A little girl decided that because her father couldn’t make her first Communion because he was in the hospital awaiting a heart transplant she would have it in the hospital so he could be there. The bishop came out and they held Mass and gave the Eucharist to the little girl for the first time right there in the hospital.
Wow.
The Catholic Review reports:
Confined to Strong Memorial Hospital as he waits for a heart transplant, Timothy Day of Kenmore, N.Y., wasn’t going to be able to attend his 8-year-old daughter Erin’s first Communion.
So Erin decided the celebration of the Eucharist should come to him.
“I gave her the choice if she wanted to go through with her class or have it here with me, and she said she wanted to do it with me, and that’s pretty special,” said Day, who has been living at the hospital for nearly two months.
“The most special part was just being with my dad,” Erin told the Catholic Courier, newspaper of the Rochester Diocese, in a telephone interview after the Mass April 26.
Several weeks ago, staff at the family’s parish, St. Paul in Kenmore, in the Buffalo Diocese, approached the Rochester Diocese to see if a priest would be available to celebrate a first Communion Mass in the Interfaith Chapel at the hospital.
They were told it would be possible if they were willing to have the first Communion on a Friday, and if they would be willing to have Retired Bishop Matthew H. Clark of Rochester celebrate the Mass. Day also received the sacrament of the sick during the Mass.
Both the Day family and Bishop Clark said the honor was all theirs.
“I am going to go home a happy man for having experienced your company,” Bishop Clark said during the Mass.
Day, a Tonawanda, N.Y., police officer, said the Mass was special not only to have taken place, but to have included the participation of Bishop Clark.
“I think somebody upstairs was pulling strings for us,” he said.
In a telephone interview after the Mass, Sherry Brinser-Day, Day’s wife and Erin’s mother, said the Mass so far exceeded their expectations that the event almost felt surreal. But the family was honored that everyone thought so highly of them to attend, she said.
“We want to make the best memories we can in the midst of all the trials we are going through,” Brinser-Day said. “I am overjoyed at the outpouring of support. I am floored.”
Keep this family in your prayers.
