Parenting with prayer

Mass was packed on Mother’s Day with adult children accompanying their mothers to church to make them happy. We got hemmed in the middle of a pew, with very little wiggle room left. The toddler was relegated to my lap. A mistake: She is getting too big to sit on my lap. And lack of room does not stop my kindergartener from wiggling. His wiggles only encouraged my daughter, who had been at a sleepover the night before, to exhibit her grumpiness.

I was not a picture of motherly love by the end of Mass, and only because of supernatural graces was I able to fend off the desire to shake and pinch these youngers. And although I really did make a heartfelt apology to the lady next to me in the open toed shoes, whose exposed toes were crunched multiple times, I had to fight the urge to say, "Sorry, but you should've found another place to sit, Lady."

I’m used to being told by older ladies behind me “I’m praying for you,” but the worst was that my big-enough-to-behave daughter wasn’t even trying to get along. Normally, she follows along in the missalette, sings the songs and is mostly well mannered. Her lack of sleep the night before must have really thrown her off because she was very contrary.

So I got caught up in wondering whether I should let her go to her third communion or not. At one point I tried to send her out to wipe off the tears from her face, but she refused to leave. Then I told her she needed to say an act of contrition before going to Communion. But I didn’t outright tell her NOT to go to communion.

This is where scrupulosity kicks in. She was not in the proper frame of mind, but she also was under the influence of sleeplessness, so some of her culpability was removed. But she knew she was being naughty because she said herself she probably shouldn’t go to Communion. I decided to assume that she said her act of contrition when she stood up to go to receive the Eucharist.


Her first communion was the weekend previous to this past one. She was so nervous the night before that she woke up three times. Fortunately, the kids had to be at church at nine, so she didn’t have too long to wait in the morning because she couldn’t sit still.

She wanted her dress on at 7 – not that she was so tickled about the dress. I sweated more about it than her. Disappointed by the choices in my price range, I decided to make a dress – not bright considering I haven’t made anything to wear except costumes, which don’t have to fit right. Then the pattern I had didn’t have her size, so I thought I’d estimate… needless to say, the dress looked very homemade. She was willing to wear it because she loved the shoes I had found to go with it – little ballet flats with a pointelle effect. But I was too self-conscious, and had her wear a dress I found on sale.

When we got to church, she blended right in, but there were a couple of girls in sentimental dresses that had been their mother’s – or in one case, her grandmother’s. I was a little sorry I didn’t have her wear the dress I made just for the memory (she did wear it for her second Communion). She also wore my wedding veil and the little gold cross I received for my First Communion – which was then lost. And found: St. Anthony came through for us, happily – the cross showed up the next day in the hallway where we all had walked 100 times the day before.


I’ve been concerned all along that I wasn’t doing enough to catechize her before her sacraments, but every time I’ve informally questioned her, she’s made the right responses, so I think her teacher has done a good job. But after this weekend’s display, I realized I need to communicate more. I need to do a better job of talking about faith and its practice as a part of our everyday conversation.


I received my own First Communion shortly after being baptized at age seven. My siblings and I were baptized shortly after my parents were received into the Catholic church, so they had had their First Communions just a few months before mine. Only my youngest brother happened to be baptized as a baby. So my parents were still learning about the culture of Catholicism as we were growing up. We didn’t celebrate saints’ days, pray the rosary, or go to adoration. On the weekends my mother worked as a nurse, sometimes we would just play Mass at home with my dad, instead of going to the real thing.


But even so, having converts for parents helped encourage my own faith development, not because they went around evangelizing when I was growing up – they do that more now – but because as a teenager I thought to ask why they chose one church over another. I had a friend who went to a fundamentalist church, and she was concerned that I wasn’t truly baptized since I wasn’t immersed in water. So I began to do a little research to answer her challenges.


After I checked books out from the library on comparative religion, read some of the Catholic books and magazines my parents had around, and started to go to Mass an extra day a week one year during Lent with my dad, I decided they had made a good choice. I didn’t change my friend’s mind about the status of my soul, but I began to take responsibility for my faith life.


For a number of years, I felt I had to catch up on learning about my faith. I read and read, went to Mass more, learned to pray the rosary. In a way, my college years were my convert years: I experienced that thrill of discovery and a resulting burst of zeal as I began to read Church documents and Catholic authors. My affection for my future husband was confirmed when I found out he went to daily Mass. And we started our marriage committed to the ideals of Church teaching on the matrimonial sacrament.

That commitment hasn’t faded, but the zeal has. Years of interrupted sleep tend to dampen fires. And so I feel a little disappointed in myself for not being more involved in my daughter’s First Communion preparation. With the three older boys, I was more engaged; as their primary teacher, I made notebooks with them, read more scripture and saints’ stories, spent more time participating in the life of the church, doing things like Armata Bianca and delivering Meals on Wheels. I miss being as involved as I was when we were home schooling, but with home work every night and sports, straight up catechesis doesn’t happen often …


I could make more excuses, but frankly, the problem is me. I haven’t made my beliefs as much a part of my everyday vocabulary as I could have. I’m not naturally talkative about my faith.

But you’d think with my children I could be. I think I sort of sat back a little, feeling proud of myself for doing so much for the older boys, but my daughter was a baby when we were reading lots of Bible stories aloud.

I was encouraged to see the post on Like Mother, Like Daughter about making the practice of faith at home an easy thing – not a production or a lecture. I could beat myself up for not making a scrapbook, or I could continue on with what we’re doing, as minimal as it may be at this point: grace at meals, religious pictures and crosses hanging around the house, nightly prayers.

And I can hope that these little things add up to an experience of a lived faith that the kids will carry with them and eventually adopt as their own. A devout friend who had led a wild adolescence once said that his parents couldn’t control him and his brothers, but they continued to pray for them, outloud, and this is what led all the boys back to the faith in their adulthood, confirming the experience of St. Monica: even when you are tempted to despair about the vices of your children, hold on tight to the hope that your prayers for their souls will be heard.

First Communion                      and               Second Communion