Be What You receive
A talk given to parents of first communicants at Our Lady of the Assumption and the English Martyrs, Cambridge by Sr. Tamsin Mary Geach
In the next few weeks your children will reach the point of making their first Holy Communion. This era of fortnightly early rising will be over! Praise the Lord!
So well done. You have faithfully brought your children to this point. It’s my job today to remind you why we go through all this – parents, catechists and children. What is the motivation that makes this worth-while?
Basically, eternal life.In the Gospel of St John, Chapter 6, we read that after the feeding of the 5000 the crowds came back to Jesus hoping for more free food. He told them not to seek for ‘food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you…which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.” When they press Him further He tells them “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst’ Later on He says ‘I am the living bread[c] which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”