Family Spirituality

Families can get more out of Mass

At Home with our Faith offered a series of 10 short articles on how your family can get more out of the Mass. We walked through the chronology of the Mass, from preparation and gathering through the final blessing and sending forth. Each month for ten issues we suggested ways that you and your family can better appreciate how the Mass can deepen and enrich our life together. What follows are the ten installments.

Eucharist: everybody has a hungry heart

A young photographer friend stopped by to show me his portfolio. One of the photos haunts me days later. Elias belongs to an Orthodox church in an old neighborhood in Chicago, and his photos lovingly chronicle the life of his congregation. The photograph in question shows a young Russian immigrant who had found his way to this church and was surprised by faith. He’d experienced a deep, unexpected conversion. The photo captured the moment just prior to his First Communion.

In the photo the man leans forward, mouth open, eyes closed, a deep hunger contorting his face. Facing him, the priest takes the cup of Communion and, as is customary in the Orthodox Church, holds out a spoonful of bread drenched in wine.

I’m struck by how that photo captures the sense that whether we know it or not, we are hungry for the bread of life. This man came from a country of great want and deprivation to a country of plenty–a country of great excess. And yet his hunger continued.

We are born with many hungers. We are fed at the breast and at the family table. We are fed at family feasts and neighborhood festivals. We are fed at parish potluck suppers and First Communion parties. We are fed at wedding feasts and at gatherings of the family for funeral rites.

Most profoundly, we are fed at the altar, the Lord’s table. We’ve got a standing invitation to come, and we can come as we are.

The part of the Mass where we receive the Eucharist is the most sacred because it is the one most packed with mystery: Many grains become one bread; the cup is lifted up as Jesus was lifted up from the dead; bread is broken so that we may all become one; the food we eat becomes food for the world; the Son of God yearns to be so close to us he becomes our food.

There is no way we, let alone our children, can comprehend all these mysteries entirely. But we can be fed by them in every season of our life. Here are some ideas on how to help your children approach these mysteries.

1. Share your own story of the time receiving Communion meant the most to you.

2. Remind your children that this meal dates all the way back to Jesus’ time. He shared this meal with his disciples on the night before he died. His followers have participated in the breaking of the bread ever since. Jesus gave us this meal as his gift to us.

3. Tell them that just as Jesus can take the "work of human hands (the bread) and fruit of the vine (the wine)" and turn them into his own self, so too he can transform our efforts throughout the day into his presence in the world. Being nice to the new kid in school, playing fair and including outcasts, treating older people on the block with respect, etc., can all be placed on the table and become our spiritual banquet. We all have a role in setting the table.

4. When we are fed, we have strength to take care of others in need. Receiving Communion can fill us with God’s love, a love that overflows to others. Encourage your children to use the quiet time after Communion to ask God’s strength to bring his goodness to those they meet throughout the week.

5. Finally, teach your children that the Eucharist is meant also for our spiritual healing. God realizes that none of us approaches the altar as a perfect human being. In the bread and the cup, Jesus offers the medicine of mercy. In Ordinary Time (Beacon Press, 1994), Nancy Mairs writes about the Eucharist: "I don’t partake because I’m a good Catholic, holy and pious and sleek. I partake because I’m a bad Catholic, riddled by doubt and anxiety and anger: fainting from severe hypoglycemia of the soul. I need food."

We are born with many hungers. Jesus arrived in a manger, a symbol that he came to be food for us all. Blessed are those who are called to his banquet. And that’s an offer we shouldn’t refuse. TJM