The Eucharist: Encountering Jesus - Sample Session

The Eucharist Encountering

Jesus

Reflections

for Parents of Children Preparing for First Eucharist

Maureen S. Hagan

Deacon Charles Paolino

RENEW International

The Eucharist Encountering Jesus

Reflections for Parents of Children Preparing for First Eucharist

Maureen S. Hagan Deacon Charles Paolino

The scripture passages contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

No part of this booklet may be reproduced in any way, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted without the written permission of RENEW International.

RENEW International gratefully acknowledges contributions to this book by Maureen S. Hagan, who wrote the original text, and Alice Hugh Brown, who provided valuable advice during the preparation of this edition.

NIHIL OBSTAT

Dianne Traflet, J.D., S.T.D Censor librorum

IMPRIMATUR

Joseph W. Cardinal Tobin, C.Ss.R. Archbishop of Newark

Cover and interior design by Clara Baumann

The mission of RENEW International:

To renew pastoral faith and parish life—unlocking the power of small groups by equipping laity and clergy to share their Catholic faith and live it every day.

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In a homily at a first Communion Mass, I used as a prop a large tin full of Crayola crayons that I had bought at the Binney & Smith manufacturing plant in Easton, Pennsylvania. I had bought the crayons about 15 years before, and it had remained in my bedroom closet, still in its shrink wrap, ever since.

I told the children that those crayons were useless as long as they were closed up in that tin, just as our hearts are useless if we don’t open them up to others, as Jesus did when he died on the cross and still does when he offers himself in the Eucharist.

When you receive the Eucharist today and for the rest of your life, I said, don’t keep God’s grace closed up inside you. Rather, take it with you from this church and share it with whomever you meet, loving them as Jesus loves you.

This time, when your children are preparing to receive Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, is an opportunity for you to revisit your own experience with the sacrament what it has meant to you, what it can mean to your family, and what it means to your relationship with the world outside the parish and outside your home.

This is an opportunity to refresh your faith in Christ and his Church and to share that faith with your children. By the way you approach the sacrament, you can help them to always be aware that Christ is truly present in his Body and Blood and truly accompanies us as both Lord and companion. And you can help them apply to their everyday lives what they have learned in faith formation.

“Communion.” The word implies sharing, oneness, collaboration. For each of us, communion is an intimate personal encounter with Christ, but it is also a call to generosity of heart, to giving ourselves as Christ gave himself, to embracing all humanity as brothers and sisters made in the image of God.

No doubt, your children will continue their religious education and will eventually receive the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of Confirmation, but it is you, not their catechists, who are with them every day. We offer these sessions to help you deepen your faith and your commitment to charity and justice so that by word and example you can encourage those values in your children.

Deacon Charles Paolino

From Childlike to Adult Faith

AIm: To explore aspects of our past and present faith journeys; to recognize a baptismal call and what that call means in our commitment to Church.

INvITATION to PRAy

SONg: “We Have Been Baptized in Christ,” Carey Landry. To download this song, visit www.ocp.org/renew-music.

Pray together

O Lord our god, you gave us life in this world and hope of life forever with you. with your Holy Spirit to guide us in this life, may we grow ever more aware of the mission you gave us in baptism to be true disciples of your Son, Jesus Christ, growing in faith through study and prayer and spreading his gospel through generosity, compassion, and a commitment to justice for all of your people. Amen.

THE wORd of gOd

Matthew 18:1-5

Become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

Quiet reflection. What word, phrase, or image from the scripture passage touched your heart or spoke to your life? Share if you wish.

Do we remember how we thought about God and the Church when we were children? Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel, “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Perhaps we had thoughts such as these:

I thought God was like a cloud person up in the sky who could see everything I did. It sometimes made me feel safe, but it also made me feel nervous.

It seemed pretty simple then. Be good and go to heaven. Be bad and go to confession, and then you could still go to heaven. I knew that God loved me. My church was a comfortable, familiar place.

Our early ideas were influenced by many factors—our parents and their faith practices; our teachers; the priests, sisters, and lay catechists; what we were taught, and how we were treated by those who taught us. God may have been to us a mirror image of our parents. The Church may have been to us a community or just a building where we went to Mass the difference depending on our family’s involvement.

For most of us, things were a lot simpler then. Faith calls us to believe in things not seen, and that can be easy for most children. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, giants and elves, superheroes—the magical thinking of childhood allows for belief in many things that eventually are explained away for us. Would our beliefs about God also be explained away by the more “logical” thinking of adulthood? Or would we just come to a different way of believing?

After childhood came adolescence—the time of rebellion and questioning. We needed to break away, find our own identities. For some, this meant rejecting anything in which our parents believed. We may still have attended Mass but questioned its relevance in our lives.

Many young adults leave the Church, either in body or spirit, at least for a time. For some, it may not even be a conscious decision. Some of us away at school or living away from home for the first time didn’t bother to find another parish. Sunday mornings could find us sleeping in, immersed in some form of social media, or out jogging. We were busy—and things such as jobs, friends, and setting up our apartments became more important.

If it was a conscious choice, we may have been questioning the authority of all the institutions in our lives. In rapidly changing times, the bureaucracy of the Church may have seemed rigid and narrow. We began to examine our philosophies and our affiliations—did they fit together?

In my 20s, I became a vegetarian, because I thought that the beef industry was doing a lot of damage to the planet. I also tried to be socially conscious regarding the other products that I used. It was at this time that I left the Church. it seemed to me to be too sexist, in addition to the fact that there was much in its history with which I didn’t agree. As an institution, it didn’t seem very Christ-like.

During these years, we may have pondered the great questions of life. Does science provide the answers? Does faith? Or, more importantly, does organized religion? If we did wander and question, what brought us back to where we are today?

SHARE

 Share an experience from your own faith journey.

 If you experienced a period of being away from regular church practice, what brought you back? If you never left, what has kept you in the Church?

REFLECTION 2

Perhaps it’s the comfort of a familiar place, the feeling of coming home, that brings us back to or keeps us in the Catholic Church. If we grew up the Church, there may be a sense of “feeling Catholic,” of Catholicism being a part of who we are.

Despite changes over the years, the Church remains unchanging in many ways. If we’ve been lost for a while, struggling with life’s burdens, we may feel a load has been lifted when we listen to the readings about being taken care of, about the sparrows and the lilies of the field, and when we hear hymns like Marty Haugen’s “All Are Welcome.”

It’s wonderful to think of the Church as a sanctuary. “For thus says the Lord: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, … As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”

(Isaiah 66:12-13) Even pop psychologists tell us that we are all looking to find the security of our earliest days. We may feel that sense of security in clinging to or coming back to the Church.

Coming back or becoming more involved may be a result of getting married and having children. Even if we weren’t away, our own faith may be reinvigorated when we present our children for baptism. Our own awareness of the call to be active disciples rather than passive observers may be heightened as we accompany our children in their faith formation, especially their preparation to receive the Eucharist and confirmation. This was addressed by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) an assembly of the world’s bishops that was meant to change the way we are Church. An important concept that the council stressed was that every baptized person is called by name to a role in the Church’s mission of charity, mercy, and justice. “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit.” (Jn 15:16) We answer that call through prayer, meditation, discussion, and discernment. The choices are varied and numerous. We are called to be more than believers in the fundamental tenets of our faith. We are

also called to an ever deeper understanding of our mission in the Body of Christ through continuous learning through bible study, small faith-sharing groups, parish adulteducation programs, spiritual direction, and retreats. The idea of a baptismal call is powerful; it has the potential to effect positive changes within the Church. When we realize, individually and collectively, that to live as Jesus would have us live, we are called to work for peace and justice we can feel as exhilarated as we are challenged.

SHARE

 When you attend your parish church, do you feel as if you are fulfilling an obligation, being a “good Catholic,” playing your part in a community—or something else? Explain.

 Conversion doesn’t refer only to a person coming into the Church from another faith tradition or from no faith tradition. It also means a spiritual experience that brings a person closer to God. In that sense, has anyone’s conversion experience been helpful to you? In what ways?

 How might you seek greater participation in the parish community?

INvITATION to ACT

Determine a specific action (individual or group) that flows from the content of this session.

 Talk with your children about how they became valued additions to your family. Connect the story with what it meant in your faith journey.

 Take your children to church, include them in your interactions with other parishioners so that they see that being Church is being part of a community.

 Seek out a friend or someone at work to share some of your faith stories.

CLOSINg PRAyER

Pray together:

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the gift of your Body, the Church. As members of that Body, a family united in the Eucharist, may we each play our part in making it a source of generosity toward those in need, peace for those in conflict, justice for those who are treated unfairly, and comfort for those who are neglected, alone, or afraid. May our guidance and example lead our children to feel at home when they are at church and to find their own places as your disciples, caring for their neighbors and for the earth. Amen.

LOOkINg AHEAd

To prepare for the next session, read Matthew 26:26-30.