Holy Communion

As we move from Lent to Easter and from Spring to Summer, everything brightens and emerging blossoms tell us of life breaking out against the numbing cold, damp and dark of Winter. This is, of course, an allegory of the victory of Christ over sin and death. Over these weeks many of our young Parishioners, having made their First Confessions, will receive a still greater share in this Victory; for the very first time they will receive their Saviour, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the most intimate way open to them this ‘side’ of Heaven; please God, these First Confessions and Communions will be the first of many Confessions and Communions in a life lived increasingly in love with and in service of Jesus.

On Good Friday, we recalled Our Lord’s being nailed to the Cross, hanging there for three hours then being laid, dead, in Mary’s arms; He was buried in the Tomb, in the eyes of many, gone for good! As we are hearing at the moment in the Gospels, in particular, Christ definitively proved that He is, indeed, God; He Rose from the dead, having atoned to the Father for the sin of Adam and Eve. As we recite, weekly, in the Creed, He soon confirmed the precarious Faith of the Apostles by sending the Holy Spirit; gone was the fear of reprisals for proclaiming the Truth. We are already hearing, not only of the bold proclamations of the Truth, but of the resistance to that truth, in the forms of beatings, imprisonment and death. Did the Church curl up and die? Not a bit of it! Energised by the Grace of God and by His Presence in Holy Communion, the Church has gone from strength to strength as, indeed, Christ promised it would. He promised, before ascending into Heaven, that He would be with us, “...until the end of time…”. Saint Paul, another of the fruits of the conquest of Good over evil, recalls us to this fact: If we live, faithfully, God’s Way, nothing can keep us from attaining Heaven.
 
Our Brothers and Sisters, in certain places in the world, are still suffering attacks, privation and death for living out the Faith which, in the ‘free’ world, so many treat so casually. Please God we will not fail our young people, the precious Church of the future. May they grow up in families where the Faith is an integral and growing part of life; may it never be allowed to come to be regarded like so many of the fashions and interests which they may well discard as they grow older.
 
Actions, as the Apostles demonstrated, speak louder than words. Enriched by regular reception of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist, may our lives, ever more, be the examples which stimulate the growth of the Church!