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SANDRA SNYDER ssnyder@leader.net
Tuesday, February 01, 2000 Page: 6
Heartily sorry and heartily forgiven
Families join children as they say the hardest words for the first tim
By SANDRA SNYDER ssnyder@leader.net To the 50-plus children gathered at
his feet, the Rev. Paul Mullen posed what to the adult assembly would seem a
rather simple question: How are we related to God? After a brief pause, one
child’s hand went up to offer an answer. “Distantly?” Well, it was quite
the opposite of the response the pastor of St. Jude’s Roman Catholic Church
had been seeking, and it did elicit more than a few chuckles, but as far as
the featured lesson went, the response illustrated a good point. It’s easy,
especially for a child, to believe God lives somewhere out there, a distance
away, but it’s a little bit more difficult for clergy, teachers or parents to
explain to young people beginning to study their faith what they would have
them know about God: He lives inside hearts and is therefore anything but a
distant relative. In the order of the day, Jan. 23, that point was especially
relevant. The scores of second-graders had filled the Wright Township church –
as another equally sized group of them had on Jan. 9 – to receive for their
first time the second sacrament: reconciliation, otherwise known as penance or
confession. For the one sacrament out of the seven that often brings on the
most trepidation in children as well as adults, the questions the young posed
to one another and their parents before and during the service were
unsurprising. “Do I have to say everything?” “What if I forget some of
the stuff?” In accord, as well as wanting to squelch any notion that God is
distant, Mullen aimed to make something clear before anyone approached the
confessional: There is nothing at all to be nervous about. To illustrate the
point, several of the children performed a skit focusing on wrongdoing and
forgiveness. Erik Chupela played the part of a sore loser during a round of
board games. Facing imminent defeat in a game, Erik decided to cut his losses
and toss his friends from his house to avoid further embarrassment. Once
alone, however, the remorse came on strong, and Erik realized where he had
gone wrong. Would his friends ever want to play with him again? Could they
possibly forgive him? Making the point that the undistant God certainly would,
Vesta Siple, director of faith formation for the parish, brought the light of
Jesus to Erik to close out the skit. And Mullen took it from there.
“Reconciliation is making peace,” he explained. “Simple.” He then led
Erik to a microphone and asked him to say two words eternally difficult for
any member of the human race to utter with sincerity: “I’m sorry.” And
those short words, coupled with the forgiveness that follows, are, to the
church, the crux of reconciliation, a sacrament that, like the other six, has
undergone numerous changes in style and reception over the years. The Second
Vatican Council called for local churches to put more of a family emphasis on
the sacraments, the Rev. Richard Fox, parochial vicar at St. Jude’s, has
explained. Such a focus was evident during the January first-penance services
at St. Jude’s. The parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters who had
gathered with the children were asked to take part, if they desired, in
reconciliation along with the young guests of honor. For those who were not
Catholic, Mullen said, the invitation was still there. “We celebrate the
blessing of forgiveness that’s given to all God’s people,” he explained,
offering the option that anyone could come to the confessional and just ask
for a blessing. Early in the service came the examination of conscience,
during which several readers posed questions to be answered in hearts and not
with voices. Do I treat others the way I want them to treat me? Do I live in
peace with my family? Do I welcome others into my life? After that came
individual confessions, and a majority of the families did take part fully,
whether by requesting the blessing or receiving the sacrament along with the
children. Walking together to various corners of the church, the members
approached their confessors individually but reunited with one another after
all had received either the sacrament or the blessing. Then they joined hands
while the priest who had heard each member’s confession asked for a blessing
on the entire family. As a final display of their solidarity as a family
unit, the first-time receiver of reconciliation then brought a paper house
with his or her family’s name on it to the front of the church and affixed it
to a larger house: God’s house. When everything was finished, Mullen offered
a few observations to the crowd. “As priests, we sit and listen to your
sorrow,” he said. “What we hear is that you really love God and your
families. … And the best news we hear is that we are forgiven. “We’ve all
come home now,” he continued, asking everyone to reach across the pews and
embrace one another. “Let’s now assure each other of God’s love.”