Additional Columns by Sherry Antonetti: Why We Don't Always Get What We Want...And Shouldn't "Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame!" Becoming a Great Story Learning to be Unafraid to Ask The Gift of Courage Coming Home to the Wide Open Door of the Father Loaves and Fishes To Do List for the Day, Every Day Delighting in the Unexpected Immediate Intimacy of Answered Prayers Celebrating the Song of Songs on Saint Valentine's Day Forty Lenten Resolutions

Being Spiritually Awake for the Feast
by Sherry Antonetti

One of the joys of children is the opportunity to reintroduce one’s self to the sacraments with fresh and innocent eyes. At Baptism, we renew our own vows, rediscovering what it is we practice, what it is we are supposed to teach and believe. At Confirmation, we are reminded that we should seek the Holy Spirit to guide us daily. When we witness a wedding, we are reminded of how sacred Christ considers love between a man and a woman. This past weekend, my second son experienced his First Communion.

My second son has a great and tender spirit. He carries a special soft spot for the poor and frequently brings his own money for the collection, reminding all of his family in the process, to be more generous in all things. He asks hard questions about justice and poverty, making his mother revisit subjects she would otherwise, probably not address. He demands that we become more involved, more active, and has on more than one occasion, begun unstocking our pantry as part of the process. Still, I had to wonder if he was ready for his first Eucharist as I separated him from his sister for the third time in the twenty minutes of driving home from school.

I pulled over and gave my moral-authority-mom-knows-best lecture for five minutes. I talked about how to show love to each other and how destructive insults were and how exhausting to drive home listening to two people figure out how to make the other furious. It earned me four minutes of sullen silence, followed by the “Mom, he’s looking at me…She started it…” type nonsense that drives parents or at least this one, completely nuts.

The evening wore on and after everyone was in bed, I fretted mentally over whether he was ready to receive Christ if reminding him of this coming sacrament only transformed into grudgingly good behavior for 240 seconds. I dismissed my misgivings on the theory that his heart was good; it was just at that moment, very annoyed at his sister..

That evening, he came to us at 11 o’clock. “Mom, Dad, I can’t sleep.” He said simply.

“Why?”

“I’m too excited about tomorrow.” He explained.

Amused but tired myself, I just took him back to bed. Three hours later, he returned. “I’m still too excited about receiving the Eucharist. Do you think I can? What about my sins earlier this week? When I fought with my sister…”

This time, we talked for a bit and I rubbed his shoulders. I told him, I had trouble the night before I received a sacrament for the first time too. In my case, it was marriage. He smiled and curled up into a ball and fell asleep as soon as he heard it was okay. My son was receiving First Communion, and his response reminded me of how excited we should be whenever we are afforded the grace of receiving the Eucharist. "Unless we can become like a little child..." I thought, looking down at his sleeping form. He was ready.

We should all be so eager, so awake for the anticipation of the feast, we cannot sleep.

Sherry Antonetti is a mother of eight children and a freelance writer of humor and family life columns with prior publications in Absolutewrite, the Catholic Standard, Beaumont Enterprise and the Washington Post. She can be reached at Smwbmpfjm@netzero.com. You can read additional pieces from her blog, http://sherryantonettiwrites.blogspot.com.