Category Archives: Catholicism

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Forbearance: A Meditation

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I was pondering the Sorrowful Mysteries today, and had some reflections I thought were worth sharing.

Ever since Nicaea, the Church has held that Christ has two natures: He is fully human, and fully divine, at one and the same time. His two natures cannot be separated, but are nevertheless distinct. This is a difficult thing to keep in mind (he said with dry understatement). While knowing and believing that Jesus is God-Incarnate, Man Divine, I tend not to think about Jesus’ human side. But Jesus was a man like us in all things but sin. And that means He had a choice.

Jesus didn’t have to do it. The essence of His sacrifice—the thing that makes it a sacrifice—is that He had a choice. At any time during His passion, with but a word, or perhaps even a thought, He could have summoned the hosts of Heaven. He could not be forced to submit to the lash, the thorns, the mockery, the spitting, the slapping, the road to Calvary, the Cross, the nails, the spear; He chose to submit to these things. All the while He was suffering and bearing the pain and humiliation, He in his humanness must needs also force Himself to continue to do so. With every lash He must, of His own free will, choose to bear the next one. It was His choice.

We know that it wasn’t easy for Him. He spent the night in Gethsemane agonizing over the choice, and asking His Father that this cup might pass from His lips.

One of the early heresies held that Jesus had no Human nature, but was only Divine; the Passion was therefore easy for Him. The Church rejected this. Indeed, it seems to me (I hope I do not fall into heresy with this) that during His Passion, Jesus needed to be most fully Human, that his Divine self could give little or no aid. We know that on the Cross there came a moment when He felt utterly abandoned, and He cried out, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

What enabled Him to bear so much suffering, and to choose to let it continue for so many hours? If it wasn’t His Divinity, what could it be? So I asked myself. And the answer, of course, was Love. Jesus allowed the suffering to continue out of Love. Love for you and I; but also Love for the very men who were tormenting Him. He was God; He could easily have destroyed them with a word. But He loved them, and forgave them even as they killed Him.

And so, I thought…maybe in His Human suffering He had one Divine aid: He was able to Love us with the Father’s Love.

And then I thought…maybe not. Maybe Jesus had to do it all in His own strength, as you and I cannot do. Maybe for His sacrifice to have meaning, His Humaness was on its own. The words from the Cross seem to indicate this.

In that case, we were saved, in that time of suffering, by Jesus’ purely Human love, by His strength of will in the greatest of the virtues, Charity.

Jesus, being free from concupiscence, that tendency to sin from which all the rest of us suffer, was not thereby free from temptation, this we know. As He was free from sin, we can assume He had no vices. But it does not follow that in human terms his virtues were innate. Perhaps he had to cultivate them as the rest of us do…through constant practice.

Thirty-three years of practice.

Perhaps that’s the reason for the Lost Years, from His visit to the Temple when He was twelve until the beginning of His public ministry eighteen years later. Perhaps that’s how long it took, leading a perfect and holy life, to develop that charity, that heroic virtue, that would enable Him to bear the torments and humiliations of His Passion with patience, forbearance, and love.

Update: I’ve just read that St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, teaches that Jesus had all of the virtues in heroic measure from the instant of his conception. Me, I’m not going to argue with St. Thomas. Oh, well.

The Liturgy of the Hours, Part III: So What?

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Part I
Part II

So, a week ago I sallied forth to the airport, to begin a week of business travel; I was armed with Shorter Christian Prayer and the Discovering Prayer tutorial. My plan was to try to say Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer, each day while I was gone, and then to continue if possible. I was scheduled to return home on Friday; in the event, I returned home on Thursday. It’s now Monday, and I’ve kept to my resolution. And so what? What’s the upshot? Has this experiment borne fruit?

Frankly, it’s very hard to say with any certainty. If I’m doing it right, the effects of a life of regular prayer are more likely to be noticed by others than by me. But here are my impressions.

I like it. I’ve been looking forward to these regular prayer times.

It’s efficient. That’s not a word one usually associates with prayer; but when I finish Morning Prayer, as I did a short while ago, I know that I’ve prayed and that I’ve heard the word of God. Given that I work a normal work week, and have the usual family obligations, this is a good thing.

I’ve been much more intentional about remembering the people for whom I need to pray. Both Morning and Evening Prayer have a time of intercession similar to that during the Mass, only better. At Mass, we’re given a very short time for our own intentions. When saying Morning Prayer privately, I have time to go through the whole list. There have been times in the past when I’ve tried to be very careful to pray for everyone, and it’s always become a burden in short order, precisely because I always spent too much time trying to be spontaneous. Day after day, this becomes an effort to find new ways to tell God in great detail things he already knows. Blech. The form of the intercessions is so much easier: it’s always more or less “For so-and-so, that such-and-such; Lord hear our prayer.” The response changes from Hour to Hour and day to day, but the rest need not. In essence, my personal intentions become a custom litany, and that’s neat.

Even on casual acquaintance, it’s clear that the psalms and prayers chosen for each Hour of each day of the year have been carefully selected. As one moves through the Hours and days, there’s a rhythm to it that I’m dimly beginning to see. And there’s definitely a peace to it. In the past, I’ve usually felt that the burden has been on me to pray well. With this, it’s less about me speaking to God and more about God speaking to me through the psalms, canticles, and readings. However you slice it, that’s got to be a good thing.

On the whole, my experience has been positive, and I plan to continue with the Hours at least through Lent. By that time it should be clear whether this is something for the long-term or not. (I’m rather expecting that it will be….)

God Bless Cardinal Mahoney

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One of the Episcopal Church’s besetting sins is the tendency to take a purely social-justice agenda, supported by purely human activism, and clothe it in religious-sounding words and phrases so that the Faithful think they are doing and supporting the work of God when all they are really doing is supporting a political platform. Sometimes the verbal gobbledegook gets so thick that it’s impossible to tell what the speaker means—if, indeed, he intends to mean anything in the first place.

One of our concerns before we became Catholic was that we’d be under Cardinal Archbishop Roger Mahoney, who is famous (infamous?) for being one of the most “progressive” bishops in the United States. Having spent far too long in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles under bishops who had (so far as we could tell) abandoned Christian orthodoxy in favor of social activism, we were in no mood to put ourselves under another such. We felt we’d be going from the frying pan to the fire.

Tonight I learned better.

January 22nd is the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. On that day, the March for Life will take place in Washington, D.C.; and today there were similar events in San Francisco and in Dallas. Today was also the day for the Diocese of Los Angeles’ annual “Respect Life” mass, which took place at 6 PM this evening. Not being in Dallas or San Francisco or Washington, D.C., Jane and I packed up our kids and took them down to the Cathedral for mass.

And during the homily, I heard our archbishop speak clearly and plainly about the evils of abortion; about the human dignity of the unborn; about the gains made during the past year; and about the overwhelming power of, not social action, not political action, but the overwhelming power of prayer to change hearts and minds and attitudes. I heard no weasel words, no gobbledegook, and no purely human message dressed in God-talk. Instead, I heard a Catholic bishop teaching his flock, in the charism of his office.

I’ve no doubt that Cardinal Mahoney has his faults and his failings. He may well provide his critics with plenty of grist for their mills. But tonight, at least, he spoke as a bishop should. God bless him and keep him.

The Liturgy of the Hours, Part II: The Mechanics

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Part I

This post is mostly about mechanics. I’ll have more to say about my actual experiences with the Hours later on.

I soon discovered that the prime difficulty of praying the Liturgy of the Hours or any part of it is that it really is different every day. There are some small bits that are identical from one day to the next, and the form of the prayer is always the same, but the precise psalms, canticles, antiphons, readings, and other prayers that fit into the slots change…and not in a simple way. First, there’s a basic four-week cycle of psalms, canticles, and readings; this is called the Psalter, and it repeats over and over again. Overlaid on this is the “Proper of Seasons”, which has alternate items for the different seasons of the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. These also vary day by dat. And then there is the “Proper of Saints”, which has further alterations for the feasts, memorials, and solemnities of various saints. And since some of the feasts and solemnities of the year are not tied to the Gregorian Calendar—Easter being the prime example—it’s pretty much guaranteed that next year’s prayers won’t be exactly identical to this year’s.

Fortunately, there is a wide variety of help available. The Universalis web site makes the day’s prayers available on-line, if you don’t mind praying in front of a computer; I don’t like it that much, though. There’s a nifty magazine called Magnificat, which in addition to the mass readings for every day of the month also contains daily Morning, Evening, and Night prayers patterned after (though not identical to) those in the Liturgy of Hours, along with other content; if you’d like to try this kind of prayer, this is a simple way to get started (and might be sufficient for many people). I bought a copy at our local Catholic store, and found it be a neat publication; but being a purist I was a bit put off that it doesn’t offer the real Liturgy of the Hours. The important thing is to be praying, of course, and Magnificat is certainly easy to get started with.

If you want to pray the genuine Hours, and you don’t want to be getting them from the ‘Net, you need to buy a prayer book. There are a number of “official” LOTH books available; the main one is a four-book set entitled The Liturgy of the Hours, which has all of the hours, major and minor, in their complete and utter fullness. I have seen this set on-line for around $140; I’ve not actually looked through a copy.

One step down from this is a book called Christian Prayer, published by the Catholic Book Publishing Company. It’s a one-volume version that includes the complete text for Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer; the full set of hymns, with melody lines; a partial set of text for Day Prayer, which I’ve not yet looked at; and a partial set of text for the Office of Readings. I ordered a copy of this from Amazon a couple of weeks ago, and it arrived last week while I was on a business trip; I’ve been using it for Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer since I got home on Thursday and (with the exception of the Office of Readings, which is laid out in an extremely confusing way) I’ve found it easy to use, given the appropriate instruction (of which more anon).

As I say, I was on a business trip for a good bit of last week; and given that business trips involve a lot of time sitting in airports, and sitting on planes, and sitting in my hotel room I’ve found it useful over the last year to use them as “mini-retreats”. So I wanted something to take with me. I’d already ordered Christian Prayer, but I went down to our local Catholic Store and found a copy of Shorter Christian Prayer. This is a condensed version of Christian Prayer, smaller and much thinner, that is intended to be used while travelling. It includes Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Night Prayer and hymns without melody lines, with a much abbreviated Proper of Saints. In retrospect, this was probably exactly the right book to start with, as it eliminates much of the potential confusion. Thursday, for example, was the memorial of St. Anthony the Abbot, the founder of monasticism; but SCP doesn’t include St. Anthony in its Proper of Saints so I didn’t need to sweat it.

As it happens, Monday was the first week day of “Ordinary Time”, which made knowing which prayers to pray very, very easy. You just start with Monday of “Week I” in the Psalter, and start going day by day. The only unusual day during the past week was Thursday, St. Anthony’s day, and given that I was using SCP that was moot anyway. In general, though, it’s useful to have some help. The Catholic Book Publishing Company also publishes a little pamphlet, the “St. Joseph Guide”, which indicates clearly which pages apply for each hour for each day of the year. There’s a edition of the Guide for each edition of the hours; my copy of Christian Prayer came with the appropriate guide for 2008. I haven’t need to use it much yet, but I’m sure it will come in handy in the long run.

As I say, CP came with the 2008 Guide; SCP did not. Everything that I’ve read on-line says that you’ll want to get this year’s Guide for whatever book you buy, which I think is true; but be aware that the book might come with this year’s Guide. Wait and see before buying another copy.

But wait! There’s more! Even with the Guide and SCP, the Hours are a bit of a do-it-yourself kit. The text for each day assumes you know how to do it, and abbreviates some parts of the “boilerplate” and leaves others out. You can tease out all of these little details (such as the fact that the “Glory to the Father” is said after each and every Psalm and Canticle, prior to repeating the Antiphon) if you study the front matter of the book diligently; but it would be very easy to be hopelessly lost. Again, fortunately, there is help, of two kinds.

First, as laypeople we aren’t required to say the Hours in any form, let alone in complete fidelity to the rubrics. It is good to be in prayer, and there’s nothing innately sinful about leaving portions of the Hours out, or making mistakes. If you’re anal-retentive, like me, you’ll want to do it just right—but in this context that might not always be a virtue. It’s the conversation with God that’s key, not dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s.

Second, there are tutorials available that walk you through the whole process. Red Neck Woman recommends a book called The Divine Office for Dodos, which unfortunately is out of print. Apparently you can find it used, and their website indicates that a new edition is due out this March. Alternatively, both Jen and I independently found a tutorial called “Discovering Prayer” which can be downloaded in PDF form from the Rosary Shop. I found it to be very helpful, and Seth Murray, who is both the author of the tutorial and the proprietor of the Rosary Shop, has been very kind about answering my further questions.

Bottom line: there is a significant learning curve to get started praying any of the hours, but there are resources to help with that; and after the first day of actually trying it, and with the intent not to sweat the small stuff, I found it to be quite easy and natural. But more of that in the next post.

Part III

The Liturgy of the Hours, Part I: Motivation

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There’s been a lot of interest in the Liturgy of the Hours around and about the blogosphere recently. Red Neck Woman has been praying the Liturgy of the Hours for some time; recently she wrote a detailed post about what they are and how to get started (start here, and follow the links. Jen of “Et Tu” has been looking into them, and this week has been engaging in “A Reckless Experiment In Prayer,” using the Liturgy of the Hours, in an attempt to bring some peace and structure into her life. She’s invested a lot of posts on this; probably the best thing to do is start at the bottom of her January archive and work your way up.

The Liturgy of the Hours is, more or less, the ancient daily prayer of the Church. It’s the prayer associated with the canonical hours you’ve probably encountered in some novel or other—Matins, Lauds, Vespers, Compline, and so forth—that literary monks are always going off to pray. And, indeed, they did. They still do. And so do nuns, and so, to my surprise, do all Catholic clergy. Lay people generally don’t, but some do, and indeed John Paul II specifically encouraged this. The clergy, however, are required to pray the Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office) every day.

I’ve been an active Christian for all of my adult life, and one thing I’ve always had trouble with is finding time for daily prayer. There have been times in my life, times lasting a few weeks or months at most, when I’ve had a regular time set aside every day for prayer. None of them have worked in the long run; most of the time, I’ve made do with the occasional spot of prayer during the day, driving to work or in the shower or whenever it has occurred to me. This is better than nothing, but it isn’t all that intentional. And, looking back on it, the problem hasn’t really been finding the time; I can make time for prayer if I want to (I certainly wasted enough of it). The problem has been the popular Protestant emphasis on spontaneous prayer, something I imbibed from a variety of sources during my college years. If you pray every day, at the same time, about the same things, you’re naturally going to start using the same words. But that’s not spontaneous! And so prayer became a quest for novel ways to talk to God, and that became a horrible burden. And if I gave up on that, and kept using my own words then I got horribly bored with prayer, as i was using the same words every single day, and they weren’t that interesting. And so I’d go back to being spontaneous a few minutes at a time if, as, and when.

(Please note, I can’t blame this on being Episcopalian; unlike many Protestant denominations, Anglicans in general have no problem with “rote” prayers and liturgy, and my first exposure to the Divine Office was through the Morning and Evening Prayers in the Book of Common Prayer. More of that, perhaps, anon.)

One of the things that moved me closer to Rome over the last couple of years was the rediscovery of the prayers of my youth: the Our Father (not that I’d ever abandoned that one), the Act of Contrition, and the Hail Mary. Indeed, one of the oddest things about the last year is that I started to pray the Rosary on occasion, something I’d never done before. Over time, that became more frequent. And I discovered two things: first, spending time with Christ daily has a salutary effect on my life, and second, not having to find my own words not only prevented my prayer time from being a burden but freed my mind for contemplation. (Which, really, is what the Rosary is all about…but that would be another post.) And there was a thought that kept recurring: that I needed to spend more time with scripture.

Given the things I was hearing about it, I got curious enough about the Liturgy of the Hours to study up on it a bit. As I said earlier, it’s the ancient prayer of the church; and, it turns out, it’s almost entirely based on Holy Scripture. During each of the hours, one prays Psalms; canticles (psalm-like passages from other books of the Bible); other prayers; and readings from scripture. Moreover, the precise psalms, canticles, prayers, and readings vary from day to day, and from season to season, and are appropriate for the hour; Morning Prayer is qualitatively different than Evening Prayer, for example.

Interesting. Daily prayer; different every day; containing great dollops of scripture; designed for contemplation; and I don’t need to find my own words. Very interesting. I decided that I needed to look into it.

Part II

An Episode of Sparrows, by Rumer Godden

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I read Godden’s In This House Of Brede some while back, at the behest of a whole bunch of people, and found that they were Not At All Mistaken. It’s a fabulous book. Since I’ve been on the lookout for more Godden, but she simply isn’t in the bookstores I frequent.

The other day we were dropping some kids’ books off at the library and I had a wild flash of inspiration: why not try the library? They’ve got books, right? They have books that are no longer in print, right? They’ll have something, won’t they? For me, this was (I blush to confess) a radical thought. But in I went, and to the stacks I hied myself, and yea, verily, they had three or four Goddens, of which this is one. All of them were in library bindings, so there were no blurbs to read; so I picked this one more or less at random, opened to the first page, and read:

The Garden Committee had met to discuss the earth; not the whole earth, the terrestrial globe, but the bit of it that had been stolen from the Gardens in the Square.

And I said to myself, “Yes, I think this will do.” And I took it home, and it did.

The story begins in the once posh confines of the Square, but it mostly takes place in the adjoining London neighborhood of Catford Street, a poor street, though proud, a street which is always grimy and in which almost nothing grows except children. The war is but recently past, and many lots up and down the street are filled with mounds of rubble, the site of the “camps” of gangs of older boys; and in one sits the local Catholic church, a temporary structure whose interior is punctuated with the stumps of the pillars and walls of the old church destroyed in the bombing.

At one spot on Catford street is a restaurant called “Vincent’s”; and in a hired room at the back lives a little girl named Lovejoy, the daughter of a travelling lounge singer, who has more or less been abandoned to the care of Mr. and Mrs. Cobbie. And this, really, is her story. It’s the story of Lovejoy’s search for Beauty in Catford street, her passionate and devoted and extravagant and persevering attempt to create a thing of beauty; and along the way she discovers something about Truth and Goodness as well (and receives not a little Grace in the bargain).

This is a very different book than In This House Of Brede, less deep (or perhaps merely less overtly deep), and I found it a little slow at the beginning; but I think it’s going to stick in my memory.

Sparrows was published in 1955, and although Godden did not convert to Catholicism until 1968 this strikes me as a deeply Catholic book. Although Catholicism is known for its creeds and dogmas and liturgies and obligations, it should never be forgotten that the Church (and Christianity in general, of course) is primarily about knowing Christ, not as an academic subject, but as a person, an individual, who loves us and who reaches out to us before ever we reach out to him. And though this is completely unstated in the text of Godden’s novel, nevertheless this is what we see in Lovejoy’s search for beauty, and in the various incidents along the way: Christ reaching out, through the parish priest (a largely unseen presence); through Tip Malone, leader of one the gangs, who Lovejoy draws into her work; through a cheap plaster statue of the Virgin Mary. And in the end there is, allegorically, death, purgatory–and the resurrection to come, though, fittingly, the latter is (though certain) still to come when the last page is turned.

I find, from a glance at Wikipedia, that Godden kept writing right up to her death in the late ’90’s, and has a surprisingly large body of work; at the rate at which I’m finding them, I expect it will take me quite a few years to work my way through them all.

My Life With The Saints, by James Martin, SJ

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Martin’s book has gotten a fair amount of attention recently; I’ve seen it mentioned two or three places, including Happy Catholic, Et Tu, and Palmetto State Thoughts.

So happens I was on jury duty last week; and so happens the courthouse was a block away from the Cathedral of the Queen of Angels (an unlovely building, but very conveniently located); and so happens the Cathedral has a large gift shop with a nice collection of books I don’t see in other bookshops, including this one. So I got it and brought it home and more or less devoured it.

What it is, more or less, is the spiritual autobiography of Fr. Martin; but it’s also the story of sixteen or so saints who have been instrumental in Fr. Martin’s life, from St. Joan and St. Therese of Lisieux to St. Thomas Aquinas to St. Joseph to St. Mary. The list includes a number of folks who haven’t been canonized, and thus aren’t officially saints, including Dorothy Day and Pedro Arrupe, former leader of the Jesuit order, but I won’t quibble. He includes as one group the Ugandan Martyrs; I was glad to hear more of their story, as long-time readers will remember we have a connection with Uganda–and twenty-three of the forty-five martyrs put to death by the King of Baganda were Anglicans.

I have a suspicion, based on an elliptical comment or two, that Fr. Martin is more towards the progressive end of the spectrum, and quite possibly more so than I’d be comfortable with; it was the progressives who made the Episcopal Church what it it is today, after all. But Fr. Martin’s deep and abiding love of God, his saints, and all his little ones in the world shows clearly through every chapter. I learned quite a bit, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

If you’ve ever wondered what saints are all about, even casually, this would be a great book to read, even if you read nothing else.

God and the World, by Joseph Ratzinger

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Around the turn of the century, then Cardinal Ratzinger spent three days with German journalist Peter Seewald in the Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. This was Seewald’s second interview with Ratzinger; the first became the book Salt of the Earth, which I might review at a later date. That interview had primarily concerned the challenges facing the Catholic Church at the end of the 20th century; this one is a broad overview of Church practice and doctrine.

For three days the two had a wide-ranging conversation, with Seewald asking questions both planned and spontaneous, and Cardinal Ratzinger answering them off-the-cuff, and therein lies the book’s charm. During his days as head of the Confraternity for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Ratzinger was viewed by the media as Pope John Paul II’s enforcer, as “God’s Rottweiler”. He was viewed as tough, stern, and intolerant. That isn’t at all the impression I’ve gotten from this book. Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, though very definite about the content of the Faith (as he should be), comes across as mild, generous, gentle, and loving—and very, very smart.

Many of the folks in the Catholic blogosphere have a serious devotion to Pope John Paul II. It’s not uncommon to hear him called John Paul the Great, and I recall one blogger (alas, I don’t remember which) speaking of John Paul as “his” (or it might have been “her”) pope. My experience was different. When John Paul was elected pope I was in high school, and not very serious about my faith; he was just one more pope. For the next nine years I more or less ignored him, except insofar as he was mentioned on the front page of the daily paper or in the homily on Sunday; and then, of course, I joined the Episcopal church. Nowadays, with internet access, it’s much easier to follow the Pope’s doings; back then, it was much harder. So although I was aware of John Paul II and his role in the world, I was both ignorant and indifferent.

By 2005 I was already beginning to have a renewed interest in Roman Catholicism (though not, at that point, any real notion of reverting). Then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI—the man responsible for preventing in Catholicism the sort of zeitgeist-driven doctrinal creep that has gutted the Episcopal Church was now the Pope. Catholicism was safe, for awhile at least. (Now that strikes me as a silly statement: of course the Church is safe. The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, and preserves the Bride of Christ from error.) So I approved of Pope Benedict on general principle.

And then I started learning more about him, from blogs mostly at first, and then from some of his books. I tried his Introduction to Christianity, which I found nearly incomprehensible, alas; it isn’t particularly introductory. But through his books Jesus of Nazareth, Salt of the Earth, and God and the World, I came to know him, and found him to be a good teacher, as well as wise and gentle, with a deep and abiding and intellectual and not at all mystical faith. (I’ve nothing against Christian mysticism; but my own approach to the faith is much more intellectual, which should surprise no one.) I read the first two while still an Anglican; my reading of the third began several months before my reversion and ended a few days ago.

In short, Benedict’s witness played a significant role in my return to the Catholic Church. I’m glad to call him “my” pope; and reading this present book, all 460 pages of it, is an outstanding way to become acquainted with him and learn from him. Moreover, because of its question and answer format it’s a great book for devotional reading, as it’s easy to read a little bit every day without losing the thread.

If you’re Catholic, go and get a copy. If you’re not, but you’d like to know what Pope Benedict thinks is important, go and get a copy.

Those Noisy Kids!

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Their parents should discipline them properly, so that they don’t disrupt the mass! And that crying baby! Her mother should take her out to the cry room, or outside the church, until she stops crying! Why can’t these parents take proper responsibility for their children?

I’ve often heard comments like this, both on and off-line; I’ve often thought thoughts like these while at church. I’m sure most of my church-going readers have done the same. But I have a question for you: have you ever approached the parents in question, when the church service is over, and found out what their circumstances are?

Jane and I were at mass with our family last week, and encountered a Very Loud Little Boy. We were sitting in the last pew in the right-hand transept; behind us was an open walkway, and a line of chairs against the wall. The Very Loud Little Boy, who appeared to be about a year old, spent most of the service roaming about in the open space in front of the chairs, and alternately crying and making loud happy noises. I confess I found him extremely annoying, and tried to ignore him as best I could.

Jane, on the other hand, identified his mother; and after mass was over, had a chat with her. Not to complain! But to comfort. Turns out the mom in question was there, all by herself, with two only slightly older kids to ride herd on as well, and she was simply stretched to the limit. She didn’t like the way her youngest was behaving; but she couldn’t stifle him without making him louder, and she couldn’t take him outside without taking the other two, and missing mass. She didn’t like her choices, and she was making the best of them.

I should note that our church doesn’t have a “cry room”; at least, if we do I’ve not been able to find it. The expectation seems to be that you bring your little ones to church, and if they are noisy, well, Christ is still present. (This was very much the attitude at our previous church as well.)

Rather than complaining about the noisy kid, wouldn’t it be better to befriend the young mother, to get to know her kids, to sit with her at mass and so give her a hand with them? It would be a gift of loving service to her, and to the others present, and a far more loving way of embracing the cross that the Very Loud Little Boy’s noise represents. Would doing so be a distraction from the mass? Sure; but that distraction’s a sacrifice every parent is familiar with, and it would be a devotion to Him we meet there.

Have I tried to do this myself? Honestly, no; the day we encountered the Noisy Little Boy we were at mass at a different time than usual. And with our brood I can reasonably make the excuse that we have our hands full already. But perhaps we don’t. And perhaps we should be keeping our ears open for that Very Loud Little Boy’s colleagues at our regular mass.