Coming Soon
Holy Baptism on Sunday April 13th 2008 at 10:00 a.m.
3 Preparation Sessions to be offered. Please register now.
First Communion on the Day of Pentecost Sunday May 11th 2008 at 10 a.m.
5 Preparation Sessions to be offered. Please register now.
Important Opportunity: Please speak to the rector now about opportunities to join and train to be part of a dynamic baptism and first communion teaching team. Parish sponsors and mentors for candidates for baptism, first communion and confirmation are also part of the ministry St. Anne’s wants to provide those coming to seek spiritual formation and support at such important times in their lives.
First Communion
A Letter to Parents, Grandparents, Brothers and Sisters and the Whole Family of St. Anne's from your Rector.
First Communion Classes Coming This Fall
A toddler's move from high chair to the family table is a momentous event. A high chair is a throne for a small king or queen whose demands for another bite are loud and clear! Her/His tray provides a safety net for the messy process of learning to use a spoon.
A seat at the table acclaims a new status: big boy or big girl. The move to the table brings new privileges. There a child can share fully in the family fare (even the broccoli!) and in the table conversation. The move also brings new responsibilities. The little one must master the rudiments of table manners. Children who sit at the table are expected to contribute something to the well-being of the whole family.
First Communion is just such a momentous move. A child, baptized as an infant into the family of God we call Church, at last takes a place at the Lord's Table. Grandparents, Godparents, family and friends join the youngster's immediate family in celebrating the event.
The move also has meaning for the rest of us. We smile in welcome— because they are joining us at our family table, too: the table of God's family. —the family of kinship and the family of faith.
In the fall of 2007 St. Anne's will offer a series of family first communion classes and invites you to approach the Rector now with your interest. A teaching team will be put together to prepare. If you are interested in joining this teaching team, please let the Rector know - we need all kinds of talents, those to help prepare and set up, those who enjoy teaching little ones, those to help with some activity time and planning time.
Eucharist is a family meal
A family meal provides more than physical nourishment. It affirms the sharing of resources, the mutual love and interdependence that is the very essence of family. It is the daily rediscovery and celebration of what it means to be family.
Also uniquely human is the ability to add meaning to a special meal. A birthday dinner, a holiday feast, a picnic outing— very young children know that these are not everyday meals. They are set apart from the ordinary by different foods, seasonal decorations or unusual surroundings, the best china or colorful paper plates, perhaps by special songs and rituals (Christmas carols, carving the turkey, blowing out the birthday candles, opening a window in an Advent calendar or lighting the Advent wreath). And they often include guests: extended family, neighbors, friends, co-workers.
Eucharist is Celebrating who we are
Such special meals celebrate who we are. They emphasize our connections with one another even beyond the boundaries of immediate family. A kindergartner can retell the story of the first Thanksgiving. Young children already know that Thanksgiving is not just for their families, but a celebration with many others.
For countless generations, the Jews have annually celebrated the beginnings of their national identity—their flight from Egypt and their adoption as God's people— with a feast at the family table: the Seder or Passover meal. It remains a family meal, celebrated at home.
Jesus celebrated the Passover meal as he grew up in Nazareth. On the night before he died, he celebrated it with his adopted family, his closest followers. Departing from the familiar ritual, he broke the unleavened bread for them and passed a cup of wine, declaring this food his body and blood given for the life of the world. In this action, he gave us the Eucharist, the family meal that unites believers all around the world at one table.
The first Christians, still rooted in Judaism, went to synagogues to pray and hear God's word, but they celebrated Eucharist in homes with those who had become family through Jesus.
Children who participated in our holy week Maundy Thursday last supper will have a vivid memory of how special this night was. With the appearance of the costumed 12 disciples, reliving that last supper with Jesus, they were brought into an ancient story that is their story too. They moved from watching the disciples feast to being invited to also come and feast on fresh made bread, juice, fruits and nuts, eggs and foods from the holy land.
Eucharist is Telling the family story
At the Passover meal, the smallest child at the table has an important role to play: to ask, "Why is this night different from all others?" Then the adults retell the story of how God freed their ancestors and made them God's own people.
The Eucharistic Prayer retells for the whole gathered family the story of Jesus' Passover from death to life, of our escape from sin and death and our adoption as God's sons and daughters. We repeat it because Christians of all ages need to remember it—not just once a year, not even once a week, but every day of our lives. Jesus' story is our story. His victory over sin and death makes us who we are. We died with him in the waters of Baptism and rose with him to new and lasting life.
Baptism gave us a new identity. It brought us into the family of the Church as birth or adoption brings a child into a family. But Baptism, like birth, is only a beginning. It takes a long time to grow into our identity. Discovering who we are as Anglican Christians is like acquiring a sense of personal and family identity: It takes both time and intimacy with others.
Much of a child's learning occurs at mealtime, beginning with the cuddling that makes warm milk taste sweeter. It grows by leaps and bounds when the child takes a seat at the family table.
Sharing the day's happenings gives a little one a keener sense of what is important to this family. Older members add family history—memories of that unimaginable time when Mommy was a little girl, how grandparents met, fond anecdotes.
The same is true of God's table. There all God's children not only repeat Jesus' story, they also express in their conversations with God and with one another what is important to this Church family, this parish family. Children may find a homily directed at adults hard to follow, but they pick up a sense of family from announcements of parish happenings, food collections for the poor, the way people greet each other, the news they exchange at the church door. Slowly, children get to know the folks at church and hear their personal expression of baptismal faith.
A first communicant has all along been learning the meaning of Christian identity from others—lisping prayers with parents and helping to set up the Christmas crèche. Very young children catch a high-chair glimpse of the parish family at prayer and gain an impression of the Eucharistic meal. The shushing finger on a parent's lips conveys that something important is happening here; people's reverence at Communion tells that what is dispensed from those shiny dishes is special indeed.
Children's preparation for First Communion begins with early visits to Sunday church services, where they absorb the sights, smells, and sounds of worship. And all of us take part in teaching what Eucharist is all about, whether we realize it or not. We welcome them with friendly smiles—or, less happily, threatening scowls. We convey with our whole selves the many meanings Eucharist has for us.
Eucharist is a nourishing meal
Nourishment is a daily process. This morning's orange juice, for example, provides only enough vitamin C for today; tomorrow will require more. Just so, the life of the risen Lord is nurtured in his people by a consistent lifetime diet of his flesh and blood. A child's First Communion is but the first taste of this food.
First tastes can be wonderful. Watching the face of a tot trying a first spoonful of ice cream is fun: shock at the coldness followed by delight. The first bite of spinach or beets is another matter; some folks never acquire the taste.
The physical taste of Eucharist is different enough from table bread that we can confuse children.
We need to teach them the story of unleavened bread. When they make the communion read themselves or we alternate the kind of bread we use from time to time, we reinforce that real bread becomes Jesus’ real body. When we say “taste and see that the Lord is good” we want our children to experience this as true even as the true sweetness of Eucharist stems from the intimacy of the table, from union with the Lord rather than the taste of the bread.
Relationships also have magic moments. The first step toward new intimacy—exchanging wedding vows, holding a newborn infant, falling into friendship—these are precious and memorable moments. But the real depth of intimacy unfolds over the years.
First Communion is just such a step into new intimacy. From Baptism a first communicant has been one with Jesus, filled with the risen Lord's indestructible life as part of his very Body, the Church. Taking a place at his table marks a new stage in the relationship with Christ, a conscious willingness to let the Lord nourish and nurture what began at Baptism. All of us can help first communicants appreciate this truth. We are all part of this nourishing.
Eucharist is a sacrificial meal
This meal is, of course, a sacrificial meal. We are fed by the flesh and blood of the Lamb slain for us.
In a sense, every family meal is sacrificial. No food appears on a family table without cost.
Someone's time and labor must provide the food; someone's time and labor goes into preparing it. A family meal always contains sacrifice, a gift of love freely given for the family's welfare.
No one knows more about sacrifice than parents do. From the first night, they rise from slumber to answer an infant's cries, they reshape their entire lives—personal, social, economic—around the needs of a child. It can be no other way: Their love for a child makes it nearly impossible for them to distinguish between their needs and their child's. What a youngster needs, a parent needs to give. The sacrifices they make are expressions of the unity that exists between them and their children.
Christians speak of God as a parent, using the intimate word Jesus used: Abba, Father. The history of God's relationship with the children of our race echoes many parental concerns: attentiveness, tenderness, discipline, exasperation, patient explanation. God from the beginning has wanted nothing but intimacy with us.
But God's unruly children refused the invitation so often that God made an extraordinary move. And a child was born in an insignificant village—a child who in his flesh was the perfect unity of humanity and divinity, Jesus Christ.
That child learned and developed, as all human children must. He gained a sense of family at the table in a Nazareth home. There too he learned of his larger family, celebrating Israel's history in the Passover meal. He listened for God's whispers in the words his Jewish family cherished as God's own and made his own God's dream for the whole human family.
And what he learned he lived. He left Nazareth for the highways and byways of Israel, where he extended love to the unlovable, forgiveness to the sinful, healing to the suffering and friendship even to enemies. He became a threat to those who believed sacrifice should be measured by regulation. By human standards, he was careless in his definition of family, making family larger than the small private circle determined by blood ties. Thus he was handed over to death by his own people.
God affirmed Jesus' willing sacrifice of his life on Easter morning. At last the earth welcomed the footprints of one who was all the Creator had planned: human flesh endowed with indestructible life.
The life of every believer is lived in the context of Jesus' sacrifice. Because Jesus died for us, we are able to die for one another. We offer with him our lives of love. We offer with him the life he laid down out of love for us.
The child who approaches the Lord's table for the first time stands at the foot of the cross with all who believe in Jesus. A child can understand that someone loves them enough to give up their life to protect them or rescue them from harm. They expect no less of their parents. They feel this intensely because they depend upon us for so many basic needs.
They love bedtime stories and movie heroes like Superman who sacrifice their personal safety and even happiness to bring safety and happiness to others. At an early age they are learning what sacrifice feels like and asks of them - to share things, to wait, to help with chores when they want to play, to be quiet if mom has a headache. They know it is hard and it takes time to appreciate sacrifice and to fully grasp Jesus’ sacrifice.
An imperfect family
Neither have the rest of us fully grasped the meaning of the cross. Most of us struggle daily against the pull of our own concerns. The sacrifices we gladly make for others mostly reflect our love within the small circles of family and friendship. Unlike Jesus, we may still, even unconsciously, draw lines against those who are different or unknown; we may pass judgment as he warned us not to do. We are far from the unity with God and all humanity that Jesus' sacrifice expresses. When we held our June picnic in Springbank and welcomed the community with a newspaper ad and banner, we were erasing some of those lines. We continue to look forward to intentionally widening the circle God has already drawn wider than our imagining.
There are rocky moments at the family table, too. Had parents the power, they would erase from a child's memory all traces of tension around the table, all recollection of cruelly teasing siblings and overreaction to spilled milk. But those memories are also part of the family story.
Over the years a child perceives the balance and learns that clumsiness, misunderstanding and disagreement matter less than forgiveness and acceptance.
The family that gathers at the Lord's table is as unruly as any other, noted for bickering and clumsiness—even cruelty. Precious few of its members can boast of genuine holiness; most of us manage to be wise, loving and forgiving only on occasion. That is why we keep coming to the Lord's table for nourishment. There we receive a vitality of mind, heart and spirit that even death cannot destroy.
Like children receiving Eucharist for the first time, all of us are still growing, nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ. Our Eucharist is a foretaste of the heavenly feast that is even now being prepared for us.
Welcoming Children to the Lord's Table - Suggestions for Parents
Keep the first in First Communion. Talk about the many future occasions when your child will take Communion with you. Help them to get excited about and look forward to maturing into this step.
Stress the baptismal connection. Get out the scrapbook and recall your child's Baptism. Unpack the baptism garment and tell its history: when and where you bought it, who else wore it. Attend the Easter Vigil with your child.
Involve your child in the sacrifices you make. Let the youngster help you fix a meal for a neighbor in need, sort through toys and clothing for gifts to the poor, visit a nursing home, add pennies to a charitable donation. St. Anne’s Sunday School provide amazing opportunities for your child to widen their circle of care.
Explore the family of faith. Visit the parishes where grandparents and friends worship, share the history of St. Anne's story, visit the diocesan cathedral.
Put a little extra effort into family meals. Let your child decorate the table for an evening meal. Talk about special meals your family has shared. Allow them to lead prayers and teach them how to pray.
For the Rest of the Parish Family
Be attentive to the "high chair set." Get to know the children who sit near you in church. show them that church is a place where people sing and are happy, where a little one is greeted with smiles.
Watch for signs that a child is approaching First Communion. In your own way, welcome her/him to the larger table.
Affirm a child who has a special role in the service, express congratulations or appreciation.
Take time to talk with children, share the peace with them and express your pleasure that they are here.