The Two Patron Saints of First Holy Communion

First Holy Communion is the most precious day of any Catholic kid. It is the day the children with the most awaiting and more prepared spiritually. Having an emotional attachment to the day, all the children must know about the patron saints of the first Holy Communion. There are two saints regarding this. Saint Tarsicus and Blessed Imelda Lambertini. They are also kids who have shown a great relationship with God and attachment to Holy Eucharist. Let’s read about these holy lives.

St. Tarsicius, a third-century Roman altar boy. Blessed Imelda Lambertini a 14th-century, 11-year-old Italian girl is the patroness. The stories of these two patrons of First Communion reveal their deep respect towards the Blessed Sacrament.

The story of Saint Tarsicius is during the time of persecution of the Church. The primary source for the story of St. Tarsicius is found in the inscription that Pope Damasus (366-384) had placed on the tomb of the boy martyr. He was an acolyte and after mass, he took consecrated Hosts to imprisoned Christians awaiting martyrdom. As a boy, he was least suspected of making visits than any other adult.

Along the Roman roads, he traveled. He ran into a group of pagan boys and men who began to harass him. While they did not know, he belonged to the hidden group of Christians, they demanded him to show what is with him hiding in his clothes. Tarsicius refused, knowing they would likely take and desecrate the Blessed Sacrament if they get it from him. His continued refusal made them angry and the crowd began to assault him. As the angry mob beat him Tarcisius fell to the stones of the Appian Way, shielding the Host beneath his body. The mob continued to attack him and killed him. When they rolled his body over to discover what he had been hiding, they found nothing. The Host had vanished.

Christians recovered his body and buried him in the catacomb of St. Callixtus, not far from where he was killed. His relics are now located in Rome at the Church of San Silvestro in Capite. St. Tarsicius of Rome, the martyr of the Blessed Sacrament, became the first Patron Saint of the First Communion.

Blessed Imelda Lambertini had an all-consuming desire for unity with Jesus in Holy Communion. She was born to a noble family in Bologna, Italy in 1322. Her Catholic parents grew up with a deep faith. From as young as 5 years of age she expressed a deep desire to receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament by making her First Communion. Her greatest desire was denied because the age was set around 14. This disappointment did not diminish her desire to live in God’s grace and she persisted in seeking permission to receive Holy Communion.

Dominican tradition tells us that at age 9 she went to live with the Dominican nuns at Val di Pietra, a neighboring monastery. Imelda embraced her new life with fidelity and devotion.

She fervently hoped the Chaplin for the convent would allow her to receive communion since she was a nun, but he held firm that she must wait. She experienced a type of holy envy as she saw other girls reach their age and receive Communion. She held such a vision that the experience would be rapturous, that she would ask others “How is it possible to receive Jesus into one’s heart and not to die?”

After two years Imelda entered the monastery, when she was 11, and watched yet again as everyone but she went to receive Jesus in the Eucharist during the Vigil of the Ascension, on 12 May 1333. Imelda longed to go up to receive Communion, but as she had been ordered to wait until 14. She remained with a longing heart. After Mass, she remained behind.

Accounts of the specifics vary, but she was found a time later by one of the sisters, kneeling as she had been when they left, with a glowing light suspended above her. Inside that light was the Sacred Host. The other sisters were called, as was the Chaplain. Seeing the scene, he knew that his decision was overruled and that Jesus was making His desire known. The Chaplain gave Imelda her first communion.

Kneeling in prayer and ecstasy, the child closed her eyes and joined her Lord as her soul departed from her body. She went from First Communion to eternal communion.

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