bearing blog

Sacramental Prep.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Oscar's impending first Confession. Well, it's all over now.  Margaret in Minnesota's daughter "Cate" was in his class at our parish.  She writes about the program here.  She captured Oscar in a photo of kids waiting in line for the confessional; in the photo at the bottom, he's the kid in the middle in the blue shirt.

(In other words, I'm letting her blog for me.  Busy day!)

Alone.

Last night Oscar and his fellow second-graders lined up to be interviewed for First Confession.  (Margaret posted about the same event here.)    He did fine, passed the "test," and he is cleared to confess next week.

His dad had practiced the interview with him for three evenings straight, and he knew the answers back and forth.  Still, yesterday morning he came downstairs, head rumpled from sleep, and crawled into my lap, folding those long legs up and curling into a ball.  "I'm scared," he told me.  "I don't want to be interviewed.  I don't want to go to Confession."

These are the times when I have no prepared scripts.  I was never a seven-year-old preparing for First Sacraments.  I went through RCIA (and a feel-good version of it, I might add).  I held him, glad that the other children were still asleep.   I thought about telling him that I am sometimes scared to go to Confession too.  I decided not to, at least not until I understood his feelings a little bit more.  Maybe they are entirely different from mine, maybe I shouldn't impose my own experience on his.  "What about it scares you?"

"I don't know."

"Let's go through it step by step and you tell me which part is scary."  One of the questions they had to learn is about the steps to making a confession, so I began with the first step.  "First you're supposed to 'go into the confessional and kneel.'  Think about going into the confessional.  Does that worry you all by itself?  If I said to you, 'Oh Oscar, I left my purse in the confessional, can you go and get it,' would that be scary to do?"

He smiled, averting his eyes.  "Noooooo."

"OK, so going into the confessional isn't scary by itself.  How about kneeling?  Are you afraid to kneel?  Maybe you think it will hurt your knees."

He smiled again.  "Nooooo."

"The next part is to wait until Father is done with the person on the other side of the confessional.  You wait until he opens up the little door and you can hear him.  Are you afraid about waiting?"

And then he surprised me by saying "Yes." 

"It's the waiting that scares you?"

"Yes."

I questioned him carefully.  To my surprise he didn't seem to be afraid of Father, afraid of confessing, afraid of what Father would say to him, or afraid of the penance.  Any or all of those would have been my guess.  I had expected that.  I knew what I could say about any of those things.  But no... it was the waiting.

"Tell me what scares you about the wait."

He was very, very quiet and then told me:  "Because I'll feel very alone in there."

He nestled his face into my neck and I squeezed him a little more tightly, thankful that I had resisted the impulse to make this conversation about what I do with my confessional hangups.  The solitude and privacy of the confessional, to me, is a refuge. 

I tried:  "There's a crucifix inside the confessional booth.  While you are waiting, you can look at it and pray and remember that Jesus is with you.  Do you think that might help?"

I could tell he was considering that possibility carefully.  "No," he said at last.  "A crucifix won't help me be not lonely."

"I can understand that."  Worth a try.  Another few minutes passed and I rocked him gently.  Then I said, "It's okay to be scared about waiting.  Lots of people are."  Some more time went by.  "When you're scared about waiting, you could remember the story about when Jesus was scared and sad.  You know -- in the garden."

He nodded.  "But it won't help me be not lonely."

"No," I said.  "It won't help you be not lonely."  More time. "But it might help you all the same."

He stayed there for a while and I listened to his breathing, thinking of all the things I might add, rejecting them one by one.  Any more from me would be too much.  In the end this is something he does on his own.  In the end he has to go into the confessional and kneel; to look around at the close, acoustically lined walls, at the blind and closed grille, at the painted plastic crucifix gazing mutely down;  to hear the muffling whir of the fan; to wait for the grille to open and the sound of a human voice.  We prepare them, we set it all up.  We tell them what we expect them to do.  We throw a lot at them and we hope that some of this sticks.  That it sticks in the heart and not in the craw.  I never felt the peculiar impotence of this knowledge as much as I do this week leading up to First Penance.  In the end they do it on their own.   

Baptisms.

Congratulations to Amber of Rutabaga Dreams on her children's baptism last weekend!  It wasn't that long ago that she was musing about godparents and trying to decide whom to pick.

Some folks have a lot of trouble finding godparents -- especially us converts who may not have very many friends or family members who are Catholics.  Is it okay to choose relatives?   How important is it that godparents be living the faith? Do you have to have two?  Is there anything that disqualifies a person from being a godparent?  Can all your children have the same godparents?  What's the godparent supposed to do anyway?  I thought this article was helpful.

I know that lots of godparents do nice things like send cards on "name days" or baptismal anniversaries, give First Communion gifts, etc.  I'm a bit of a slacker in that department.  I think that the most important thing a godparent can do, aside from being a good role-model Catholic especially if he or she is visible in the child's life,  is simple:  pray daily for the godchild.  I'm a godparent, and I try to stay committed to pray daily for my godchildren.  We are, for example, godparents to a lovely little boy the same age as our middle son (whose godparents are our godchild's parents).  After his baptism we added his patron saint to our mealtime prayer litany so that we would always remember to pray for him as the years go by, even if someday his family should live far away from us.   

I still remember fondly each of my children's baptisms.  (Yucky homily for MJ's baptism excluded.)  I really ought to get in the habit of using their candles on special days -- so far we've only gotten them out to show the older children once, on the day that Mary Jane was baptized. 

Hunger.

Food for thought from one of my favorite local blogs, The Recovering Dissident Catholic.

At Communion you may exclude YOURSELF. It's popular these days to think the big, bad, Church excludes me. The Church excludes me because I'm sleeping with my boyfriend. The Church excludes me because I masturbate. The Church excludes me because I aided an abortion. The Church excludes me because I'm a practicing homosexual. The Church excludes me because I use contraceptives. No, beloved, the Church does not exclude you. You exclude yourself...

A lot of Catholics know and accept that what I said above is Truth. However, a lot of people have a major problem with publicly identifying themselves as someone who may have done something wrong. If I remain in my pew, EVERYONE is going to know I did something wrong ...

I believe that publicly acknowledging to your fellow Catholics that you may have done something wrong is just about the single greatest act of individual courage in our time. Which is probably another reason that so few are willing to do it. Too many of us have no backbone whatsoever.

At the end of the day, it's no one's freakin' business what you may or may not have done that keeps you in the pew.

I have this dream that someday I'm going to go to church and the homily is going to be about proper reception of Communion, and the priest is going to say:

"OK, everyone.   We all know that I can't see into anyone's heart.  I've never refused communion to anyone, because I've always trusted my congregation to know whether they should or shouldn't receive.  Today I am still not going to refuse anyone communion, but I want to try an experiment in trust.  Just one little experiment.   Just for today  --- no rationalizing.  Today I want all of you to scrupulously follow the Communion reception guidelines.  I only want you to come up and approach me if you know that you can under the Church's rules.  For once, today, I'm hoping that I see fewer people come up to receive the Lord's body and blood.

"Everyone -- everyone -- who has been thinking, 'Gee, I ought to go to confession, and I will just as soon as I get around to it' -- if you're thinking that because you're conscious of mortal sin that you haven't confessed, I want you to stay in the pew today.    If you haven't been to confession in a long long time, for whatever reason, and you think you might have a mortal sin on your soul -- stay sitting.

"If you know there's something the Catholic Church teaches that you deny, something that you completely disagree with -- I'm not saying something that you don't understand or that you're not sure about or even something you're struggling to believe, but something you know that you cannot abide right now -- I want you to stay sitting.  It's nothing personal.  We're just going to follow the rules today.

"If you haven't done the penance from your last confession -- stay sitting.  If you're contagious -- stay right where you are, we don't want to catch it.  If you're a Christian from another denomination, let me stress that you're as welcome as anybody else here.  But even if you've been quietly receiving here all along, I want you to stay in your seat today.

"And anybody here who wasn't done eating breakfast by  --- let me check my watch --- eight-thirty-three this morning -- you all stay sitting too.  What?  Yes, that includes coffee.  I know, I know, there went at least ten or twenty percent of you right there.

"Those of you who are going to receive --- I want you to make an extra effort to keep custody of your eyes while you're moving forward to receive the Lord.   Some people are going to feel a bit nervous and exposed staying back -- it takes some getting used to.    Oh, and by the way, if you're feeling pleased with yourself that you 'qualified' -- better put a lid on it.  Pride's a sin.   

"Those of you who now know you should stay back  --- don't worry, you may think everyone's looking at you, but believe me, they're not.  Almost nobody is going to be thinking about anyone but themselves and, I hope, the Lord.  And I suspect there will be plenty of people to keep you company.   By the way,  you'll find a little card in the pew in front of you with the words to the Prayer for Spiritual Communion.  Now's a good time to take a look at it.  Now is a great time to think about what you're missing out on here today --- even if it's just for today --- and why."

Reason #12 to homeschool the sacraments:

... the commenter at this post at Ten Reasons who writes,

I wish I'd been more attentive to her pre-sacrament CCD class, though. I heard for myself the catechist telling the class that "Jesus used unleavened bread because yeast hadn't been invented back then."

Eh.  Where to begin?

Venting about confession.

What Cathy-of-Alex said.

Big day for MJ.

Mary Jane Frances was baptized on October 1:  the memorial of St. Therese of Lisieux and also Respect Life Sunday. 

Baptism was outside of Mass, and the service lasted almost an hour.  Much to the surprise of our guests, whom I'd told to expect about fifteen minutes' worth of stuff.  Oops.

The only mar on the baptism service was the middle part of Father's remarks:  a pro-spanking, "kids these days don't get enough discipline" diatribe.   Did you know that kids' ears are on their backsides?   Oy.   

We had a pewful of attachment-parenting friends in attendance; the seven attachment-parented children, sitting politely in a row, could easily testify otherwise.  He's an exceptional priest, but... Somebody send the man a copy of the Popcaks' books, please.  I'm perfectly aware that it's my Christian duty to discipline my child, part of the baptismal promises; and I'm also pretty sure that I have tools at my disposal, other than whacking them, to accomplish it.   

It was also, of course, Respect Life Sunday.  Amy asks what we heard.  The theme of the homily in the Mass that preceded the baptism was abortion as a symptom, rather than a source, of our culture's sicknesses.  That outlawing abortion tomorrow, though a reason for celebration, would not fix the underlying problems; that the culture must change first, and it must begin in our own homes. 

I thought, what a blessing for MJ to be a sign of new life that day.

Brief conversations.

My favorite blog comment of the morning, so far, comes from Rich Leonardi's Ten Reasons, where RL recounts the brief conversation he had with Archbishop Wuerl upon encountering him by chance in an airport.  Commenter Chris writes:

I've had much briefer conversations with a couple cardinals, a few archbishops and several bishops. They have all been identical.

Them: The Body of Christ!
Me: AMEN!

One was slightly longer.
He said: Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternm. Amen.

And I stuck my tongue out at him.

Hm, I seem to be encountering the same sort of conversation stopper with my parish priest.

Is it absurd to approach the priest and ask for anonymous confession?

Commenter Patrick Laws asks a good question, apropos this post about face-to-face confessions, in which I noted that either priest or penitent has the right under canon law to insist on anonymous (behind the screen) confessions:

Does anyone else recognize the absurdity of the notion of a penitent approaching his priest and insisting on "anonymous" confession?

Depends how he approaches the priest. He might call anonymously for a confession by appointment and ask to meet the priest in the confessional rather than in the foyer, or in the office, or whatever.

Or someone --- perhaps a woman or child --- might insist on using the confessional rather than the priest's office, not for anonymity, but because of feeling that it's inappropriate or even risky to meet any man, priest or no, alone in his office.

Thirdly, some people feel more comfortable behind the screen. (Not that confession has to be comfortable --- but some people have an easier time opening up and making a complete confession.)  Even if the priest knows who you are, it's perfectly reasonable to ask to use a confessional, assuming there's one available. Anonymity isn't the only reason for the screen --- which is why I added "(behind the screen)" as a parenthesis to describe the kind of confession that either priest or penitent is allowed to seek.

More on confession.

From the point of view of the priest (in this case, Fr. Martin Fox --- where would we be without the priestbloggers?)

I sometimes wonder what folks think of the penances they accept from me. I try to match a penance to the situation shared; but too often, I receive no inspiration, and I resort to something rather standard. I have to remind myself: I'm a priest--Christ is present in my ministry, and I know that's true when I give absolution. That does not mean, however, that I have been given any special, supernatural gift of being a doctor of souls, as it seems some priests have been given. One point I make about the penance is that is not a "punishment" nor even a "payment," but rather more like an "offering" and even more, healing. One penance I often give--which draws a puzzled reaction--is to ask a married person, "can you do something romantic with your spouse?" I could be wrong, especially as I haven't been married, but I stand by that as a worthwhile penance: because what I'm intending is that the spouse I'm speaking to take the lead in some healing within that very important sacramental relationship of marriage....

This gives me occasion to remind you, dear reader, that when you go to confession, the priest does not, merely, assign a penance; the penitent must accept it. At least, so I was taught and so is my practice. After suggesting a penance, I ask: "can you do that?" and/or, "that's not too hard?" Sometimes, people will give a reason they can't do a penance (e.g., I might say, "can you apologize to that person?" and the penitent might reply, "I don't know that I'll see him again."), and I will change it.

As a confessor, I try to remind myself how delicate, how privileged, this moment is. I recall something a priest I know says often at penance services for high school children: pray for us priests that we won't get in the way of Jesus. There are times I wonder if I should say anything at all, and there are times I merely suggest a penance and give absolution.