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why you have to go to church

4 Comments

Why do you have to go to church, my child?

I thought I wasn’t going to have to answer that question for a few more years. Maybe even a decade before you started stomping around with teenage eye rolls of disgust when I ask you to get dressed on Sunday morning, and not in those ratty jeans with the holes in the knees, either.

But here we are today, already five minutes late and you’re standing at the back door whining in protest, your stubborn feet kicking the mud-caked shoes you refuse to put on so we can scramble into the car.

Do you want my answer? Ok.

This is why you have to go to church.

. . .

 It’s good for you to go to church.

Here’s part of what church means: faith, prayer, ritual, music, beauty, and community. Experts agree those are good things for growing kids, healthy like tall glasses of milk and long nights of sleep.

But I don’t need an expert to tell me what I see on Sunday mornings. You leafing carefully through the hymnal pages, pointing when you find what we’re singing. You leaning quietly into my side as we listen to the readings. You lunging across the pew to shake hands with everyone at the sign of peace.

You like church. (Even when you claim it’s only because of donuts afterwards.)

Here’s another part of what church means: it’s a place where you aren’t in charge. And neither are your parents, the ones who usually get to call the shots.

Church is not about you or me. It’s about God. It’s about believing in something bigger than yourself. It’s about the amazing and aggravating people who come together under one big tent.

Life, you will find, is also like this. Church is good practice.

So it’s good for you to be there.

. . .

It’s good for the rest of the community to see you in church.

To remember that you’re part of the Body of Christ, too, even if you’re the antsy legs that can’t sit still in the pew. Even if you’re the dancing feet that are itching to run up to the choir and clap while they sing. Even if you’re the loud voice that asks WHY WHY WHY a hundred times during the homily.

It’s good for the frazzled mom with lanky teenagers to remember when her kids were that small. It’s good for the gentle grandparents to watch the hard work that they did as parents. It’s good for the single friends to remind us how to see you in fresh light as your own person. It’s good for the young couple in the back pew to fast-forward a few years and wonder what it might be like to wrangle their own restless kids in the front row.

It’s good for all the grown-ups to remember that you belong there, too. That you are beloved and baptized like the rest of us.

So it’s good for the whole congregation to have you there.

. . .

It’s good for our pastors to have you at church.

They see children in a keen way – a bright-eyed, call-you-by-name, high-five way that makes me think the Jesus of slow-down-I’m-just-going-to-sit-with-these-kids-for-a-minute would grin, too.

You give them hope, and they give you someone tall and important and not-your-parents to look up to. We need more priests like them, and maybe you might be one, so it’s good for you to see each other across the altar on Sundays.

So it’s good for our pastors to have you there.

. . .

It’s good for our family that you go to church.

We only have a few years to set this rhythm before school and sports and schedules for every extracurricular on God’s green earth begin to pull at the fabric that holds our early years together right now. And before all those activities and enrichments and after-schools start to trickle into every gap of free time on weeknights and weekends, your father and I want to be sure we’ve carved out space for what matters most.

Which includes: God, community, service, silence, song, beauty, and the inner life. (See also: church.)

So it’s good for your mother that you go to church. You make it harder to concentrate and easier to remember why I’m there.

It’s good for your father that you go to church. You let him show you what it means to be a man who can tear up at soaring hymns or fist-pump at zinging homilies.

It’s good for your little brothers that you go to church. You are their two-sizes-bigger role model, and when you pester me again about when you can be an altar server or when you can start taking communion, they listen, too.

So it’s good for all of us to have you there.

. . .

Why do you have to go to church, oh sharp-eyed, stubborn-cheeked, wild-haired child of my heart?

Because? Because you have to? Because I said so? Because that’s just what we do?

No.

Because you are the church, too. Because you are asking questions and growing into answers and challenging me and wondering about God.

And you deserve a place that is safe and warm and welcoming for your big, hard, important questions. A place where we will pray and sing and learn and forgive and thank God together. A place where we remember, again and always, what we are to do and who we are to be. A place like our church.

And we are now ten minutes late.

So let’s go. Shall we?

Originally appeared at Practicing Families. 

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. micaela says

    15 August 2015 at 11:31 pm

    Absolutely lovely, Laura. We also tell our kids that Jesus comes to meet us in the Eucharist and it’s so special we wouldn’t miss it for (almost) anything. But other than the Eucharist as our primary reason, these are all lovely and so completely true.

    Reply
    • motheringspirit says

      16 August 2015 at 1:32 pm

      Absolutely – I couldn’t agree more! I was struck by the words of the Eucharistic Prayer Mass this morning, that it is “our duty and our salvation” to give God thanks and celebrate God’s presence in our lives. That same truth applies to this question of why we gather as a community for worship, because it is our duty and our salvation (and our deep joy!).

      Reply
  2. Shannon says

    17 August 2015 at 11:22 am

    Oh my goodness I just love this!

    Reply
  3. Ann Marschel says

    20 August 2015 at 8:40 pm

    Laura–this is the same question our oldest asked at such a young age too and you have so wonderfully put it into words that ring true. Thank you! I know sometimes, as parents, we can leave mass upset and questioning what the homily even was about. At the same time though, we along with our children are being blessed with so many graces and attending together is so good! Thank you again for this lovely insight.

    Reply

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I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
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I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

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So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
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I am writing this to us next week. When our right I am writing this to us next week.

When our righteous anger will have quieted down. When the white-hot fury pulsing through our veins will have subsided. When the news cycle will have moved on.

Do not forget how we felt tonight.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

We cannot live like this. Literally—our children are dying. Our elders are being murdered. We have accepted violence as—a way of life? An unfortunate side effect of freedom? A helpless shrug?

No. I am not resigned.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

Remember how it felt today to hear the news and feel the world crack open—again, for we have heard it a hundred times now. Remember how you felt sick to your stomach. How the children around you glowed, alive and fragile, miraculous and vulnerable.

Remember how you wanted to do something, anything, how you wanted to act, how you wanted to stop and scream for it to end, how every cell in your body cried out that this was evil and unjust and horrific and cannot continue.

Press into that memory like a bruise.
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The only way anything changes is if we change. Change what we believe. Change who we support. Change how we vote. Change where we give. Change how we act. Change how we speak. Change how we pray.

There are no easy answers to terrible, complex problems—which is what gun violence in the US has become. But the lack of easy answers makes it all the more urgent and vital that we press into our righteous anger and say NO MORE.

Stay angry. Flip tables.

I am writing this for us, for tonight, for next week. And I never want to write it again.
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