I took my first Catholic Communion in 1973, when I was seven years old. I didn’t wear the white lace wedding-cake confections and veil and patent-leather shoes often associated with the rite. Instead, my mother bought me a sky-blue sleeveless Izod shirt-dress that she had picked up somewhere half-price and which, in her view at least, was sufficient unto the solemnity of the occasion (or in any case, less vulgar than the whole tiny-bride-of-Christ routine). I looked more like an aspiring tennis champ than a Communicant.
Still, I watched as Fr. Tom reenacted the Last Supper, preparing the body and blood of Christ for our consumption. “Take this, all of you, and eat it. This is my body, which will be given up for you.” My mother’s parting instructions as I left the pew to go up to the altar: “Don’t fidget in the Communion line, and don’t chew the host.”
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