Is anyone tired of fighting the good fight? We fight our kids into khakis and dresses and shoes to get out the door to Mass every Sunday. We fight them to stay in their seat, sit up straight, pay attention all through Mass. We fight (ok, discuss) faith formation curriculums to be sure they are learning all they need to for salvation. There’s a lot of struggle in getting these little souls to heaven.
For me, the fight of “but Mass is so long and so boring” is currently killing me. My kids, ages nine, eight, five and two, all tell me variations of this complaint every week. It doesn’t help that we recently moved out to the country where ANYTHING including Mass is at least a fifteen mile drive away. And there’s one Sunday Mass time. No more sleeping in, no more choosing from a buffet of options in drive time, start time, music or priest. It’s a weekly struggle where I just want to (and sometimes do) yell, “stop arguing with me. You’re going because it’s good for you!!”
This past weekend, my eight year old daughter received her First Holy Communion. This was different from my eldest, who had gone through his sacramental prep at a Catholic School, and it felt like he lived and breathed that prep everyday. Now, with our kids in a public school and attending weekly faith formation classes, I felt like the sacramental prep was relegated to the back burner. We didn’t talk about it as much. I wasn’t as invested in it between moving, new projects at work, and figuring out a new school. I felt like I failed and short changed her. She is whip smart and learned a lot while her brother went through the process, so any time I asked her what she learned in faith formation, I got a “nothing” and I was devastated. I was ready to tear the program apart for the sake of these little souls.
But then I went to their First Holy Communion retreat. There were things I’d have done differently, but her weekly teacher was up there having them tell their parents what transubstantiation was, and using the actual word. They were talking about Eucharistic Miracles and most importantly about Jesus.
The day itself is a blur of out of town guests, making sure we took all the right pictures, party prep and honestly, and an evening T-ball game for my five year old. It was a beautiful day. But not as beautiful as a week and a half later. While driving home from a softball game, my eight year old said, “Mom, I always used to feel like Mass takes FOR-EV-ER and it still kind of does, but now I’m excited to go, because now I get the Eucharist.”
And there it is. That’s why we fight. That’s why we pray. That’s why these little souls are so important. They show us, with the faith of a child, what is actually important.
