Grace abounds

This weekend was a rather sacramental weekend for me. I went to a baptism on Saturday and a First Communion on Sunday, both featuring the children of colleagues. The First Communion was at a parish Mass that also happened to include 3 baptisms. So, it feels as though, well, grace is abounding.

Grace often comes abounding in unexpected ways. You have to love it when, for instance (to exaggerate just a tad for the poetry of it), the child is being signed with the cross and she screams as though she is being nailed to one. Or when we pray for her to be freed from her worldly attachments and, again, she screams with pain. What a disturbing but wonderful reminder of what it is we are doing to our children when we baptize them.

I'm still not sure what to make of the First Communion. I never really got an explanation for this, but it was just the one kid for First Communion, but at a parish celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi. So it felt a little strange. I don't think I've ever been to a child's First Communion where it was just the one kid. It made it oddly special and especially odd. But the priest imported especially for the occasion did a pretty nice job with the homily. Again, grace abounds.

Both occasions were followed by festivities: food, drink, community, children running around with joy and laughter. I feel very blessed by the community I have fallen into here. It is almost unbelievable to me that I feel as much at home here as I do, having been here less than a year. A wonderful, strangely appropriate thing for me to realize on the feast of Corpus Christi, my hometown in more than one way.