Every Communion like your First Communion

Our First Communion is considered one of the biggest days in our Catholic lives because this is the day we receive Jesus Christ’s body and blood in the form of bread and wine for the first time.  We all remember the day we had our First Communion. It was a day of prayer and festivities. We were dressed in white and spent weeks of preparation for this big day. Excited and anxious to receive Communion, like swans in a row we went to the Altar with our hands folded in prayer. The Priest greeted us with "This is the body of Christ,” our meekly reply, “Amen,” and the little host was put into our mouths. Next, we went to the Eucharistic minister who said, “This is the blood of Christ,” and we replied once again, “Amen,” and we drank. Just like that, Jesus had entered into us. St. Cyril of Alexandria said that when we receive Communion we are “as two pieces of wax fused together make one, so he who receives Holy Communion is so united with Christ that Christ is in him and he is in Christ.”  The Pastor in our parish always makes a point to say in every First Communion, that this is the “first of many” Communions. Our First Communion is not supposed to be our last Communion; rather it is the beginning of many more Communions. Since we are receiving Christ’s body and blood, every Communion, your second, third, hundredth, etc. should be very special.
               
​     We must treat each of our Communions with the same amount of joy and love as we did during our First Communion. Let us be hungry to be filled with the grace that comes from Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Oftentimes we forget the importance and the great gift we have been given through the Eucharist. Jesus said to St. Faustina ““I desire to unite Myself to human souls, know, My daughter, that when I come to a human heart in Holy Communion, My hands are full of all kinds of graces which I want to give to the soul. But souls do not even pay any attention to Me; they leave Me to Myself and busy themselves with other things. . . They treat Me as a dead object.” We must strive to change this by rejoicing at every chance we have to receive Christ and believing that Christ is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament. Additionally, we should remember God’s deep love for us and how He fills this love in our souls when we receive Him. St. Therese of Liseux during her First Communion was filled with so much joy that she was moved to tears by God’s immense love, “Heaven entered my soul when I received Jesus…It was joy alone, deep ineffable joy that filled my heart.” A short prayer we could say before Communion is “Thank you Jesus for the great gift I am about to receive, Amen.” Let us always remember to treat every Communion like it was our First Communion. 

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