Eucharist is the sacrament that completes the process of Initiation into the Christian community. Eucharist is unique among the sacraments; the sacrament that is at the heart of our Christian faith. It gathers the community, gives us our Christian identity and prepares the community for mission. Eucharist is, by its very nature, communal. It is the sacrament that nourishes and strengthens the whole community and indeed makes us ‘Church’ and Body of Christ for the world’.
The Sacrament of Eucharist is about intimacy and relationship and points to the birth of our relational self – our forming bonds of relationship with others. If we are responsive, it ignites and directs our desire to connect and relate to others and therefore further defines our identity in being in relationship with God and others.
The Eucharist is referred to as the “source and summit” of the Church’s life and therefore the life of all its members. In listening to the Word of God and through being nourished by God’s life in the Eucharist, providing we are responsive, we become increasingly who God calls us to be and effectively, then, who we want to become.
For the Christian community, Sunday is considered the Lord’s day and is therefore a special time in the week for the community to gather to celebrate the Eucharist. We remember what God asks of us, we commit to following Jesus, we pray and give thanks to god for the life Jesus shared with us, we celebrate the memory of Jesus as we receive the Eucharist and pray to become more like him and we are sent out in God’s mission for the world. To be a Christian is not a private matter. The Eucharist sends us out live God’s mission for the bringing about of a world of peace and justice, love, forgiveness and compassion in our everyday lives. The Eucharist nourishes us for this mission.
- When will St Mary’s celebrate First Eucharists for 2020?
Parents of the child to receive his or her first Eucharist are asked to come to a Faith Formation Night on Tuesday the 18th of March and to a Eucharist Commitment Mass on the weekend of the 21st and 22nd of March.
First Eucharists will take place as follows:
25th & 26th April
6.30pm Saturday night (vigil) Mass
10.00am or 5.00pm Sunday
2nd & 3rd of May
6.30pm Saturday night (vigil) Mass
10.00am or 5.00pm Sunday