What are some of the joys and challenges you face in helping your community celebrate First Communion?

What are some of our parish traditions that help make this a meaningful experience for families?

Happy conversing,
The Forum Team

Last year we moved out celebration of First Eucharist to the regularly scheduled weekend liturgies. There was some resistance from a few parents who thought that the celebration wouldn't be "special" enough but after the celebration we had wonderful feed back not only from the families of the children who received their first communion but also from the rest of the parish.
To help our parishioners understand the decision to make the first communion celebration part of the weekend liturgies we ran the following article in our parish bulletin

This year our first communion students will receive the Eucharist for the first time at Weekend Masses on Saturday, May 9th at 4 p.m. and Sunday May 17th at the 10:30 a.m. Mass. We are hopeful that celebrating 1st Eucharist at parish liturgies will:
• Give the children in our program the chance to celebrate with those of you whom they see regularly at Mass,
• Remind us that the gift of Jesus’ presence is here for all to receive wach and every week not just on special occasions
• Inspire all of us to approach each celebration of the Eucharist with the same awe and enthusiasm that our first communicants have.
We hope that these Masses will be a source of great joy for our parish family as we welcome these young people to the table of the Lord for the first time and we hope that you will plan to join us at these celebrations.

We also moved to celebrating during the regular weekend liturgies.

I work for a three parish cluster, so there was a lot to think through: how to let each of the three parishes retain their distinctive traditions, while also beginning to pull the three together into one pastorate community. The pastor and I had a number of in-depth discussions before the switch, which helped us provide a "united front."

I began informing parents of the change as early in the year as possible - at the Reconciliaton parent meeting, when I gave an overview of the sacramental preparation process for the year. The pastor also wrote an article for the parish newsletter and bulletin, to help catechize the entire parish community.

Every time I got push-back from parents, I simply listened to their concern, and then explained our rationale, and tried to engage them in conversation about what is most important in our Eucharistic celebrations, and subtly reminding them that this is not a "production" or "event."

To help underscore the notion that we are one pastorate community with three different worshiping sites, families could choose to celebrate at any of the seven weekend liturgies. Interestingly enough, people split themselves up pretty evenly across all the Masses.

We also had a reception after each of the Masses, which was well received.

We also celebrate first communions at the various weekend liturgies. We limit the groups to no more than 16 families and each family has whole pew so the child is with their family. The children process in at the begining of mass and bring forth the gifts as a group. Our ushers guide the children forward to receive communion before the rest of the family members and congregation come forward. Back at one of the parent meetings we gave out "service record" sheets on which the family is asked to choose some form of service to offer in preparation for communion. These were collected at the communion retreat (and later for those who forgot) and they are among the gifts presented at each of the masses when first communions take place. We also have the families make a banner for their child which they place on the end of the pew where they are sitting. This then goes home as a remembrance. (Back at the beginning of their preparation for confession the parents also presented their children with a cross for their room as a sign of their beginning their preparation for these two sacraments. This was done at all the masses one weekend). Once the communions are done we'll put up a display showing the families at the retreat, the service projects they did and other remembrances of this year's preparation.