Today we celebrated the first communion of Chimamanda, Henry, and Olivia, and I want to highlight the following.
You’ll notice that there is a direct line and even a straight path between the baptism pool and the altar. That’s because the belonging that we celebrate at baptism is supposed to end up around the altar table so that we become the body of Christ.
But I’m telling you, you don’t learn anything about the Eucharist (what it is, what it’s for, what it is about, the gift of it, the grace of it, the challenge of it, you don’t learn any of that) unless you immerse yourself in it.
Unless you keep coming to it. Unless you are faithful to it!
And so I am asking the parents and the St. Benedict the African community to keep these children, long after their first communion, faithful to this sacrament.
People will say “Oh, I’m just not into it” or “It doesn’t do anything for me.”
But it isn’t about us!
It is about God. And our life in God. And our being formed into the body of Christ by the Body of Christ. And our becoming church. That’s what it’s about.
It’s about us being faithful in just a tiny little reflection of the awesome, amazing, abundant, extravagant, faithfulness of God to us.
And that is worth being here. So as these children start to join us around the table of the Lord, be aware of that.
Pray them to this altar and pray to keep them at this altar.
[Written by Sister Joanne Delehanty, OP]
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Read more-Mrs. Rowell, Parishioner
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SAINT BENEDICT THE AFRICAN PARISH
340 W 66th Street
Chicago, IL 60621
773-873-4464
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