My 9 year old daughter frequent the catechism and this year he will receive the Communion. When there is to go to Mass it’s a drama. Cries and tearsand then still go and leave Mass having instead listened with Attention there preach. And sometimes, in the afternoon, he presents me with ideas again reflections on what he heard, even referring to his own life. Furthermore, in front of thenews kiosk in the courtyard me, her and the little brother we turn to Marybefore going home for a greetingto thank her for things beautiful they meetings that we experienced.
Every Sunday I wonder if it is right to force her.
MARTA
Read Alberto Pellai’s answer
– Dear Martha,
if we let them decide children whether to go to Mass on Sunday, based on their wishI doubt we would find many of them sitting there. Going to church is not attractiveaccording to the prevailing logic of today gratification instant. It forces you to stay composed, silent and listening. There is a scriptat the time of Mass, which is already written and which does not require the subject to be recited. In church you have to learn to regular your emotional states, manage the boredomstop everything for an hour.
The Sunday service experience should be a family ritual. THE childrenFrom an early age, they see mum and dad who have a different priority on Sundays from what happens during their time usual lives. You don’t run, you meditate and pray with others, you listen to someone who provides you ethical indicationsmoral and spiritual. In short, Sunday after Sunday, children learn that in life there is visible and theinvisibleThe material and it spiritualThe Well and the bad. It’s a teaching of fundamental importance. Every Sunday your little girl rebels against something that seems like little to her attractive.
Think about it: even go to schoolfrom the dentist or from pediatrician often triggers oppositional reactions in ours childrennevertheless we don’t ask ourselves the doubt: “Am I right or wrong to force it?”. Going to Mass on Sunday should find us, as parents, calm down than deciding that children come with us, even against their will. It means building together, embodying it in family habitsthe value of things that the “everything and now” society tends to consider worthless.
It must be cultivated spirituality individual even against desire so as not to lose the value ofimmanent. B. Marchica also tells it very well in his book Spiritual intelligence (Mondadori) which invites us to never stop looking for one happiness in the hereafter and in ours daily.
