Week of April 25, 2021

A Note From Fr. LeRoy

As our Easter Season continues, as the sun shines, and as things are beginning to bud and bloom in Spring, this is the time of year when many children also receive their First Holy Communion. This weekend and next at our various celebrations, all the children from our, “Together As One,” ACC will be celebrating this wonderful sacrament and event in their lives. During these Masses, it’s great to see our children (along with their parents) all dressed up and with smiling faces as they receive our Lord in the Holy Eucharist the first time. Like Spring buds blooming, we rejoice in the life Jesus is sharing with them and how they are growing even closer to our Lord.

It was Pope Pius X who in 1910 issued the decree, “Quam singulari,” which changed the age at which First Communion can be celebrated by lowering it to 7 years old. Pope Pius X had a great devotion to our Lord in the Eucharist and so he did not want to deprive our children, who even at this tender age, would need the grace of Jesus in them.

Truth is, science has shown that from birth to age 5, a child’s brain develops more than at any time in their life and that at about age 7 these children begin asking much more thought-provoking questions! Turns out psychiatrists and psychologist have also discovered that at the age of 7, children truly enter into the “Age of Reason” where their brains become like a sponge with the ability to absorb all sorts of information. What better time for these children (then) to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord at their First Holy Communion? God’s providence and sacramental grace reaches us at critical times in our life, beginning with birth and Baptism, through the Eucharist as we grow into the age of reason and even through the end of our life in the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. We are so blessed to experience God at these special moments.

“We are a Sacramental People on a Sacramental Journey in our Lord!” So, if you happen to attend one of these Mass-celebration or are a parent or grandparent or a relative, be sure to congratulate our children as they make this important milestone in their spiritual development. God bless our children and families, and “Thank you Jesus” for providing your very self on which we can be nourished and so find peace and strength and comfort in Christ! On behalf of Fr. Timothy, Fr. Tom, Fr. Oswaldo and myself, “Congratulations to all our First Communicants!”

Fr. LeRoy Scheierl