This weekend we celebrate the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi. This beautiful feast reminds us and calls us to remember that Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist is the greatest of all gifts; for the Eucharist is the very body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.
It is for the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith, that I have given and continue to give my life. Having experienced Jesus in the breaking of the bread, I desire, crave, to receive the Eucharist all the more as a disciple fostering ever deeper friendship with him.
Last month marked the 50th anniversary of my first holy Communion at St. Rita of Cassia Church and School in Aurora, Illinois. I will never forget that day, when my Irish father and good German Lutheran mother, along with my big brother and little sister, walked out the front door and crossed Old Indian Trail into St. Rita’s. There I sat in the front row with a billion other kids anticipating the moment.
The next day back at school one of my classmates ran up to me and said, “I saw you at church yesterday, Kevin, and you looked so joyful receiving your first holy Communion.” I replied, “Well, you know, I waited a whole extra year and I just couldn’t wait to receive Jesus!” Unlike all the other 139 students who received their first holy Communion that day, I was a third grader — yes, “a year late.”
That occurred 2,604 Sundays ago. As I’ve shared with so many people, for the past 2,604 Sundays I have never missed Mass unless I was sick. I mention this not to boast, for this Finnegan is also a “Sin-again!” Rather, it is shared as an emphasis on the ordinariness of our faith.
Going to Sunday Mass and receiving the Eucharist is one of the normal or typical things I do. Like eating macaroni and cheese. Or watching the Chicago Cubs. Or cramming for a math test. Or saying “I’m sorry” to my little sister. Or sneaking a few cookies from the cookie jar. Or playing catch. Some things we simply just do.
Boasting of “my record,” however, becomes a weird point to make this year. This year’s first holy communicants might not only be third-graders by the time they receive Communion for the first time — but very likely will not even be able to go to church for many weeks thereafter, of course for “Covidian” reasons.
So how do we foster within our children a truly eucharistic spirituality? How do we help our children know that receiving the Eucharist from within the assembled community has been and always shall remain our normative pattern of life as disciples of Jesus Christ; a living tradition for 2,000 years, rooted in the lived experience of Jewish sisters and brothers for many millennia?
One way forward is for us “older” children of God — for indeed we are — to express in our routine lives the love, the practical love, of Jesus. For Jesus realized and declared that the bread he would give is his flesh for the life of the world (Jn 6:51). And that’s what disciples do who consume the Eucharist; we give our flesh. And so whether I received my first holy Communion 2,604 Sundays ago or one Sunday ago or will next Sunday, the very act of receiving the fullness of Jesus calls, indeed, demands of me, through the Holy Spirit, to give my flesh, my life, for the life of the world — for the wellbeing of our children.
The next time a third-grader asks, “What’s the source of your magnanimity?” Calmly respond, “I received Jesus in the Eucharist; how else can I live?”
Father Finnegan is the pastor of Our Lady of Grace in Edina.
Sunday June 14
Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ
