Eucharist: United with Christ and with Each Other
by Christine Szczepanowksi

Over the next two weekends, eighteen children from PREP (Old St. Joseph’s Parish Religious Education Program) and from St. Mary’s Interparochial School will make their First Holy Communion. In this celebration, young members of our community will continue the initiation into the Church begun with their baptism by joining us at the Lord’s Table. First Communions are traditionally celebrated in Eastertide but were postponed this year due to the pandemic. OSJ’s celebration has also been modified to enable social distancing. Instead of the usual community celebration at 9:30 AM Sunday Mass, we will have three smaller, private Masses. The sacrament remains the same, but this accommodation sheds light on aspects of it that we might not always consider. Despite the division into smaller groups, this year’s First Communicants are being formed together to bring new life to the whole community.

Eucharist unites us with Jesus, and it also unites us with one another. We become what we receive, the Body of Christ. As with Sunday Mass, even if Eucharist occurs in several celebrations, we are in fact one people sharing the One Body and Blood of Christ. The intertwined union of individuals with Christ and with one another is at the heart of the whole Catholic sacramental life. Another way of putting this is that our spiritual and our material lives are ultimately inseparable. All the sacraments use material, finite, created things as channels to the spiritual and infinite, and that includes our bodies. The more fully we can enter into this reality, the more fully we will experience God’s presence in all of our lives.

Our PREP program builds on this fundamental understanding. We teach the tenets, prayers, and liturgical practices of our faith and prepare children for the sacraments of Reconciliation, Eucharist, and Confirmation. We also strive to form the children into live-ers of the faith. Through reading, exercises, and especially classroom discussion, the teachers help their students consider what the history of God’s people; the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; and the institution of the Church mean for their own lives. In age-appropriate ways, PREP teachers help student discover how God is active in their lives. Finding where you fit into the world includes exploring how you can be a channel of grace for others. Discipleship is a way of living your life that respects both your own gifts and desires and your responsibility and capacity to make a difference in the world.

The sacraments confer graces that support discipleship, and our sacramental preparation highlights this connection. Eucharist brings us close to Jesus and helps us to be considerate of others, to learn to balance our needs and desires with those of others, and to find joy in sometimes putting the needs of others above our own. Reconciliation moves us toward harmony—with God, with others, and with our own inner selves. Confirmation is the culmination of PREP, completing initiation into the Church and bringing with it a more mature understanding of discipleship. We emphasize choosing the confirmation name of a saint who will be a true model for the young person, a holy person who embodies a trait the confirmand would like to emulate Writing a short paper on the saint and explaining their choice encourages the students’ self-reflection.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are particularly salient for young people growing up in a world of often competing values. Religious and moral truths do not change, but the way in which we encounter them in our lives can and does. Values that the grandparents of children in PREP today may have taken for granted as social norms are no longer universally shared. The Church’s place in society has likewise changed. The virtues that constitute the gifts of the Spirit are needed more than ever in the context of so many countervailing influences. The root of the word ‘virtue’ means strength. We hope to help our PREP students acquire the strength and the wisdom to navigate contemporary moral challenges.

Both education and spiritual formation use the concept of appropriation. This means not just acquiring knowledge and insight with your head, not just being able to repeat it on a test; it means coming to know it for yourself. It requires thinking about what you learn, connecting it to your own experience, maybe wrestling with it and being able to use it in your life. It means opening your heart to God’s stirring within you. Old St. Joseph’s PREP teachers try to facilitate such appropriation. At a time when many people are leaving organized religion and even ceasing to believe in God, we seek to nurture young believers who integrate faith into their lives. Our pressing social and environmental problems need faith-based values that recognize the worth and right to a decent life for all people. Faith formation includes helping children develop a sense of social responsibility.

All of us who have taught PREP have had moments of grace when a child speaks a profound truth, sometimes one that adults tend to overlook. Here’s one of mine: I asked the first-grade class I was teaching if they knew what ‘amen’ means, and one little girl spoke right up. “It means,” she said, “that you believe with all your heart everything you just said.” Amen to that!