Last weekend was a busy one. Toby turned 8, and also celebrated his first communion and confirmation. We had a little bit of a party afterwards with some of his friends and their parents at our place.

Toby looking serious at his first communion and confirmation

It seems like a blink of an eye since Toby was born. It was almost surprising me to be sitting beside him in the church before he made his way up for first communion. He has certainly grown up! Now both of our kids can receive communion at mass.

Toby’s sacraments were the catalyst for us to switch churches. We now go to Holy Spirit Church in Stittsville.

Since I’d worked with Jake through these sacraments, I asked Tracy to work with Toby through his. The sacramental team in our former church just said the wrong things in the kick off meeting. That experience, combined with some other disappointments  that we had in our local church caused us to reconsider.

Tracy is teaching in a Stittsville school and so came across Fr. Steve – the parish priest there. He sets an inclusive and pragmatic tone for the year old church there. It is a beautiful church – calm, fresh and welcoming.  Fr. Steve is clearly very strong in his faith, and is a brilliant communicator.

Toby was away from his school friends, but as it turned out even his school friends didn’t celebrate their sacraments together at our local church. It seemed so disconnected.

It was a little tricker to keep up to date with all of the sacramental milestones for Toby – the church in Stittsville is fantastically woven into the schools – so the teachers were also very involved in preparing them there, and Toby missed out on that ( there was no equivalent at our local church ) – but of course he benefitted from the wonderful support of his teachers at St. James.

In the end it was a lovely ceremony – with considerate and challenging words from the priest, and an emotional integration of the ceremony into the mass. I was moved. Very proud of Toby and very grateful that we celebrated at our new Church. Fr. Steve told the kids that their day was the day that gave them the strength to say yes to love for the rest of their lives.

It was fantastic too that Toby’s friends Kate and Mark came to the ceremony. They both whispered loudly to him when they went for their communion – calling him ‘Toba’ and giving the thumbs up. They made it very special for him.

Afterwards we cooked on the barbeque and sat around the table talking. The kids played outside and on the wii. 

I wish my parents and family could have been here. I called them the next day and they talked with Toby. Lately I’ve been thinking about them a lot. I thought back to my first communion too. The one piece that was missing really on the day. But thankfully we had some friends here. An interesting path for us all to this sacrament – a testing one. Maybe that’s the way it is supposed to be!