We are at Saturday evening vigil Mass, outside our normal routine so we can accommodate some rare Sunday morning plans. Despite a heavy plying with snacks before church, both kids grow hungry as dinner time approaches. They’re also a bit fidgety as this post-nap period is typically full of play, not reverent silence. That said, they’re one and two years old and are mostly quiet as we sit in one of the last pews in an almost empty church.
My two-year-old is softly narrating parts of the Mass: “Mama, he is blessing the bread. Oh and now the wine!” My one-year-old is rolling his matchbox car along the kneeler. The car falls a few inches onto the floor and quietly rattles. The lady in front of us, with three middle-school aged children, turns and glares. She’s not the first.
When I was a new mom, I spent many Masses tucked away in the cry room so I wouldn’t trouble the folks around us in the pews. I was hyper aware if my newborn was cooing or fussing too loud, if she wanted to nurse at a reverential time, or if my rustling through the diaper bag was noisy and distracting. But when churches reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic, our church kept the cry room locked, citing sanitation concerns. By that point, I had a second baby, and nowhere to take him other than outside in the middle of winter. And so, we learned to mitigate from the pew, and occasionally from the back of church or outside.
Since then, my kids have grown accustomed to weekly Mass attendance, but they are just that, kids. Kids wiggle and flail. Their attempts at whispering are rarely successful. They grow bored and distracted easily. They drop things and trip and occasionally make a commotion. That’s what kids do. We mitigate as best as we can, involving them in the Mass, summarizing the readings and Gospels, pointing to the stained glass or stations of the cross, offering toys, but there are times our efforts are null, and our children have a moment where they behave like children.
I can’t imagine it was different in Jesus’ time. I don’t believe children then were angelic, nor free from the desire to play and understand and question and participate alongside the adults. And yet, Jesus still invited them to join him.
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In the Gospel of Matthew, while Jesus is in Judea, people bring their children to Jesus so he can pray over them, but the disciples prove less than welcoming, even rebuking the crowds.
“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these’” (Matthew 19:14).
At least by this telling, Jesus did not request for the parents to first quiet their children. He welcomed not just the well-behaved children, not just the obedient ones, not just the well-kempt or quiet or tidy ones. He repeatedly reminds us that Heaven belongs to those with childlike faith. Childlike, in all the mess and chaos and curiosity that comes with it.
Perhaps if our neighbors in the pews could see past their distraction and frustration and could hear the wonder in my child’s voice as she asks why we ring bells during the consecration, or her curiosity as she wonders why Jesus had to sleep in a manger instead of a crib, or her anticipation while she fidgets and asks how much longer until she can go up the aisle for her blessing, then maybe they, and I too, would have a richer understanding of the type of faith Jesus prescribed for us all.
So too would we better enter into the synodality that is underway in the universal Church. If synodality is the life and mission of the Church as God’s people journey together, shouldn’t we also welcome the small, noisy, and sticky ones? If our goal in this three-year synod is to discern our way forward, aren’t the next generation of believers a critical part of that path?
Still, I’ll do my best to keep things quiet each Sunday. I’ll proffer Cheerios and stuffed rosaries and Bible stories to keep the chaos at bay. But in the moments where childhood overcomes maturity, sideways glances aside, mama knows Jesus is happy they’re here.
Tara Hunt McMullen is a freelance writer, military spouse and mom of two. Her family frequently moves, but is currently based in the Florida panhandle.
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