- Feb 5, 2002
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Several years into young motherhood, I volunteered to prepare parish second graders for their first Communion.
The weekly classes with 18 children often felt like 45-minute exercises in humility, but my goal was to ensure that when the children experienced their first encounter with the Flesh and Blood of Christ, they knew it really was Jesus, and that Jesus really did know them, love them, and long to be received into their bodies, hearts and minds.
Brief classes meant there wasn’t much time left to train the children in spiritual supplication, but I did guide them (week after week), through halting recitations of the “big three” prayers which form the bedrock of Catholic orisons — the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
I say “halting” because while the children remembered that we’d done this before, the prayers never flowed easily off their tongues. While I dedicated three distinct classes to teaching what all those unfamiliar and mysterious words meant, retention wasn’t happening.
So, when a mother angrily questioned why her daughter didn’t know the Our Father, I sassed back a little: “Well, I have 45 minutes a week with them. YOU have every day; are YOU teaching it to her? Are you praying with your kids? That’s actually your JOB, you know, to teach them how to pray by your own example. Are YOU praying?”
Continued below.
www.osvnews.com
The weekly classes with 18 children often felt like 45-minute exercises in humility, but my goal was to ensure that when the children experienced their first encounter with the Flesh and Blood of Christ, they knew it really was Jesus, and that Jesus really did know them, love them, and long to be received into their bodies, hearts and minds.
Brief classes meant there wasn’t much time left to train the children in spiritual supplication, but I did guide them (week after week), through halting recitations of the “big three” prayers which form the bedrock of Catholic orisons — the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
I say “halting” because while the children remembered that we’d done this before, the prayers never flowed easily off their tongues. While I dedicated three distinct classes to teaching what all those unfamiliar and mysterious words meant, retention wasn’t happening.
So, when a mother angrily questioned why her daughter didn’t know the Our Father, I sassed back a little: “Well, I have 45 minutes a week with them. YOU have every day; are YOU teaching it to her? Are you praying with your kids? That’s actually your JOB, you know, to teach them how to pray by your own example. Are YOU praying?”
Continued below.
Parents, PLEASE: My seventh grade religious ed students do not know the ‘Our Father’ - OSV News
Brief classes meant there wasn't much time to train children in spiritual supplication, but I did guide them through halting recitations of the "big three" prayers -- the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
www.osvnews.com
