With joy we welcome 41 youngsters from our School and Parish Faith Formation Program who receive their First Holy Communion this weekend. This is an important milestone on their journey of faith, as they join our community at the table of the Lord, and a moment of grace and blessing for our community.

The Holy Eucharist, Vatican II reminded us, is the source and summit of our Christian life. We believe and profess that in receiving the Sacrament of the Altar, we receive the very reality of our crucified and risen Lord, his Body and Blood given for the life of the world, for the life of each one of us. Moreover, as theologians back to St. Augustine have taught, we affirm that in receiving the Body and Blood of the Lord, we become what we receive. We become his body and blood at work in this broken world of ours, the hands through which he continues to reach out to bless and heal, and his heart that loves our broken world back to life.

The Eucharist is the paradigmatic sacrament of transformation: ordinary food, the simplest elements of bread and wine become a new and potent reality. No longer merely bread that fuels our bodies and wine that gives gladness, these fruits of the earth and work of human hands become a new reality. In them and through the Spirit’s power, the Word becomes flesh again, and becomes our nourishment, which then, both wonderfully and mysteriously, becomes flesh again in us. We become what we receive.

What began at the Last Supper and on Calvary is remarkable because it is dynamic. The Eucharist is no static idol or artifact that exists merely to point us toward a transcendental reality. Rather, it is the real deal, the real presence of the living God among us, and is real nourishment. Jesus did not say “Take and Look.” He said, “Take and Eat.” And while praying in adoration before of the Blessed Sacrament is a lovely practice, even more beautiful is our experience of gathering around the table together to receive this transforming gift in our ultimate thanksgiving feast. One bread makes us one body. One cup of blessing blessed and shared makes us one family, blood relatives to one another.

The Eucharist we share, Pope Francis never tires of reminding us, is not a prize or reward reserved only for the virtuous, but rather, is medicine for the sick and strength for the faltering. It binds us together into one interdependent and interrelated community. Indeed, it is the source of our union and communion with each other.

And so this weekend we welcome these children into union and communion with us at the “grown up table” set by Jesus’ own hands and filled with his own life. We give thanks for this gift, and for the generosity and commitment of their parents, families, teachers, and friends who bring them here to join us. May God who has begun this work of transformation in them, and in us all, bring it to fulfillment and completion, and grant us all a place together one day at the banquet that will never end.

Breaking of the Bread, Greek Chapel, Catacombs of Priscilla, Rome, late 2nd cent. AD