My first Holy Communion I remember as a bit of a disaster. Hospitalisation meant I missed much of the painstaking preparation and what little I had was rushed. I just knew it was immensely important without fully appreciating why. More importantly I was wearing ‘hand-me-down’ sandals. And even worse than that, girls’ sandals one of which wouldn’t buckle.
It was many years later when things finally fell into place. In particular: John 6. 35 – 57.
‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and who ever believes in my will never go thirsty…and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. . . For my Father’s will is that everyone that looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and will raise them up on the last day. . . . Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood …remains in me, and I in them.’
This is both powerful and unambiguous. Even so, for a long time I found it difficult to fully appreciate why priests and Catholics took such risks in C16th England: ruinous fines, broken bones and death for the sake of Holy Communion.
If I had been GK Chesterton, I would have had no problem. No problem at all.
fter his reception into the Catholic Church, Chesterton went to High Wycombe to be prepared by Father Thomas Walker for his first Holy Communion. Father Walker remembered the preparation as ‘one of the happiest duties I had ever to perform. . . It certainly did not take long to prepare him for he evidently knew as much as I could tell him. Nevertheless, he said I was to treat him as any child whom I was teaching…I went through the catechism very meticulously explained all the details, to which he lent a most vigilant and unswerving attention. (So aware was Chesterton) of the immensity of the Real Presence on the morning of his First Communion. . . that he was covered with perspiration when he actually received Our Lord. When I congratulated him, he said, “I have spent the happiest hour of my life.” But, at least to begin with, he found it difficult going to Holy Communion, his ‘best happiness.’ He was ‘too much frightened of that tremendous reality on the altar. “I have not grown up with it, and it is too much for me.”’
Deep down, I regret feeling none of what Chesterton experienced that first time, but then I have grown up with it. In fairness, too, I suspect Chesterton may have been feeling something else if he had been wearing girls’ sandals, one of which was unbuckled.
