Journal of a Sabbatical

May 1, 1999

community

The fabulous spring weather continues and everything everywhere is in bloom. It's a perfect day for Andrea's First Communion. I never did find the rosary I wanted to give her. I think I really did give it to Lizzy and just don't remember. I had this brainstorm yesterday that it would be neat to give her a picture of me at my First Communion, so I asked the guys at Andover Photo to copy an old photo my Dad had taken and have it ready this morning. Amazingly, they did. I picked it up at 9:05 AM, stuffed it into the card along with my remaining $5 in cash and drove to the church, pulling in right behind my mother.

Saint James church is pretty small so Andrea's group was actually the first of four to celebrate. There were 21 kids in this group. At my Mom's parish there are only 10 kids total making First Communion this year. Changing demographics I guess. The young Catholics are all in the formerly rural suburbs now. Actually, Newton was never exactly heavily Catholic outside of Silver Lake (Our Lady's parish) anyway. And it's gotten way expensive to raise children in Newton.

The children looked beautiful in their special clothes - girls in white dresses, boys in blue blazers with white shirt and tie. They sang a wonderful meditation song after communion and they looked positively angelic all gathered in front of the altar. Andrea was poised and serious for the whole Mass. I was impressed.

The emphasis was definitely on welcoming the children into the Eucharistic community and on the meaning of community in general. The homily talked about how community didn't just mean Sacred Heart/Saint James Parish. In addition to bringing up the bread and wine at the Offertory, they brought up baskets of food and other necessities that they had collected for the needy. I was moved almost to tears by this.

If there is one lesson from Catholicism that has stuck with me, it's the emphasis on community and social responsibility. In the nineties, the decade without compassion, I've had a hard time with the emphasis on individualism. Earlier this week I was listening to The Connection discussing individualism versus community on WBUR and getting all worked up about it. I just can't grok the notion that we are all insulated little capsules responsible only for ourselves and we have nothing in common No common good? No common wealth?

We are part of the human community weather we acknowledge it or not. What happens to Albanians in Kosovo or high school kids in Colorado (both of whom the kids prayed for at the Prayer of the Faithful) matters to us. It affects us whether we know it or not. We have the illusion of a separate self and the deeper we go into that illusion the more of a shock it will be when we realize that we really are all connected.