First Communions Past

As I've already noted, Sarah makes her First Communion this weekend. Non-Catholics may not have a clue about this, but it's an important rite of passage. Our Orthodox brethren, even our Eastern Catholic brethren with whom we're in full communion, give communion to infants, so even they don't have the same rite of passage around age 7. The Eastern churches have always given baptism, the Eucharist, and what they call chrismation and we Latins call confirmation, to infants, so even many Catholics of the eastern tradition don't do it the way we Latin rites do. (I think the Maronites in Lebanon are the exception, but may be wrong about this.) It may be comparable in some ways to the bar/bat mitzvah, but it's done at a younger age. The closest parallel I can think of is that many varieties of Islam think that Ramadan fasting should begin around age 7, though others put the age later.

Anyway, both Tam and I had mothers whose families had been Catholic for a few generations (including Irish lines that went all the way back) while our fathers were converts. I thought we'd honor Sarah's first communion with some photos from our families' past. That's me and my cousin Linda Hendricks (now Duncan) in the photo, taken, if my little booklet is correct, on May 9, 1954. If the date is correct I did it in the first grade slightly before turning 7, while Sarah is doing it in the second grade.

My cousin Linda and I were and are virtually the same age, born about three weeks apart, and as a result were in the same class from 1st grade through high school. We were both only children, which made us closer since we had no siblings of our own. We're still close.

To go back a generation, here's my mother's first communion photo at left, from sometime I would guess in the late 19-teens or 1920ish (she was born in 1912). For years I didn't realize this was she. Then someone sent me some other childhood pictures of her (she had brown hair later and is a blonde in the childhood photos) and I suddenly realized this must be her at her first communion. Some other family photos will be showing up between now and Saturday, when Sarah makes hers.

Sarah, incidentally, will be helping carry the altar cloth at the offertory, and has already proclaimed herself "nervous," so we're working on getting her prepared.