2002 CONFESSIONS
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Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

JULY/AUGUST 2002 CONFESSIONS

WHY? WHY? WHY?

You see your sins in your children. My five-year-old son is a sensualist, licking his lips as he talks of sweets and professing a desire to marry all the girls, "so I can have them." He is a materialist, allowing lust for stuff to dictate his behavior in all sorts of unpleasant ways-particularly ingratitude. He is never satisfied, always clamoring for more, always on to the next thing, asking to go somewhere even as we arrive home from somewhere else. His temper is short, and he gives in to shouting at his brother when he is offended. He is easily frustrated and allows that frustration to carry him away, past the most obvious solutions. (In his case, asking a parent for help; in mine, asking God.) All these sins are my sins, shrunk to fit his little self. I will not say I caused these habits entirely -- my son is fallen just as I am -- but surely some of his readiness to indulge them comes from watching me.

As bad as I am, I don't think I ever disliked Sundays (read: attending Mass) the way he does. The scene is played out almost every week: on entering his room to get dressed, he sees that his church clothes have been laid out, and he begins to look like someone has stolen all of his toys. Though he knows it will displease me, and though he does not want to displease me, he cannot help himself: "I have to say, I don't like Sundays. Why do we have to go to church?"

Why? Because God commanded that we keep holy the Sabbath. Actually, I've never used that one. My first reason for going is one step less remote: the Church -- God's voice on earth -- requires it. If you give me a minute to think about it, I'll say I go to receive the Eucharist, to achieve physical intimacy with my Lord and so be strengthened and transformed. That's true, of course, but it's the rule that has created the habit of getting to Mass.

My son is not yet old enough to receive the Eucharist, so that line of reasoning doesn't impress him. (And though we tell him we're eating Jesus' body and drinking his blood, I don't think it really registers. When something curious hits home, he asks about it. He's never asked about eating God.) I haven't used the "God commanded it" line in part because it's not my reason, and in part because I don't want to make God into the heavy. But I get tripped up on the line I do take -- "Because God has given us everything we have, and we need to say thank you, and going to Church is how we thank Him." When he persists in his protests -- "Why do we have to thank him in Church?" -- Dad, rushed as he often is, trying to cram children's feet into stiff-leather church shoes, gets testy, starts hauling out the charge of ingratitude. Sometimes, Dad snaps. "Should we just take away all your toys, since you don't want to say thank you?" And bingo, God is the heavy.

Here's the problem: though he is good in many ways, religion doesn't matter much to my five-year-old. Religion is concerned with satisfying the deepest longings of the human heart, longings he can't even identify yet-he thinks the blessings of family, friends, and stuff are pretty great, and more stuff would be even greater. Religion is concerned with being good, but his parents provide motivation enough for that. Religion is concerned with the life after this, another thing that doesn't really register. He understands that death is sad, but I haven't talked much about hell -- it's not really a danger for him yet -- and so he doesn't cling to Christ out of fear.

And Heaven doesn't sound all that appealing, except for the possibility of doing whatever he wants. (True, we tell him, but your will will be rectified, so you won't want anything that's bad for you. That kills his buzz a little. My son reveals my limitations. There is a beauty, a romance, a desirability to the Faith-it is, after all, an encounter with Love itself. I see that beauty, sometimes more clearly than others, but so far, I have been utterly unable to communicate it to the boy. He's more interested in asking, "What can't God do?" I should say, "There's nothing He can't do," but I don't. I say, "He can't live in the heart of someone who has rejected him." My boy smiles, seemingly pleased at the thought of defeating God.

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