Spring season, First Holy Communion and blessed weddings all add to keeping the Easter message and melody going beautifully.
The spring issue of “More Good News” highlights the wonderful children celebrating their first Eucharist.
For those of us who are so privileged and honored to partake of the Blessed Sacrament so often, the Easter season affords the opportunity to renew our treasuring of this sacrament so central to our faith.
Woven through the practice of our Catholic faith always has been and always will be our belief and conviction the Christ’s real presence is held within the blessed bread and consecrated wine. We take the Lord at His word — “This is my body … this is my blood.”
To receive Holy Communion is to enter into a real encounter with the Lord, crucified and risen.a
These children who are so happy about their First Communion hopefully will, as time goes by, have a hunger and desire for many more encounters with Jesus in the sacrament we cherish.
So important is the example of their good parents in these first months and years after their children’s “first” Holy Communion — the faith is caught more than taught, person to person, parent to child.
A very beautiful and significant part of the Eucharist is that this Blessed Sacrament makes of all of us a “body of Christ.”
When we hear the phrase “the Body of Christ” and take the Eucharist and respond “Amen,” we are affirming that it is the Lord’s real presence and also that we are part of the church, which is Christ’s Body, all of us assembled together.
It is truly sad and unfortunate if a child’s First Communion ends up being the last communion for a long time, when someone or family is not present with the assembly at Mass. We then are not quite the best body of Christ that we should be.
Maybe a good and easy way to describe the wonderful gift of the Eucharist is to say when the real presence of Christ is celebrated with those who really are present, the miracle happens and the blessings blossom like the spring growth all around us.