First Holy Communion

From " A Piece of the Banner"

One of the major spiritual responsibilities of the nuns was to indoctrinate us in the mysteries of the Catholic religion and prepare us to join the spiritual community of St. John the Evangelist. The opening initiation into this age-old society was the ceremony called  “the receipt of First Holy Communion.”

       For the ceremony, the families arrived early at the huge St. John the Evangelist Church. Most walked from their homes in the surrounding neighborhood streets. We were about to make our first Holy Communion.

The receipt of Holy Communion is an esoteric ritual, clouded in antiquity. It represents to the faithful the transubstantiation of matter into spiritual being. Most of us never understood the concept, but it was a rite of passage that each of us went through in turn, uncomplaining, generation after generation, reaffirming a two-thousand year old ideology.

Inside the church, the pews were crowded with parents, grandparents and beaming relatives. Our own seats were a glimmer of polished and contoured wood, with red-padded kneelers and racks for hymnals and bulletins. The aura in the church was solemn and thoughtful.

       The surrounding pews contained the proud parents, grandparents and observant representatives of a generation past. The godparents, finished out the row. Many, many families stood similarly, row upon expectant row of communal celebrants, participating in a familiar and age-old ritual. Thoughts of their own First Communions, and the accompanying wellspring of memories, lent an air of nostalgia to the proceedings.      

         We, the communicants, were bedecked in a patterned array of white lace dresses for the girls and sober blue broadcloth suits for the boys. We looked like miniature brides and grooms marching two by two, down the aisle of tomorrow.

Anxious parents, equipped with a dazzling array of expensive photographic equipment, jockeyed for line of sight positions to capture, in celluloid, a moment of memory. The mood was festive and the occasional squawk of younger siblings seemed to punctuate and enhance the familial and communal nature of the event.

The Mass, the most arcane and mystic of Catholic rituals, proceeded through its time-encrusted stages. The language has since evolved from Latin to English, but the ceremony itself was little changed from antiquity. The kiss of peace and a handshake with those nearest you, was a pleasant and modern addition to the rite.

The communicants filed solemnly to the altar and received, for the first time, a small wafer of bread, which was reverently placed onto our tongues by a be-robed and properly officious member of the clergy. The children responded, each in turn, “Amen” to the incantation “Body of Christ.” In later years the priests would place the host into the communicants’ hands and they would put it into their mouths but that wasn’t how it was done for millennium. It represented a receiving in spiritual form of the body of Christ. Each of these junior Catholics was nervous and expectant. They did not fully understand the ceremony, but were aware in a visceral sense of the import and seriousness of the rite in which they were collectively engaged. They sang, in the clear ringing pitch of young children, a song of happiness and devotion.

The flicker of photographic flashes and the whirring of motorized camera drives added a background of subdued, high-tech opera that curiously complemented the solemnity of the ritual.

Next, the congregation proceeded in a similar fashion to the children, and partook of the spiritual banquet offered. It had a swaying and familiar regularity, not unlike many primitive American Indian ceremonies.

Lastly, a small loaf of bread was distributed to each child to share with family. It was a poignant reminder of Jesus the Nazarene and his last supper, where he asked each of his followers to share with him the bread of life in a spiritual communion. The service concluded with a round of applause for the communicants and we parted, in tributaries of steel, to the many family celebrations at various homes and restaurants throughout the area.