My husband and I have been blessed with three boys. I wish I could tell you that each Sunday I say “It’s time to get ready for church” and the boys jump up and make themselves look handsome and we all happily get in the car and arrive early to mass! I wish! I am sure other families can relate when I say, some Sundays easy and some…are not!
With three active boys, our family is always involved in sports in one way or another. The boys play sports, they watch sports, they talk about sports, they probably dream about sports! Since they love it so much, it is a great tool to teach them about other things in life. One day a thought popped in my head, so driving to Good Shepherd this Wednesday I decided to try it out and I asked, “What do you think is more important, the practice or the game?”
Like normal I ask a question and I get three different answers! “the game”…“the practices”…“both are important.” “Why?” I asked. “The game is important because that is the whole point”, our oldest says. Next chimes in our youngest, “the practices are more important because that is where you learn.” Our middle son, says with the most confidence “It’s both! The practices are important because if you don’t practice, you won’t know how to play the game. But, the game is a little more important because that is what it is all for!”
So, I asked, “Would you go to a game if you had never gone to practice?” “No way!"..."How would we know what to do?”…“How would we know who was on our team?”
“What if you went to every practice and then it was time for your game and we were too busy to go? Or just too tired?” They laugh, “That’s crazy!”…“Why would we skip the game?”…“Why would you say that?”
“Well…think of church on Sunday as the game and our Wednesday atrium as the practice. Each week we go to the atrium and we practice. We learn the parts of mass and what they mean, we learn how to sit quiet and listen to God, we learn about Jesus and how he loves and calls us and we meet our friends and catechists so we know who is on our team. If we miss Atrium, we miss all that. Then each Sunday we have our big game. We go early to prepare for the game by calming our minds, we say hi to all our teammates and we participate by listening, singing and receiving the sacrament. If we miss Church, it’s like missing the big game.”
We rode in silence for a minute or two before someone started talking about something completely different and we were onto something new, but for the few minutes of silence I prayed that my words sunk in deep into their little hearts, and…that next Sunday is one of the easy ones!
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