Reverence in Church - 1

Sorrowing Parents, Pupils and their Teachers were once attending the Requiem Mass of one of the students who had, sadly, died of Leukaemia. During the homily, a baby began to cry. Father brought this into his thoughts. “Although we are, today, mourning the death of a loved one, we have just been reminded by that cry that, though some lives must end, others will begin”. He reminded us all of the vital place that our children hold in the Church.
 
While we might, for example, object to our prayers and contemplation being disturbed by audible conversations among adults, we will, surely, take heart at the sound of a baby’s cry or the voice of a small child; these little ones are reminding us that, through God’s Gift of life and the generosity of Parents who conceive and nurture them, the Family of the Faithful will, as Jesus promised, live on.
 
Christ said, when His Apostles would have sent children away, “Let the little ones come to me…”  On another occasion we are told by Him that we must become child-like (not childish) ourselves, showing that unconditional love and trust to God that a child shows to his or her parents. Just as our children depend on us, their Parents, to bring them to birth, feed and clothe them, they depend on us, too, in a more profound and critical way; parents as  the first teachers of their children are in the forefront of their education in and practice of, the Faith.
 
Children need to become familiar with the church and the Mass from as early an age as possible. While part of their education in the Faith will, indeed, involve developing a reverent silence in church, however, Parents must not be self-conscious if the children express themselves as only little ones can! Every time we hear the cry of a cry of a baby or the voice of an infant, we must thank God and Parents for the continuing life of the Community of the Faithful. Our children are the sign of our Love, demonstrating that as Catholics, we do not go along with the often anti-life mentality of the world. They are the Adults – Parents, Priests and Religious – of the future.