Monday, May 2, 2011

First Holy Communion Homily - May 1, 2011 -- Repost from Marriage Blog



Holy Communion Mass
St. Margaret Mary, Winter Park, FL
Homily by Fr. Richard Walsh

Today we attended First Communion Mass for my nephew Dominic. The pastor, Fr. Walsh, gave an excellent homily. I wanted to video tape it but at Fr. Walsh's request I decided to just sit and listen. Now I wish I had a better view and continued to record. His homily was so inspiring not only to the kids making their First Communion today but also to some of the adults who were there. I can only try to retell what I remember from his Homily.

I found the video above to best retell the story that Fr. Walsh used in his Homily today. Various variations of the story can also be found online. The story involves famous pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski. The part that touched me about his homily was not the story but how he related it to our faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

In his homily, Fr. Walsh compared each of the Communicants to the little boy on stage. Each one goes up to receive Communion for the first time with very limited knowledge about faith but Jesus reaches around from the left and from the right to embrace them with his love to make them complete. The realization is that Jesus does not just do this for the little ones with little knowledge of the faith but for all of us. Some days we are weak and our faith is lacking. Jesus reaches around each one of us and makes us each complete. He reminds us that we cannot do this alone. We each only play one instrument while He plays the rest to make it sound like a symphony. Some days we are strong and he harmonizes as to complement our piece.

Jesus is the one who completes our faith. We trust that He has already begun a good work in us and with His help we can finish the task we are set out to do.