Daily Prayer List
We all have many things in our lives that we like to pray for. A list of intentions floats around in each of our minds and it changes constantly. New intentions are added, fulfilled intentions are subtracted, and all along the way, we’re hopefully putting our trust in God and not in ourselves. This is very much a living list and it reflects our most closely held relationships and needs.
Each morning, when I’m disciplined enough to rise at 5am, I start my day with prayer. I roll out of bed, go downstairs and get the coffee brewing. While it brews, I check in with Twitter and Instagram to see what I missed overnight. When the coffee is hot and ready, I meander into our family room where I take a seat at our breakfast nook. I open my prayer with the sign of the cross and then I form my list of intentions for the day. The first cogent thoughts of mine each day are the intentions that are on my heart.
Our daily intentions should be ever on our mind and being constantly lifted up in prayer. Having a list can be helpful in that it keeps you very aware of those for whom you need to pray and for those things that you need help with. By having a list that you revisit daily, you can remain centered and ensure that those for whom you promised to pray get prayed for!
Pray for your intentions at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. Prayer should be conversational and it should be honest. You don’t have to put on a front with God, you can simply express how you truly feel. Along with bookending your day with prayer, offer up small sacrifices during the day. When challenges arise or difficult situations, you don’t have to pause to consider for whom or for what to offer your sacrifice. Your list is ready to go and ready to be prayed for.
Don’t forget to be thankful. Most of us screw this up. Like a young child on Christmas morning, we open the present that we really wanted and get completely consumed in the celebration, forgetting to express thanks to the person who gave it to us. Prayers will be answered, many in a very big and impactful way. Remember to be thankful, even if an intention isn’t answered, before you remove it from your list. Sometimes we ask for things that, unbeknownst to us, would be quite harmful in our lives. That means that when a prayer isn’t answered, it too is cause for giving thanks. You may not have gotten the job that you wanted, but you couldn’t see how it would consume you and push your marriage to the brink of collapse.
By maintaining a daily prayer list, even if only in your mind, you can more consistently pray for the intentions in your life. Adding and subtracting as needed will ensure that what needs to be prayed for gets prayed for. Above all else, you’ll have a starting point for a habit of regular prayer, an essential element in the life of any saint!
Don’t Press Snooze
I have three layers of alarms each morning. My Fitbit has 3 silent alarms scheduled each morning for 4:55am, 4:57am, and 4:59am. At those times, it vibrates on my arm until I press a button to dismiss it. At 5:00am the lights in my bedroom slowly come on. Finally, as a fail-safe, at 5:05am, a very loud, and very annoying, alarm on my phone goes off. Most days, all I need is the Fitbit. Some days, I need the lights to help. On a rare occasion, my phone is there to save the day from getting away from me.
Three layers may seem excessive, but no matter how many sounds, utilities, or devices seek to disrupt a very peaceful sleep in a warm bed, it’s up to me what I do with their alarms. I might spring out of bed and get straight to work, or I might silence them all until around 7:30am when Benedict’s cries for food and attention stir me. There’s no silencing a Benedict alarm.
About 90% of the time, I’m up at 5:00am each day. My entire daily routine is based on a 9:00pm-5:00am sleep schedule. That’s adequate sleep for me, keeps me healthy, productive, and can usually preserve my energy levels so I don’t feel the need to nap later in the day. When I sleep past 5:00am, I waste opportunity.
Sleep is a wonderful thing and based on the numerous posts that I’ve written about sleep, no one can accuse me of discounting its value. Sleep is intrinsically valuable and has a lot to say about how successful any given day will be for you. At the same time, it’s easily abused. We can get lazy and stay in bed most of the day. It’s tempting to oversleep or “catch up” on lost sleep, but oversleeping often ends up just being a waste of time. Get what you need and no more. There’s so much you could be doing!
Morning is a fabulous opportunity. Whether you’re a morning person or not, when you first get out of bed, your brain is full of creative power and your batteries are fully charged. As time progresses, you lose creative power and energy. Logically, that means that your biggest chance to make a splash, your biggest opportunity for productivity is at the beginning of your day, not the end. Lost minutes, whether to sleep or frittered away doing meaningless tasks, add up. Think of all of the great things you could accomplish if you were awake and energized in the morning, instead of snoozing.
Let’s face facts; one tap of the snooze button is never just one tap. It’s never just five more minutes. The snooze button is your biggest enemy in the morning. When you surrender once, it becomes that much easier to surrender again. And again. And again. When you hear your alarm go off in the morning, assuming you’ve planned your day around your wakeup time and have given yourself ample time to sleep, get up, get out there, and seize the day!
Sleep is a wonderful thing, and like other wonderful things, it’s healthy in moderation. Don’t surrender to the tyranny of sleep, keeping you in bed during your most productive hours. The best way to take advantage of each day is to go to sleep at the right time and wake up at the right time. Don’t believe the lie that the snooze button is telling you.
Forget About Being Right
There are many commonly held beliefs about marriage that I refuse to subscribe to. Over the past two years, they’ve been weaved into many of the posts that have appeared on this blog. I don’t believe that marriage is about someone being in control. I don’t believe marriage is about someone being nothing more than a rubber stamp. I believe that marriage is more than a partnership or a co-venture. Marriage is about a husband and a wife, both pouring themselves completely into relationship and reaping the rewards together.
I’m so tried of people telling me the way to have a happy marriage is for the husband to only say, “Yes ma’am.” You might think people are being hyperbolic, but I don’t. If I were a wife, and my husband was an empty suit like that, I’d be furious. Who wants to be committed for life to a person who’s completely spineless? Just as egregious, I don’t think that your wife is always right and you’re always wrong. I’m so resolute in my belief that I first addressed this topic in my 4th blog post to appear on this site, way back in March of 2013.
Yet, despite my protests, it’s true that being obsessed with who’s right only prolongs conflict. Fights don’t have to last long. In fact, they can end very shortly after they begin. All you have to do is stop being emotional and forget about being right. It’s a hard concept to execute in the heat of the moment, but it’s still very possible.
In the final analysis, who was right in any given conflict is not nearly as important as the relationship itself. Conflict is never resolved by assigning blame. Conflict is resolved when core problems are identified and remedied. Once the core issue is taken care of, everything else resolves itself. Assigning blame is treating a symptom- remedying the underling issue is treating the disease. Beware of pride in fights. When we let our pride take over and continue to posture, we only prolong a conflict and let it do further damage to our marriage.
It’s important to be more concerned with mending the broken fences. No one likes an unpleasant conflict in their relationship. The situation is even worse when the impediment is in your marital relationship and you have to see your spouse every day! When you forget about who’s right, you can start asking yourself what you can do to heal the relationship. If you have any role in the conflict, make immediate adjustments to remove the road block to peace. Then, be sure to ask yourself the perennial question, how can you prevent a repeat fight over this same issue?
When you’re able to set aside your emotions in a conflict with your wife, you’re able to get a better understanding of the situation that you find yourselves in. Remember to be kind. Kindness, humility, and servant leadership aren’t concerned with winning. Instead, they’re concerned with loving. Make the resolution a win-win. By acting with kindness, you ease the pain of conflict with your wife and you also replace negativity in your own mind with gentleness.
If you want to drive your relationship off a cliff, by all means, full speed ahead with the blame game. If you want to strengthen your marriage and reduce suffering just forget about who’s right.
Three Ways to Improve Date Night
Now that Alison’s internship is starting to wind down and she’s finished with her examinations and their associated preparations, we’re finding more and more time to spend as a family. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still crazy busy and working long hours, usually far from home, but now that she has less on her plate, her home time really is our own.
When we first got married, I read a study by the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project. In the study, researchers found that there was a real, tangible benefit in having regularly scheduled date nights. Couples were not only happier, they had higher quality sex lives, a significantly lower rate of divorce, and well above average marital satisfaction. Upon reading that study, I decided to do my best to implement the practice.
Life happens and the opportunity for date night ebbs and flows, but there isn’t a week that’s gone by that I haven’t thought about the importance of a weekly date night and a desire to have one. The other week, Alison and I finally were able to have a date night after many months without any. We played “The Office” board game, had a drink, and enjoyed the time to just be silly and have fun.
Our choice to play a board game is just one of the infinite possibilities for your date night. Although date night should be regularly scheduled, it should be anything but routine.
Having new experiences with your wife is a key component to happiness. The unknown and the excitement of surprises play right into our curious nature. Although you and your wife may be expert mountain climbers, there’s always something exciting about a new trail. Although you may be professional bowlers, there’s something new about going to a different bowling alley. Each week, try to change some aspect of the date night and make it something that you’ll both look forward to.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You must have sex on date night. Our society has gotten way out of control with expectations about sex. Sex and dates have become so intertwined in our minds that we stop trying to separate them. The fact remains that while they can pair nicely and appropriately in a marriage, they shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion. You and your wife should be able to be intimate without having sex. Even more important, intimacy, fun, and together time shouldn’t be exclusive to sex. You and your wife should be able to have fun, be intimate, and be together for an enjoyable evening without having to have sex. This is especially true when you’re spacing pregnancy with valid cause. In the times when you abstain, you still need to be connecting. Sex is important, but don’t make it the foundation upon which you build date nights.
We spend way too much time being serious. Let date night be your hall pass to let loose. Put the kids to bed or hire a babysitter and just enjoy being the people you are. Don’t bring emotional baggage, stress, or technology. Give yourself permission to have the night off and not worry about life. Be free to be silly like you were when you were dating.
As we travel through life, into marriage and onto the journey of parenting, we change. We rise to the occasion and live our lives responsibly. Date nights are a weekly opportunity for you and your wife to focus on what is the center of your family’s life, your relationship. Your family’s happiness, wellbeing, and ultimately the success of your children rests largely on the quality of your marriage. We spend most of our days looking out from our marriage and caring for the needs of our family. It’s critical that you regularly take time to look in on your marriage and care for your relationship’s needs.
By doing something different, avoiding the trap of making it all about sex, and giving yourself permission to let loose, you can dramatically improve your weekly date night, and, by extension, your marriage.
Don’t let another week pass you by.
Your Role As Husband
The role of husband is perhaps the most challenging role that any man faces. As a single man, the world was your domain. You chose your coming and your going. You chose what you ate, when you ate. You did all of your own social planning, shopping, and travel. As we stepped into the role of husband, and subsequently the role of father, all of that changed.
Some may decry the lost freedom that a married man experiences. Some men long for days of old when they needed no one’s permission, when they had their entire living quarters to themselves, and all was at their direction. What is perceived as a loss is actually a gain.
Man is fulfilled in the married life, whether that be through a permanent marriage to a woman or to the Church. There’s something about the social constructs of both marriage and Holy Orders that not only spurs a rapid maturation in men, but also remarkable stability. Vocation brings us into the fullness of what it means to be men.
The role of husband is so challenging because it requires all of our energy and effort; others depend on us. Our wives depend on us to provide for their emotional needs. They depend on us for stability and strength of character. They depend on us to help guard them from threats against the family. As fathers, our children are wholly dependent on us from their first moments in the world and continue to be through the long and arduous process of growing up.
While we are the head of our household and the leader of our family, these roles are not honorary ones. A husband doesn’t sit on his throne regulating the lives of his household. Rather, he must engage in the activities that real husbands engage in, namely, leading by example. He initiates family prayers, he proactively plays with his children, he finds ways to ease his wife’s pressures and burdens, and he promotes domestic tranquility by ensuring that his own emotions foster a low-conflict marriage.
What so many of us are tempted to do, especially in times of strife, is to shift the blame onto someone else. Husbands can be quick to blame their wives for whatever ill the family is facing, but that’s a recipe for disaster. We should recognize that injecting blame into any situation only exacerbates the problem. Everyone makes big mistakes and everyone makes little mistakes. So instead of focusing on who did what, focus on what we can do to fix it.
To this point, we haven’t considered the duties and responsibilities of the wife. In fact, reading with a certain bias, one might find these concepts to be completely sexist, painting wives as helpless without a husband. Not so. We’ve focused exclusively on the role of husbands because, frankly, we don’t seem to have a good grasp on what that role really is.
Not only are we facing record levels of absentee fathers, some fathers who live with their families are mentally or emotionally absentee. They come home from work, exchange pleasantries, and then engage in their own pursuits, wanting to be waited on hand and foot. If we don’t have a job description, if we don’t understand what being a husband truly means, how can we expect men to step into the role?
We’re innately coded to protect, defend, and provide for our families. When we have no direction or clear communication about what’s expected of us, that’s when our marriages start to crack.
As husbands, we must be proactive. We have to communicate with our wives about how she sees our role. We must understand what things we do that drive her crazy and how we can better meet her needs. This is an evolving conversation, not a one and done. On a daily or weekly basis we need to be checking in to make sure that we’re not only meeting her expectations, but exceeding them.
We need to be active in our children’s lives. We need to make diligent use of our time so we do the things we want to do while not stealing time away from our family. We need to turn off the TV and just roll around on the floor with our kids. We need to reintroduce family activities that reinforce family identity, values, and mutual growth.
Your marriage is not based on emotions or intensity. Your marriage is based on a mutual consent between you and your wife to love each other so fully and completely that it flows forth into your children and your children’s children. You can only meet that standard if you’re all in.
Support Our Priests
Growing up, priests were a constant presence in my house. My parents were very diligent in cultivating relationships with the priests at our parish, even as we moved across the country and around the world. Perhaps more notably, they made sure to continue these relationships, even when a particular priest was reassigned or we moved. I think that having the opportunity to get to know our priests on a more personal level, besides just seeing them at Mass, was instrumental in me discerning a possible vocation to the priestly life. Knowing them, I was able to better see myself being one of them.
Our parish priests are the leaders of our communities and we should be taking care of them by opening our hearts and homes to them. It’s our duty, as the faithful, to welcome them into our family and to share the joys of life with them.
The life of a priest, like the life of any person, can be difficult and lonely at times. While they may have joined the diocese that they grew up in, they may still not have as much time as they’d like to spend with their own families. Priests should be considered members of our families. They are to care for our spiritual health and we are to tend to their material needs. One of the ways to integrate your parish priests into the life of your family is to do as my parents did, and invite them to participate in your family’s life. Certainly they won’t be able to all the time, but when they do, it can be a very refreshing experience for them. They’ll be able to get out of the rectory and do something relaxing. They won’t have to run a meeting, manage conflict, or hear a litany of complaints. Instead, they’ll get to share in the beauty of family life. Have them over to dinner often and invite them to your family’s celebrations.
Another great way to support our priests is to observe their special days. Find out when his birthday is and give him a thoughtful present. Celebrate his ordination anniversary in some special way. Find out the other days that are important to him, perhaps a nice note or card on the anniversary of his parent’s death.
Most importantly, continue to build the relationship beyond assignments. From time to time, the Bishop will reassign priests for various reasons, based on the needs of the community. When you build a relationship, especially in modern times, it’s natural to just let it fizzle when someone moves away. Certainly he’ll have new responsibilities and new families to mingle with. I’d encourage you to stay in touch. Be a constant friend and support network for him. He may face an issue that he doesn’t feel comfortable discussing with his parish, or he may be sent to a parish that isn’t able to support their own basic needs and you may be able to help. Preserve the familial bond that has been formed between him and your family.
I think the most important part of this whole idea of supporting our priests comes back to my own experience. You’re teaching your children something important. First, you’re fostering in their minds that they might be called to the priestly or religious life. Second, you’re modeling for your children how the faithful is called to care for those among us who have laid down their lives in sacrifice for us as priests.
Sublime Forgivness
The struggle with the Sacrament of Confession is a lifelong one for Catholics. Our struggle is a deeply human one in that the Sacrament requires us to look at our lives and voice our failings. We’re not perfect people, and Confession is a stark reminder of that. We love the feeling of cleanliness after Confession, but we struggle with comprehending God’s great mercy.
Recently I’ve been reading books about World War II. I love history and learning about so many of the characters that helped shape world events. Some of the stories are so sensational that it’s hard to believe that they can be real. One of those characters is Rudolf Hoss. Rudolf was the commandant of Auschwitz for many years during World War II. Under his direction, somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million people lost their lives, whether by outright murder, death by starvation, torture, disease, or cruel medical experimentation.
I fail to come up with words strong enough to express how reprehensible Rudolf’s actions were. He’s considered by many to be the greatest criminal to have ever lived. The compete disregard for human life is shocking, even today, 70 years later. The magnitude is unimaginable. 3 million lives, snuffed out on his orders.
By all accounts, most people would consider him to be eternally damned. Of course, that’s not our place to judge and we’ll never know. You’d think that after the end World War II, his story would be over. It’s precisely then that it starts to get interesting. After some time on the run, Rudolf was caught and convicted of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to execution by hanging. The authorities built a gallows on the spot in Auschwitz where the camp Gestapo interrogated and tortured inmates. He was executed in 1947. The part of the story that we don’t often hear about was that Rudolf was Catholic. Certainly his actions as commandant were in direct opposition to everything that the Church stands for and teaches. Indeed, there’s a great body of documentation showing the great lengths that the Church went to in order to save Jews and other persecuted people during the war. Yet, a few days before his execution, Rudolf received the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
We’ll never know the disposition of his heart, how contrite he was, or what he even said. What we do know, based on Church teaching, is that God will forgive any sin for which we are truly sorry, if we bring it to Him in the Sacrament with a contrite heart. What that means is that Rudolf, the greatest criminal of all time, a man who ruthlessly and actively allowed 3 million souls to perish who were under his authority, if he asked God for forgiveness, was granted it.
Amazing.
The lesson here is this: God’s mercy, through the Sacrament, can forgive any sin.
Fear plays a role in how we approach, or don’t approach, Confession. We feel a great sense of shame as we commit the same sins day after day, week after week. That shame drives us to fear naming our sins to a priest who may know us or recognize our voice. This is, of course, unfounded. The priest may never reveal what he hears under the seal of the Sacrament, and further, he’s undoubtedly heard much worse. Yet, even with this knowledge, shame still creeps in. This is, no doubt, the work of Satan. The fact remains that a faithful Catholic is devastating to his plans of destruction. That means that the more faithful and fervent you are, the greater the threat you become. It also means that if you’re tempted more frequently, you just may be living the Christian life right.
We’re all repeat offenders, even the priest. While he may not struggle with the same sin that you are, he knows all too well that the struggle is real. We all resolve to do better and we all relapse. Repeated relapses led us to believe that we’re unworthy of forgiveness or that there’s no point of going to Confession because we’re just going to sin again. This logic is completely backwards. It’s when the swimmer gives up that he’s overwhelmed by the water and not a moment before. Confession is our chance to persevere and overcome.
In the Sacrament of Confession, we’re confronted with more than just our past failings; we come face to face with the overwhelming majesty of God. Who is this that can forgive our numerous and repeated offenses against Him? Who can have an inexhaustible supply of mercy, love, and forgiveness? With the right intent, we’re able to receive true forgiveness. Aside from being able to physically receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus, as He promised, through the Eucharist that He established, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is the greatest benefit of being a Catholic.
We all face fear and shame when we reflect upon our lives and see how far we’ve fallen short of the bar we set for ourselves. Through grace and the Sacramental life of the Church, we’re able to be healed, reconciled, and dusted off, prepared to rise again tomorrow, refreshed and joyful, ready to praise Him throughout another day.
How to Grow this Lent
Unbelievably, today is Ash Wednesday. In just a few hours, the hunger pangs will start to set in as we observe the first of two fasting days this year. Masses today will undoubtedly be crowed by the faithful looking to mark the beginning of this penitential and fruitful season.
Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that many fast food chains have started to market heavily their fish options. I think it’s pretty funny that they cater to us every time this year. It also shows the remarkable market strength Christians have when we band together.
The question on everyone’s mind, including mine, is how can we grow this Lent? Over the past two weeks, I’ve been promoting my most recent book, Grant Us Peace, as one possible aid in your Lenten journey. Although it is a 21 day retreat, as opposed to the full 40 days of Lent, I wrote it specifically for times like these. It seems that around Ash Wednesday each year, many Catholics recognize how far they are from the spiritual life that they wish they had and are eager to hit the restart button. If that sounds like you, “Grant Us Peace” is the right book for you now.
What’s perhaps even better than the newness that Lent brings is how excited the clergy gets. It’s wonderful when priests dramatically increase the frequency and prevalence of liturgies and devotionals. Stations of the Cross are offered weekly, a few extra daily Masses are added to the schedule, some very early in the morning and others at night. This is really great because it caters to members of the parish who wish they could participate more actively in the daily life of the Church, but their work schedule precludes them from doing so. Your parish might even have a speaker series or a mission happen during Lent and, of course, there will be a penance service. The penance service is awesome because you really feel comfortable confessing your worst sins to a priest that you’ll likely never see again.
As we start this 40 day journey, I want you to take a good look at the full schedule at your parish and find some ways to more actively participate with you and your family, especially in the Easter Triduum. These liturgies are sublime and, when you really get into them, are not at all boring or old fashioned. They are beautiful expressions of faith that allow us to better understand how sin effects the entire Church.
This Lent, find ways at home to enrich your family’s spiritual life. Be reflective, be resolute, and immerse yourself in this season. Read the Sunday readings together on Saturday, pray a rosary together, or even just start praying together in the evening. Do something and make it a priority.
Lent is a beautiful opportunity for a grand spiritual restart. Don’t wait until Holy Week to start yours.
Our Political Role
Today we observe President’s Day and I think it’s an excellent time for us to consider our political role.
There’s been a large shift over the past 50 years in terms of the average American’s involvement in politics. A trend has developed in which each generation finds itself losing more and more faith in their government as a result of repeated scandals and increasingly frightening surveillance programs. What’s so easily forgotten is that employees of the government are, by and large, ordinary Americans just like us.
Astoundingly, instead of actively using the mechanisms in place to remedy errors, namely voting in elections and voicing opinions to elected officials, participation in politics has dwindled among the general population. By far the biggest opportunity to enact change are our regularly held elections, and yet, on Election Day, most Americans stay home. Even worse, an elected position has become a career for many in our society. The longer a person serves in government, the more susceptible they become to undue influence by special interests, tempted to corruption, and drunk on power. Instead of fresh ideas and new faces to solve our most complex societal problems, we keep sending the same people back year after year, and in many cases, decade after decade. Gone, too, are the days when Americans would regularly write or call their representatives and share views on bills and issues being debated in Congress. We’ve fallen victim to thinking that our voice really doesn’t matter, that one vote can’t make a difference, and so we back out of politics completely, except for some shouting matches online and at Thanksgiving.
Politics, the business of promoting the common good, has removed reason from every discussion and replaced it with ideology. In this scenario, we all lose. The poor are given hand outs instead of hand ups. The successful are objectively robbed as the price for doing well. The middle class become political pawns, used by everyone in bids to increase power, influence, and size. Bills become so laden with pork that it’s hard to determine what the original intent was. Instead of using our time to fix broken systems, update laws as science and technology advance, and promote strong, stable families, we spend all of our time scheming, yelling, and accusing each other of ridiculous things.
You know all this to be true and so do I. How do we, as Catholic husbands, address it? As with all great change, it starts at home. We should take an active political role ourselves, we must teach our children about the duties we have as citizens of a democracy, and we should take it upon ourselves to fix problems locally.
We must advocate for what we believe in. We each have a few issues that are close to our hearts that we feel compelled to support. Some may be life issues, others tax issues, and social justice issues might even be in the mix. Keep track of when your issues are being discussed and pick up the phone, mail a letter, or send an email to your elected officials. Despite what you may think, representatives do take into account the opinions of their constituents. They can’t read your mind. Share your opinions!
Next, we must show our kids that living in this great country means that we have responsibilities to fulfill. Don’t duck out on jury duty. Vote in every election. Elections happen almost every year in your community and range from local, state, and federal elections. You can easily find out when elections are being held and where they are, participate! Members of the armed services literally gave up their lives so that you can vote, so do it!
We also can’t be led to retreat every time our ideas lose. When we leave the discussion, we only give louder voice to the opinions that we disagree with
Lastly, solve problems locally. We can’t fix homelessness across the country, but we might be able to get together with a few neighbors and fix the problem in our town. We can’t solve the scourge of absentee fathers in another city, but we could start a regular inter-faith seminar for young men that teaches and informs about the duties, benefits, and joys of responsible parenting. We can’t get adequate healthcare for people in another state, but we can fund a free clinic in our community. We don’t have to wait for the government to fix a problem, we can do it ourselves!
This is our nation and our home. It’s up to us to use the structures in place to make it a just society that serves all with dignity and fairness.
Our Diocese’s Best Kept Secret
When you have a new baby, everything in the world is wonderful. A long 10 months of hopeful anticipation culminates in you finally getting to hold your new little one as they snuggle up close to you and sleep. It’s an amazing time and also an exhausting time. The joy of holding your warm baby is mixed with the terror that at any moment they could have a blowout and ruin your Hallmark moment.
As your family adjusts to its new life, whether this child be your first or your twelfth, you get to go to Mass together and bask not only in the peace of the liturgy, but in the joy of everyone around you. People love babies and our love of them is on full display at Church.
In these many weeks of happiness and serenity at Mass, there’s one thing that doesn’t cross your mind: this child will be a toddler soon enough and Mass will become an epic struggle. No longer are you struggling against the urge to mentally check out or to resist reading the bulletin. No, you and your wife’s struggle is to maintain order and discipline with your tiny human who wants nothing more than to be moving, squirming, walking, holding the hymnal, ripping the hymnal, throwing toys on the floor, taking off their socks and shoes, reading a book, shouting to hear their own echo and so on.
Young parents are trying to balance instilling the practice of going to Mass in their child with the rights of other parishioners to not have a little kid screaming right next to them for an entire hour. It’s an incredibly stressful situation for any parent to be in. Worse, taking your child to the back of Church means there’s no longer any comfortable seating or the opportunity to actually see or hear what’s going on. Most Churches have woefully inadequate cry rooms that amount to nothing more than an afterthought.
This goes on for months and months until the family can reintegrate with the Parish when their child is old enough to know that Mass is a quiet time.
Alison and I faced this stark reality starting just a few months ago. Gone are the days when Benedict would be content to be held by us or sleep in his seat during Mass. He’s a boy on the move and he’d love to tell you all about it!
Our parish, like so many others, had little room to work with in the construction of the Church. That meant that shortly after Mass began, sometimes even before Mass began, one of us would have to take Benedict into the narthex and experience Mass from there. The sound was good, but there was no comfortable seating. After the homily we’d switch places-the upside was that it gave us both half of Mass to be quiet and prayerful. The downside, which completely outweighed the upside, was that our family was sadly split during our most important activity of the week.
Thankfully, our parish is also staffed by genius priests. 7 years ago, they built a new Church on the parish lot. Our community is huge with six Masses on the weekend, all packed to overflow capacity. Instead of knocking down the historical Church which was built shortly after the end of the Civil War, they kept it as an Adoration Chapel. In a stroke of pure genius, instead of letting the old Church sit empty on the weekend, they wired it for sound and video from the main Church and it now is the cry room. The Mass being celebrated right next door is broadcast to a large TV on an AV cart through a camera that pivots in the back of the main sanctuary. So, when someone is at the Lectern, we can zoom in and just see the reader. When the priest is praying the consecration, we can zoom in just on the Altar. All Mass, no distractions.
What makes this “cry room” so special is that it’s a fully commissioned Church with the Blessed Sacrament still in repose. It’s not a random room at the very back of the Church, it is a Church! Benedict can still have the experience of being in Church and going to Mass without Alison and I having to bear the stress of not wanting him to disturb others. I call the Chapel, jokingly, St. Benedict’s Chapel.
It’s a wonderful blessing to have this opportunity. There are other families with children who go to Mass in the Chapel and no one has any expectation of complete silence. We still try to regulate Benedict, to a point, but if he screams, we don’t blush. If he throws a book on the ground, we don’t shudder. Even better, since there are far fewer people, we have space to spread out with the large amount of things we bring to Mass these days to keep Benedict appropriately engaged.
Perhaps what I love most about St. Benedict’s Chapel, apart from it being a real Church, is the relief that it brings to parents. We’re able to pray and enjoy the experience of Mass in a Church, without worrying about the erratic behavior of our toddler. We’re able to be together, as a family, at Mass. We’re able to form good habits in Benedict and help him understand not only what’s going on in the Mass, but what all of the things are in the Church.
I look forward to the day when our family is able to participate in Mass with the whole community again, but for now, I’m quite content celebrating in St. Benedict’s Chapel, where families can pray together without stressing over every sound their child makes.