Holy Communion

Confirmation is not an end but a new beginning, the beginning of your life as a communicant.  Nowadays Confirmation is usually followed straight away by Holy Communion.  But if Confirmation has not taken place in your own parish church, then your First Communion may instead take place in your church on the following Sunday. (1) (see also Note below)

First Communion

Your First Communion is the first of very many.  It is an occasion of great happiness.  For then you receive Jesus himself in his Ascended Body.  You have heard so much about him, perhaps seen a film about him.  And now, as you receive the Blessed Sacrament, you and he are part of one another.  As he himself said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (NRSV, John 6:56).

Regular Communions

You begin by making your Communion at the Sunday Eucharist, and then during the week as well if you can.  In the Early Church, during the great persecutions, the Christians used to be given each Sunday, at the end of the Eucharist, some of the Blessed Sacrament to take home with them so that they could make their Communion every day of the week.  When the persecutions ended, so Communion at home ended too, except of course for sick people who had the Blessed Sacrament brought to them.  In most churches now the Eucharist is celebrated on one or more weekdays, so many people can make their Communion in church during the week as well as on Sundays.