Today our second graders will be receiving their First Communion.
Here is one of my favorite First Communion stories. It is rather unconventional.
Felicia Braun’s First Communion was a rather traumatic affair. She was tortured with deep apprehension.
The photographer who was to take the children’s pictures saw it and his questioning frightened Felicia. He told the little girl how beautiful she looked in her Communion dress. “Smile,” he
implored the girl, “why are you so sad? You want to be bright and smiling on the day of your first Communion, you will want to
remember it all of your life.” Felicia would remember the day, but not for the reasons the photographer imagined. He ultimately
took two pictures, one worse than the other, of the glum little girl.
As the ceremony went on, Felicia was shoved into the procession of children approaching the altar. Finally, she looked up and saw the priest presenting the host to her, and she looked into his eyes and saw forever. She remembered the kind face of her own real father, and she thanked God, she thanked God that none of the people in the church had discovered — her lie.
Felicia was five years old when the lie began, the lie that saved her life. It was a long way from her home, the death of her mother,
the hiding places, the filthy coal box where she was stowed, to eastern Galacia in the Ukraine to live a life of deception. Felicia was good at it. She learned the prayers that her new parents, the Strokas, had taught her. She never told. She was even able to sit on the knees of those that wanted to kill her, German soldiers, who told her that she looked like their own daughters, like a good German girl.
Felicia, as you may have guessed, was Jewish during WWII, and her lie was to pass as the Christian daughter of the Strokas.
So many Christians during that chaotic and dangerous time were willing to sell their neighbors and even participate in the
murderous madness of the Nazi regime. They were willing to forget their Lord and Savior’s command to love because it was easier, safer and more socially acceptable to suppress it.
But there were others who were willing to put their lives on the line, who were willing to risk ostracism, vilification and even
imprisonment and death, to aid and abet their Jewish neighbors, and even people they did not even know. They are called the
Righteous of the Nations, those people like the Strokas, who had enough compassion and love for others that they were willing to hide and help those who would have died without their aid. Many of the Righteous were ordinary everyday people, who if you asked them before the war, probably did not think they had it in them to be heroes, but who were heroic nonetheless.
In the familiar story of the feeding of the 5000, a story that mirrors the Eucharist, Jesus tells his apostles to feed the multitude with what they have. The apostles remind the Lord that there is
absolutely no way that they can do it. They didn’t know that they had it in them to feed the crowd. And yet with the Lord with
them, with Him by their side, they not only feed the multitude, but they astonishingly have more to spare. The moral of the story is
clear: with the Lord, we can do more than we could ever imagine.
As I read Felicia Braun’s story and others like it, I wonder what I would do if I lived at that time in those conditions. Would I have the courage, would I have the fortitude, would I have the savvy,
would I have the compassion to love a fellow human in need, even though my life may be on the line? To be honest, I am not that sure. But whatever the people like the Strokas, the Righteous among the Nations, had, I want to have. And what they had, I
believe, is the faith that we can do more than what we can ever imagine. That when we need to feed the hungry horde, the Lord will supply, not just bread but bravery, goodness, kindness and humanity.
In the Eucharist, we realize that the bread of life that we share gives us what the Righteous among the Nations had.
When we come forward in the procession may we, like Felicia, see forever.
And may it not be a lie.
Congratulations to our Second Graders!
Father Kevin