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Communion 2020: Preparing at Home

Posted bykilnamanaghcastleviewMay 10, 2020July 5, 2021Posted inUncategorized

For up-to-date preparation materials for Communion, please see: Communion 2021

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Posted bykilnamanaghcastleviewMay 10, 2020July 5, 2021Posted inUncategorized

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Communion 2020

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Official Parish Page for the Parish of Kilnamanagh-Castleview.

Kilnamanagh-Castleview Parish

2 weeks ago

There is a phrase in today’s first reading which we might easily pass over. The prophet Isaiah speaks about those who ‘observe the Sabbath, not profaning it’. God then promises: ‘These I will bring to my holy mountain. I will make them joyful in my house of prayer.’For us Christians, the Sabbath finds its fulfilment in Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day of the Resurrection. From the earliest days of the Church, Christians gathered on this day to celebrate the Eucharist because this was the day on which Christ rose from the dead. Today’s reading therefore gives us a good question to take home: If Sunday is truly the Lord’s Day, what in my Sunday tells me, my family and my children that this day belongs to God?For many generations of Catholics, Sunday felt different. People went to Mass and, as far as possible, ordinary work stopped. Families ate their Sunday lunch together. Shops were closed for a day. There was time to visit grandparents or relatives, to go for a walk, to rest, to talk and to pray.Much of that has changed, particularly here in Ireland. Our society is now busy seven days a week. Shops are open, emails arrive at all hours and work follows us home on our phones and tablets. Sunday can easily become the day for catching up with everything we did not manage during the week. The washing has to be done, the shopping for the coming week has to be done, the garden needs attention and there are all kinds of jobs around the house. Somewhere in the middle of all that, perhaps, we fit in Mass.Yet Sunday is meant to have a different character. God gave the Sabbath to his people as a gift because human beings need rest. We need time in which we are more than workers, consumers and people rushing from one obligation to another. Sunday reminds us who we are: creatures made by God, members of a family, brothers and sisters in Christ, people who need time to worship, to rest, to enjoy one another’s presence and to receive life again as a precious gift from our heavenly Father.The Church therefore asks us to refrain, as far as reasonably possible, from work and activities which prevent the worship of God, the joy proper to the Lord’s Day and the rest of mind and body which Sunday should bring. Some work, of course, remains necessary. Nurses, doctors, carers, Gardaí, emergency services and many others must continue their work on Sundays. Families still need meals, children still need care and the ordinary responsibilities of daily life do not simply disappear because it is the Lord’s Day.But we can still ask ourselves whether everything we do really has to be done on Sunday. Does the weekly shopping have to take place that day? Does the washing machine need to be running all afternoon? Do we need to spend hours catching up on jobs which could have been done on Saturday or could simply wait until tomorrow? Perhaps Sunday could contain a little more peace: a proper family meal enjoyed together, a visit to someone who is sick, elderly or lonely; a walk together, some time for prayer as a family, or simply an hour spent in one another’s company without everybody disappearing to a separate screen somewhere in the house.Children learn what we really believe from what they see us doing. If we tell them that Sunday is the Lord’s Day while every Sunday looks exactly like every other day of the week, they will quickly notice the contradiction.This even applies to the way we come to Mass. No one needs expensive or festive clothes to come before God. The Lord sees the heart, and we should always be careful about judging another person by appearance because we do not know their circumstances. Yet the way we dress can still say something. If we were invited to a wedding, a formal dinner or a reception with someone important, most of us would make an effort to dress appropriately because we instinctively understand that the occasion calls for it.At Mass we come before someone infinitely greater than any politician or celebrity. We come before Christ, the King of the Universe, who invites us to gather around his table. We hear his Word and receive his Body and Blood. Surely our outward manner should express something of what we believe inwardly. A certain care in how we dress, how we conduct ourselves and how we prepare for Mass simply says: I know where I am. I know what I am doing. I know before whom I stand and whom I serve.The woman in today’s Gospel gives us a beautiful example of that awareness. She comes to Jesus with extraordinary faith, calls him ‘Lord’, kneels before him and perseveres even when the answer she hopes for does not come immediately. Eventually Jesus says to her: ‘Woman, you have great faith.’ What makes her remarkable is that she recognises who stands before her. She trusts him so completely that she knows even the smallest crumb of his mercy will be enough.Perhaps that is what Sunday is ultimately about: the weekly opportunity to remember again who stands before us and before whom we stand. We remember the Lord who created us, redeemed us, rose from the dead, gathers us around his altar and gives himself to us in the Eucharist.If we really know that, something in our Sunday should show it. Our week should contain one day which feels different: a day when God comes first, unnecessary work can wait, family receives more of our time and we make room again for silence, leisure, rest and prayer. Above all, Mass should become the centre of the day rather than just another appointment squeezed into an already busy schedule and competing with other priorities.So perhaps the question to carry with us this week is simply this: If Sunday is truly the Lord’s Day, what in my Sunday tells me, my family and my children that this day belongs to God?And if we realise that Sunday has become pretty much like any other day of the week, perhaps the Lord is inviting us to reclaim something our busy world has gradually taken away from us: the gift of Sunday, the gift of worship, the gift of rest and the gift of remembering, week by week, that our lives ultimately belong to God. ...

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