Eucharistic Hospitality

Like so many parishes in the United States, the springtime is the occasion for Christ the Redeemer Parish to celebrate First Holy Communion with our youngest communicants. The last two weekends of the Easter Season gathered two different communities of believers to share at the Lord’s Table. Parents, godparents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, brothers and sisters brought their relatives to celebrate around the Lord’s Table and to receive their First Holy communion.

The first weekend of May, our English language First Communion celebrated with seventy-nine children. A hundred and one children from Spanish language families celebrated Eucharist for the first time on the Vigil of Pentecost, the following weekend.

First Communion is an essential and well-remembered celebration for most families and, certainly, within the parish community. Our experience of this sacrament bears out in our memories what the “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy”, in speaking of the Eucharist, calls “the Source and Summit of Christian life.” Our theology, our spirituality, and our personal experience know that the Eucharist is the source from which all life comes and the point where all that our lives know of the presence of the Lord is celebrated.

First Communion reminds us that Eucharist, whether celebrated for the first time or regularly each Sunday, is when we can see, touch, and taste what it is to be the Body of Christ, the Church gathered for liturgy. To this gathering, the Lord invites all of his People and is faithfully present, whenever the Church comes together to assist at the Eucharist.

Welcome
Everything about the Eucharist is welcoming and invitational. The Father gathers his People in Christ and the Spirit, allows us to know the Christ in Word and sacramental sign. This hospitality is expressed in the community gathered in Christ, first of all, to hear God’s saving and nurturing Word. This hospitality which welcomes and accepts all believers is expressed at the Lord’s Table. By the action of the Spirit and the faith of the gathered community, the bread and wine are transformed into the very Presence of Christ among us.

Eucharistic Diversity
Our most recent First Communions showed not only the centrality of what we believe about Eucharist, but allowed an expansive experience of the cultures, languages, music, and family life which is the context of our faith. Everything, from the clothing which the children wore, to the language used, to the rhythms and phrasing of the

songs, to the family participation, showed the diverse and distinct Presence of Christ among his People.

In this diversity, there is the singular and real Presence of Christ among those gathered at his Table. Bread is taken, blessed, and broken. Wine is taken, blessed, and poured out. Expressed and celebrated with diverse language, culture, and music, the bread and wine are transformed by the action of the one Spirit into Christ’s Presence. No less wonderful by eating and drinking at the Lord’s Table, participating in Holy Communion, the believing community is transformed into the Body of Christ, the Church. We become one Body, one People in Christ Jesus with one mind and heart.

No less wonderful is that the Eucharistic community is missioned and sent to be food and drink for all. The Body of Christ, the Church, is to be broken and given for the life of all. In communion, we become what we eat, not only within the liturgy, but in a continuing way in our everyday lives. We become a Eucharistic People.

United in Faith
Before the Eucharist we are united in one faith, and, following the celebration, we continue as one People of one faith, one Lord, and one baptism. Our communion liturgically only begins the process of being in communion, rooted in Christ, and also one with our brothers and sisters in the world.

The Challenge
The Eucharist challenges us to be a Eucharistic People. What we see and experience around the Lord’s Table is what we are and what we shall become. That’s what it means to be Church, which finds its beginning in the Eucharist and celebrates its culmination in Eucharist as the Church gathered before a common Father to praise and bless his Name. The Eucharistic Presence of Christ is not divided into a liturgical and practically-lived reality. Christ present at the Table is also present in our brothers and sisters. Can we see the same Christ in our brothers and sisters who receive him at communion? Are we able to see the same Christ in our everyday living?

We are blessed at Christ the Redeemer to see Peoples of many languages, cultures, music, and perceptions. The Lord is not divided, but rather he calls us to be one People, undivided in mind and heart. The children show us with their families and friends the same Christ who calls us together. In Christ Jesus we are all migrants, Pilgrim People on the way to the Kingdom. As we embrace at the greeting of peace at the Liturgy, let us be embraced by the Christ, who has called all his children to the blessings of his Eucharist Table.

CDH