The priest arranged envelopes from the children who had written to Jesus in preparation for their first holy communion. It was not easy to stack them since they were bulky with little tokens included by the children to give to Jesus as their small ‘pre-communion’ offering.
Father Alden opened the first envelope and saw a necklace made of dried seeds. He counted eleven seeds and concluded that Brandon had made a Rosary for Jesus. The letter read: “Dear Jesus, I thank the gift of yourself. I want to give you this Rosary I made. I promise to say it better everyday.”
The second one contained some bottle caps. These came from Sean’s collection. They were carefully uncapped and therefore were not deformed nor scratched. Fr. Alden once saw his collection of bottle caps from the different countries he would visit during summer. Sean wrote: “Dear Jesus, thank you for your love. My gifts are my favorite bottle caps from my collection!”
“Indeed, an edifying sacrifice for someone so young,” Fr. Alden was touched.
The next envelope was quite imposing. It looked like it was about to explode. Fr. Alden cautiously opened it. Out came a number of random things from colored cotton, to candy wrappers and multicolored strings and rubber bands. Ralph wrote: “Dear Jesus, here are my treasures I won in our games during recess. Thank you for your body and blood.”
Fr. Alden could not help but be simultaneously surprised and amused with the children’s gifts to Jesus. They had indeed understood what a great blessing they were about to receive and in their own little way were trying to give back to the Lord what they considered the best and most precious things they had in hand.
Another thing that many of the boys had underlined was their eagerness to ‘clean’ their souls by doing their first confession. They had understood pretty well how sin is the only obstacle to receiving Jesus worthily.
“How wonderful,” Fr. Alden pondered. “These boys are not even ‘veterans’ to sin, and they consider their smallest sin as an obstacle to receiving Jesus for the first time. Their innocent souls seem to portray how one
ought to engage the spiritual life with a positive and refined love. A love leading one to foster a great and sincere sorrow for any sins that God –who is so good and deserving of all my love– never deserves from us.
He saw a pink envelope. It didn’t appear like it had anything inside. Fr. Alden opened it and out popped a front tooth! He was very bewildered at the letter’s gross content. Thinking there could have been some mistake, he reread what was written on the envelope: “To Jesus! Love Jonathan.”
Carefully, he opened Jonathan’s letter. It read: “Dear Jesus, I was going to give my tooth to the Fairy Godmother! Mommy said I could give the money to you when the fairy comes. But she forgot to pass by. So I’m giving you my tooth instead!”
Fr. Alden examined the yellowish baby tooth. He chuckled at the simplicity of the boy who could even think of giving such a thing to Jesus. He read the note again and realized he had missed a small arrow at the bottom of the page.
He flipped the note and read: “On my communion day, you will know I’m Jonathan. I don’t have any front teeth. If the Fairy Godmother gives you any money, can we share? If not, keep my tooth in case mine doesn’t grow back, you can give back this one to me when I get to heaven!”