Kids at Mass

It happens almost every morning.  We walk as a family to our beautiful old church for the morning Mass.  My almost five-year old races around back in his wheelchair to use the ramp and Eric accompanies him.  Maragaret (I’m three and everything in my life must be ritualized) insists on entering by the front door and we each have our own section of the front steps to use.  She shows me how strong she is by heaving open the heavy front door and then the door separating the narthex from the church.  We enter the silent, prayerful church and as Margaret sweetly begins her trot up to the very front pew an ear-piercing shriek of delight shatters the silence.  The shriek comes from my baby.

Most days I walk Margaret up to the front pew where she rejoins her father and brother, drop off the back carrier and return to the back of the church where I will quietly pace behind the last pew or, more usually, retreat to the narthex and listen to Mass through the speaker system.  On a really good day I remain in our front pew but by the time I’m heading up for Communion my shirt is covered in drool and spit-up, the collar is stretched out, my sodden scapular is hanging outside my shirt and my little boy’s bald head is covered in lipstick marks.

When this routine began a month or so ago I was tempted to despair.  But I’ve been through this before.  Twice before.  This time is a little different.  For one thing, I’m grateful for the seven or so months when I was able to remain in the pew most of the time.  William’s laid-back temperament has been a blessing.  With Margaret we went almost two straight years without ever sitting through an entire Mass.  On the other hand, the two older kids do better if Dad remains in the pew and Mom takes the baby so this time around it’s always me who is hightailing it out the back.

I also feel confident knowing that the very small, very aged daily Mass crowd at our new parish think our kids are little angels sent from heaven to bless their days.  They are kissed and caressed every day (I’m not kidding) and have lots of prayers and rosaries coming their way.  The two priests at this church are also very supportive of our Mass attendance.  This hasn’t always been the case.  We’ve been glared at by fellow Mass-goers in the past.  My husband (three years ago today, actually, on the day of Margaret’s birth) was threatened with bodily harm if he continued to bring Joseph to Mass.  The pastor there–our pastor–didn’t want to “take sides.”  That same pastor many months later published a bulletin announcement–two weeks in a row–asking parents of small children to please participate in Mass from the (unheated) narthex.  At another church I was once asked to leave the foyer with my noisy daughter and we were once asked from the pulpit, during a homily, to leave Mass.   When we didn’t leave that priest angrily confronted my husband after Mass asking, “Why do you bother coming?”

Why, indeed?  I confess I’ve asked myself that more than once.  During the season when I would typically be the one in back holding my daughter who on one occasion was screaming so loudly that a police officer left Mass to see if I needed medical help and look in at my husband only to see that he had to keep up an almost constant sotto voce chatter with my son to keep him from going berserk with boredom it was very hard to keep at it.  And then I would find that I was too-narrowly defining prayer.  There is some ideal, I suppose, in kneeling at Mass, head bowed, rapt in silence and meditation.  But how much more powerful is the prayer of the mother or father standing as a witness to the culture of life, enduring sometimes outright persecution, straining to create some interior silence in which to embrace the cross–all the while quite literally embracing his or her vocation–hoping for a few crumbs of grace from the table of the Lord.

Fortunately the Lord offers us more than crumbs and Eric and I know that without that regular infusion of grace we would never make it anywhere–never mind daily Mass.  And at Mass, as in all things, it is so hard to gauge when a child has turned the corner.  One day I expect I will realize that I haven’t had to take William out of the church for some time.  And it is hard to believe now that the same girl who blesses herself with holy water, runs up the aisle, genuflects and sits more or less attentively for thirty minutes every day is the same one who subjected us to daily tantrums for months on end.  And that introspective boy sitting in his chair on the aisle?  The one who sometimes acts a bit spastic at the most reverent points of the liturgy?  Who knows what grace is entering his young heart and forming his character.  I expect the Lord will bless Eric and I with many all-too-silent years of prayer.  For now we bring our children in hope.

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