It’s easy, isn’t it, to attribute significance to the wrong things.

The apostle Paul once wrote: “ONE THING I do – forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize toward which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

The great King David, wrote in psalm 27: “ONE THING I ask of the Lord, ONE THING, this is what I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the BEAUTY of the Lord and to SEEK him in his temple.” In Psalm 86, one of my favourite psalms, he says “TEACH me your way O Lord and I will walk in your truth. Give me an UNDIVIDED heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you O Lord my God with ALL of my heart; I will glorify your name forever.”

The secret is ONE THING – our relationship with God. Why not take some time to nurture that relationship along with your child as you approach First Communion day? Ask Jesus, the living bread, to send his Spirit to pray within you. Seek his help as you prepare your child to receive Jesus with great faith in this wonderful, life-giving Sacrament which he gave as a gift to his followers.

Now when most of us think back to the time we received our First Communion we tend to call to mind such things as new clothes, white veils, rosettes, gifts of money, and so on. When I look at the cute photographs of my own First Communion Day down in Our Lady’s School – yes Our Lady’s, Templeogue (I have the distinction of being the very first boy in Kindergarten to receive First Communion there in the mid 70s!) - I can still vividly recall the fuss and excitement of it all, and especially the big day out afterwards with my family in the Marine Hotel in Sutton. Curiously enough my other vivid memory of that time is the ice cream wafers which we used when practising to receive the host in the days beforehand. I was half expecting we’d get a nice generous slice of strawberry blonde or raspberry ripple to go with it, but however……

Whatever our recollections of that big day, as we journey down memory lane it might be worth asking ourselves the very fundamental question: What difference did it make to us anyway – the fact that we made our First Communion? Indeed, what difference is it likely to make to your children, now that they have reached the age? What difference in ten years time when they are teenagers, or even ten years beyond that? Will they be among those for whom the Eucharist continues to have some meaning or will they be among those for whom it no longer has a significant part to play in their lives? It is a question well worth thinking about in a year when someone you care for and love with all your hearts is approaching the sacrament for the first time.

It is also a question worth posing in the light of various surveys and statistics which have appeared over the past number of years relating to attendance at church. It is obvious that there has been a sharp decline in the number who regularly and faithfully turn up in church on a Sunday to be nourished by the Bread of Life. Such a development begs a few questions such as “Why have this thing called the Eucharist at all?” and “Why introduce young children to the practice of participating in it”.

It is Jesus himself who has answered the question as to the difference a life of communion with him will make. Here are just some of the things which he said and promised:
“ I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full.”
“ As I draw life from the Father, so the person who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will draw life from me.”
“ Anyone who eats this bread and drinks this cup has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day.”

Looking back on the story of Jesus we find that over the three year period of his earthly ministry some people stuck with him and were faithful through thick and thin. These we can say became disciples of the Lord, friends, companions, true followers.
Over a three-quarters of an hour period or so on a Sunday we can say in a sense that the very same movement takes place, one more step is taken along the road of discipleship, of companionship, of friendship with Jesus. All of these steps add up to a lifetime of following the Lord.
Already in baptism you set your children on this road. You publicly undertook to give them good example and promised to bring them up in the practice of their faith. Now with their First Communion, they are that bit more capable of participating, according to their age and stage of development, in what this is all about.

With help from all of us together – parents, teachers, priests and the parish community which gathers with them, they can come to appreciate how Jesus is present in each Eucharistic gathering, namely:
- in his community, God’s family, which comes together in his name;
- in his Word, especially the Gospel, proclaimed;
- in his Minister, the Priest, leading the prayer;
- and finally in the Bread and Wine, transformed and received.

They will also be helped to see that Jesus wants to be seen as being present in the needy and poor wherever they are to be found and that the Mass really only makes sense when we go forth from the Church to love and serve each other and those most in need. So perhaps in the coming months in your preparations you might try and sensitise your child to the different forms of the Lord’s presence today in liturgy and in life. Be conscious too of the eucharist with a small “e” as I like to call it – your meals at home. Perhaps on occasion you can make a family meal extra special by lighting a candle on the table and inviting your child sing or say the grace before meals. Your own attitude, posture, reverence and prayer in the church and especially at communion time too will speak volumes to your child. For ultimately they learn far more from witnesses even though they are fortunate enough to have superb teachers this year, whom on behalf of all my brother Carmelites here in the Parish, I would like to pay tribute to.

Earlier on I asked you to reflect upon the question: “what difference is First Communion likely to make in the life of your child?” This question can only be answered by keeping in mind that this will be just the first of many communions. The second, the third, the fourth and so on, will be every bit as important as the first.

What is at the heart of it all, at the end of the day is ONE THING – the developing relationship between your child and the person of Jesus Christ. Help him or her to get to KNOW Jesus, not simply to know about him.

First Communion is a big day in the life of your child and rightly so. But let’s help them not to lose sight of the ONE THING which is the most important – the real meaning of the sacrament – coming to meet Jesus the Risen Lord in a very deep way.

Preparing a child for any sacrament is a work of partnership involving parent, teacher, and priest. Partnership, however, also involves God.

“Can you tell me who made you?” the priest asked the little girl. She thought for a moment, then looked up and said, “God made part of me.” “What do you mean part of you?” “Well,” answered the little girl, “God made me little, I grew the rest myself!”

“Growing the rest” is a lifetime job for all of us. In truth, preparation for First Communion began the day your child was born. What these next few months are all about is only the drawing together, or the summing up, of what you have been teaching your child right from the start. You’ve already done most of the necessary groundwork without being conscious of it, simply by trying to do your best as parents. The Second Vatican Council stressed: “Parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children” (Education, 3). Though you may agree with this, you may also be wondering if you are sufficiently qualified. Perhaps you may be worried if your child asks you a question, especially a religious question, that you won’t be able to answer it properly. You may feel that if you don’t give her the right answer straight off, you may be shattering her faith. Maybe since leaving school, you just haven’t had much chance of studying your faith. And now, in the demands of earning a living and bringing up a family, you haven’t much time for reading.

For what it’s worth, I think that if you honestly admit that there are questions to which you don’t know the answer, you may be teaching your child one of the most important lessons he will ever have to learn which is this: faith does not depend on our understanding everything perfectly. In fact, if we did understand, it wouldn’t be faith. Real faith means trusting in someone we love, trusting when things seem muddled and when we can’t quite see where we’re going. You may recall that episode in the Gospel when many of Jesus’ disciples left him because they could not understand what he was saying. Jesus then asked the twelve, his closest companions: “What about you, do you want to go away too?” Peter of course (who hadn’t understood any more than anyone else) piped up and said: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life and we believe” (Jn 6:68). Perhaps your prayer at this time might be “Lord I believe: Help my unbelief”. Know that he will support you in the months ahead. For Jesus is only ever a prayer away. I hope that these few scattered thoughts may help you to clarify your own approach to the Sacrament of the Eucharist and so enable you to provide creative support for your child not only during these months of preparation, but in the years that lie ahead.

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