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First Communion Retreat

By Deanna Bartalini

This time of year often finds those of us who prepare children for First Holy Communion in our final weeks of preparation.  In our program, children receive First Holy Communion on the first Sunday in May.  We have a morning retreat for them a few weeks before.  It’s a chance to come together and do some activities together, take an up close tour of the church, practice the songs for Mass and practice how to receive.

Here is an outline with the resources we use:

9:00 am   Welcome, distribute name tags

9:05:  Opening Prayer

3 stations, each 20 minutes long;

9:20 – 9:40; 9:45 – 10:05; 10:10- 10:30

Station #1  The Weight of a Mass: A Tale of Faith by Josephine Nobisso;    I use the book, but there is also a Youtube video available.  We read the book and then ask questions about it.  If you have not read it, do so.  It is an amazing story with beautiful illustrations.  At a certain point in the story, the children listening will start nodding and gasping as they understand what is happening and the meaning behind all the action.

Station #2   Chalice and Host craft; I found this on The Catholic Toolbox.

Station #3  The Last Supper;  I read the Last Supper and then do a short reenactment with unleavened bread and grape juice.

10:35:  The Making of Communion Bread; this is an awesome video that not only demonstrates how hosts are made but explains what the Eucharist means to us.  A  Passionist nun of Erlanger, Kentucky, is our guide for this brief ten-minute video.

10:50:  Snack and Bathroom break

snack mixMix the following ingredients together in a large bowl, telling what each ingredient represents.  We have some for a snack and then the rest is bagged up with a tag on it for the children to take home.

11:00:  Church Tour; I point out our various statues, holy water font, tabernacle, how to genuflect, Mass responses and postures.  We also practice how to receive Holy Communion, with unconsecrated hosts, of course!  Then our music director teaches us the songs we will use at the Mass.  We close in prayer in the Church and then go back to the parish hall for parents to pick up the children at noon.

 

Read all posts by Deanna Bartalini Filed Under: Featured, Sacraments Tagged With: first communion, retreat, Sacrament, second grade

Catechizing about Communion outside Classroom Walls

By Karee Santos

marga first communion best 4
Catechizing doesn’t have to stay within classroom walls, as Cyndi Marlow, Coordinator of Children’s Faith Formation at St. Gabriel the Archangel Church, well knows. Kids learn better with strong parental involvement, and teaching kids often means teaching their parents, too. So Cyndi keeps the parents informed and up to date by occasionally emailing them articles and blogposts. After reading my blogpost on my fourth child’s First Communion, Cyndi decided she had to share the post with the parents whose kids were being prepared for First Holy Communion. Cyndi told me:
This arrived with perfect timing. … I work with families of children preparing and so many times I witness that they have put their focus on the dress, the party, the cake, the photographer, etc, even putting the focus on the children having a pageant like experience….I love this paragraph [of your post] “Because when you take away the pretty dress and the pretty hair, the veil, the crown, the gloves, and the festivities, what’s behind it all is Jesus. At First Communion, we’re not celebrating our children so much as we’re celebrating him — the God of Love who took flesh and blood in order to bring us eternal life. Our eyes and our hearts should be turned to him.”  AMEN!!!
To everyone who works to prepare kids (and their parents!) for First Communion, feel free to share the original version of this post at my Can We Cana? blog, just like Cyndi did. And have a blessed Easter season!
*****************************
First Communion, Fourth Time Lucky

Scabbed heads, burned faces, and stomach viruses might not seem like a lucky start to my fourth child Marguerite’s First Communion day. Poor Marguerite tripped over the curb at school a few days before her First Communion and went flying up, up, up, and then down onto the pavement. Scabbed knees, scabbed hands, but the worst was a big scab on her forehead right by her hairline. Not the best for close-up shots.Then there was my husband’s burned face. He got scalded in the shower (horrible, I know — how did that happen?), and the entire left side of his face was covered by a reddish-purplish burn. To disguise it, we had to decide between a Phantom of the Opera style mask, a Middle Eastern veil, or Loreal True Match foundation. We went with the foundation. The whole unfortunate event reminded my husband of the time in high school that he let his brother Tony cut his hair.

Hair buzzer: “Skkkrrt.”
Tony: “Uh-oh.”

Left with a bald spot in the back of his head, my husband colored it in with a black magic marker so no one would notice. See the parallels? But I digress.

The wonders of modern make-up

The wonders of modern make-up

Finally, there was the matter of my younger daughter Cecilia’s stomach virus. I’ll spare you the gory details, but they were — gory. None of the guests invited to the First Communion party was willing to set foot in the house plagued by such an unpleasant virus.

My mother-in-law mourned the absence of a full-scale shindig like we had for our other children’s First Communions. It doesn’t matter, I told my mother-in-law, Marguerite will have a party with Jesus. Because when you take away the pretty dress and the pretty hair, the veil, the crown, the gloves, and the festivities, what’s behind it all is Jesus. At First Communion, we’re not celebrating our children so much as we’re celebrating him — the God of Love who took flesh and blood in order to bring us eternal life. Our eyes and our hearts should be turned to him.

So we might not have been able to bring Marguerite to his altar without blemish or spot (Eph. 5:27). We might not have been able to bring ourselves that way either. But all the minor calamity took our minds off of what we were bringing Jesus and made us focus on what he was giving us — freely, undeservedly, despite our inner and outer flaws, and despite the masks we wore to cover them. We cannot possibly merit the gift of God sacrificing himself for us on the altar or on Calvary so many centuries ago. We can only receive it with humility and devotion. Realizing the enormity of God’s gift in the Eucharist is what made Marguerite’s First Communion the luckiest — the most blessed — of all.

marga first communion best 2

Read all posts by Karee Santos Filed Under: Catechetics, Catechism, Elementary School, General, Sacraments Tagged With: Eucharist, first communion, first holy communion, sacramental preparation, second grade

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