Four Ways to Help Prepare Your Child for First Communion

You can help your children understand and appreciate the Eucharist--and thus prepare for First Communion--if you relate it to their lives. Familiar, ordinary realities that kids already value can be conversation-starters for exploring the meaning of the Eucharist with them. Here are four ways to use those everyday realities to talk about the meaning of the Eucharist with your children so they will understand the sacrament they will be receiving for the first time.

If your kids are like mine, one of their main interests in life is food. How many times a day have I heard, "What's for dinner?" or "Isn't there anything good to eat (read: junk food) around here?" So, food is a natural starter for conversations about the Eucharist, since it is a ritual meal. Here are some ways food can help you talk to your children:

• "The Eucharist is a meal. On the table of the altar, Jesus feeds us with his Body and Blood, under the appearances of bread and wine."

• "Just as food nourishes our bodies, the Eucharist is spiritual food that nourishes our soul."

• "The bread and wine are signs that tell us the Lord is nourishing us spiritually."

• "Unlike other signs--stop signs, for example--that can't cause us to do anything, the bread and wine of the Eucharist cause what they signify. They nourish us in our spirit; they cause us to grow in Christ."

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