This is
a very important day in the lives of you children, in the lives of your
families, in the lives of our parish community. I know
that all of you will cherish memories of this day all of your lives. You have
been preparing all year for this special sacrament – for the first time you
will receive the Lord in the holy Eucharist, for the first time you will
receive his body and his blood in this very special way. When you
were baptized as infants, when your parents made the promise to bring you up in
the Catholic faith, your parents were told that they were to be not only the
first teachers of the faith for you, but they were to be the best of teachers
as well. In these
past couple of months that I have been with you here at St James as your
pastor, I have seen many examples of the dedication and the love in which your
parents are instructing you in the faith. That is
a blessing for you in your lives, and your love of God and the ways you have been
taught in the faith have brought you here today. All of
us joyfully celebrate this special day with you.
In
today’s Gospel from Luke, we hear about Jesus looking out at the crowds thar
have gathered to hear him teach and to watch him perform miracles. The
disciples want Jesus to send the people home so they can get something to eat,
but Jesus tells the disciples that they can be fed. He
performs a wonderful miracle, multiplying a few loaves of bread and a couple of
fish into enough food to feed the hungry crowd. In that
miracle, he gives them hope and he shows them that he is the Son of God. Jesus
performs a miracle for us each time we come to mass. He feeds us with his body and body, he brings
us salvation and hope. Jesus
enters us in the Eucharist we receive – we in turn become the body of
Christ. The body
of Christ that we receive influences the way we live our lives even when we
leave the mass. We heard
an account in our first reading about how the disciples in the Early Church
took care of each other out of their faith and out of their love for God. They
shared their belongings with one another. They not
only preached the Word of God to the world, but they showed people what the
Word of God really meant through their actions. That is
what you are to do also, boys and girls: to live as the Body of Christ through your
words and your actions, to be Christ to the world. We
celebrate with all of you today. And we know that the Eucharist you receive
will have a wonderful affect on your lives when you let it penetrate your
hearts.
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