{SQT} Seeking the Sacrament of Confession

1. More Birthday Fun

Joseph's grandparents came to visit and we invited over a couple of families for a Sunday brisket supper, which was a lot of fun fellowship.

Requested by Joseph: gingerbread cake with powdered sugar

2. What Are We Reading?

A snapshot of the books we're in the midst of reading through this week . . .

Read-alouds for pleasure:

• Mama's Bank Account--absolutely delightful book about a Norwegian family in San Francisco in the late 1800s, suitable to read aloud to all ages

Read-alouds for History this week:

• The Great Wall by Mann
• The World's Story by O'Neill 
• The Saint on Horseback: The Story of King Louis IX

Katherine

• Kidnapped by the Vatican?
• Holiness for Everyone: The Practical Spirituality of Josemaria Escriva by Simmons
• Divine Intimacy 
• From the Housetops--the periodical by the Saint Benedict Center, I strongly recommend this!

John

• Crown of the World
• Everyday Millionaires by Chris Hogan
• From the Housetops--the periodical by the Saint Benedict Center, I strongly recommend this!

Mary

• Redwall: Martin the Warrior
• Straw into Gold
• The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field
• How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books
• a hagiography of St. Thomas Aquinas

Margaret

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• The Bible
• Tiki Tiki Tembo 
• The Hundred Dresses
• The Moffats
• a hagiography of St. Thomas Aquinas

Reading aloud to Joseph and Thomas

• Fifty Famous People (there was weeping one night because I did not read this)
• Angel Food for Girls and Boys
• A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Thomas has recently re-discovered our collection of old-fashioned Golden Books, so has been having me read many of them to him.

3. Margaret's Creativity

This week, Margaret finished her story (three pages typewritten), presenting it ceremoniously to Grandmom to read aloud.

She also submitted two paintings to the HSLDA art contest, and then she topped off her creative week by typing and formatting a love letter to Mama. I was called down the stairs to find hearts strewn across the table, Margaret presenting the letter, and Mary playing theme music on her violin. What did I do to deserve that kindness?

4. John's Creativity

John (12) has been greatly enjoying his sacred art class at his hybrid school. He worked on a weaving project--including building the loom--during the first quarter and got to bring it home recently to finish in his free time.

5. Sport of the Week

This week, it's been all about street hockey, whether in sneakers or on roller blades. Also, the weather dried and warmed ever so briefly and I led our first family walk through the neighborhood in months.

6. Thomas

I recently made a few puzzles available again (instead of remaining locked up), so Thomas has been one happy three-year-old.

7. Confession

I have successfully taken six children to Confession by myself for three Wednesdays in a row now as part of my hoped-for newly established routine to make the sacrament available to them weekly. I have watched over the years as numerous large families reach the age of having middle schoolers and then teenagers and they start making Confession available very regularly. I think that by that time everyone in the family needs the graces!

So here is our family having reached that stage!

Chris and I decided that regular Confession is more important than squeezing that many more academics in, so I'm taking two hours out of our incredibly busy day to take us there. I write it into the morning prayer time for all of us to do a private Examination of Conscience, and then we stop school at 10:45 and get back just in time for a quick lunch before resuming school. I'm doing this even with a loud, babbling one-year-old and a three-year-old who sings loudly while we walk up the silent church full of prayerful adults toward the bathroom, "Me going potty in the church! Me going potty in the church! . . ." That's how important this is becoming to me.

I don't have a tremendous amount to offer, but I have noted that my three Confession-age children have been delighted and excited to be going to Confession and public recitation of the Holy Rosary each week. So happy that they're telling me that they love it and writing "yay!" on the school calendar next to the entry for Confession.

Some younger Catholic families earlier on the path, so to speak, might wonder how to get to this point instead of getting to the point where kids are resentful, scared, or rebellious about Confession. I think these practices are helpful:

• The parents should be going to Confession with regularity and the children should know it. Even better is if the kids tag along and witness their parents going to the sacrament.
• Confession should be joy-filled and not made out to be scary to the First Holy Communicant. When I'm homeschooling my child during the FHC year, we do a lot of role-playing of Confession, each taking turns being the priest and being the penitent, so the child is hearing the priest's words over and over, and he is practicing his words over and over, and he's practicing confessing certain imagined sins. This is so helpful. (We even take the child for a tour of the confessional: we just get in line and quickly pop a head in, tell the priest we're showing the confessional to our child, and they've always been welcoming.)
• I don't know whether this helps or not but we only participate in Confession in an old-fashioned confessional or box or with a screen: we would not do Confession face-to-face unless no other format was available.
• Little children can feel overwhelmed about trying to remember sins. It is okay for a small child to just go in with three simple, memorized sins to recite. Getting too complex can be overwhelming and lead to fear.
• Parents can help guide young children in learning how to do an examination of conscience, but they should not be reading their child's confession list. This is one of the first steps toward developing a private relationship directly between the child and God.
• Children should be taught about mercy. Especially because I come from a non-Christian background, not converting to Catholicism until 28 years old, I know about the inexplicable mercy of God on the wretched. From the youngest of ages (5, 6, 7), I explain to my children, "There is no sin too big for God to forgive. God is bigger than any sin. Saul persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians, and God forgave him and made him into St. Paul, THE APOSTLE. You think you're so special that the priest hasn't heard your sin innumerable times? You're not that special. There is no sin God cannot forgive, so always go to Confession."

All of that said, I have yet to get one of those kids who is naturally terrified or resistant to Confession. Maybe we just got lucky, or maybe some of our practices have helped, so I offer them for whatever they are worth.

(It's only been three weeks. Pray for me that I have the fortitude to continue taking us most weeks and that this becomes a truly ingrained habit.)


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