No mother could snatch her child from a burning building more swiftly than God is constrained to succor a penitent soul.
— St. Henry Suso
Jennifer wrote to ask me about the First Confession/First Communion program at our church, and as such I am going to have this post about Cate’s first confession do double duty.
I know that Cate won’t mind!
Let me begin by saying that for all the kidding around that I do on this blog—for all the light sarcasm and the goofy exaggerations—I take the sacramental life quite seriously. It is through the sacraments that we obtain grace, and without grace I would be lost. Completely lost.
You know the wretch in the song “Amazing Grace?” Well, that was me. I could try to explain to you how much I changed after my first general confession (where I confessed all-at-once the many, many sins of my past life), but now is not the time, I don’t think. I will try to explain when I get around to telling my conversion story, and I’m thinking perhaps during the Fridays of Lent is when I’ll tell that tale.
And do you know what else? My husband has courageously agreed to keep the kids this weekend so that I can go on retreat—the same sort of retreat that originally triggered my conversion! I am a little numb at the thought that after 13 years, I will be following the Spiritual Exercises once more. I am nervous. What will God have to say to me?
Anyway. Back again to the post on my daughter’s First Confession. My family is blessed in that our parish has an awesome religious education program. It is well organized, fun and best of all–in this opinionated mom’s opinion–it is orthodox. (By “orthodox” I mean that my parish strictly adheres to the teachings of the Holy Father and the Magisterium. Sadly, we have many religious education programs here in the Twin Cities that do not.)
Even as homeschoolers, we have always been pleased to participate in our church’s 2nd grade sacramental prep classes, (I teach the other grade levels at home), the occasional children’s retreat, and of course, the second-to-none, can’t-be-beat week of CVBS.
Jean is the coordinator of Elementary Religious Education at our church, and has been so for the past eight years. Do you know Jean? Well, you should. The children absolutely love her, and we parents are pretty fond of her as well! She is as holy and kind and wise as a person could be. She is also very patient, and indulged my many questions as I prepared to write this post.
Jean said that the heart of our parish sacramental prep program is the book Jesus and I by Father Aloysius J. Heeg, S.J. (reviewed here by Alicia). It is the best one she’s found by far, Jean said.
The book includes three sets of questions at the end of each chapter: one section titled “How many can you answer?”; one titled “Can you also answer these?”; and a third list of review questions.
The first set of questions corresponds to the text of Jesus and I. The second set of questions in this book was taken directly from the Baltimore Catechism, and it is these questions that the children need to learn for their First Confession and First Communion interviews. (The answers are listened in the back of the book, incidentally.)
Certainly you don’t have to go over all of these questions with your child, but you can bet that your students will know the faith if you do so. “Get it in their hearts when they are children and as they grow older they’ll understand it,” Jean said.
Providentially, Jean was also given a coloring book with pictures done for Jesus and I. She printed them up into a big spiral-bound workbook with the stories and questions from the text–to make it more “kid-friendly”, she said. And that is what our children use to prepare for the sacraments of First Penance and First Communion!
As we get closer to Cate’s First Communion, I will see if I can get permission to post the novena prayer we use. On each day of the nine-day novena, which ends on the day before they make their First Communion, our child plants a different flower (i.e. virtue) in the garden of their soul. “Now my heart is a beautiful garden with many flowers that I have made just for You, dear Jesus. I hope that you are pleased!”
How could He not be?
No more posts from me ‘til Monday! I’m off for the retreat.
Ad Jesum per Mariam, (as always),
What a blessing to have such a program in your parish. Enjoy your weekend retreat! If you think of it, pray for a little reprieve from the bitter cold in the upper midwest!
Thinking warm thoughts…
Jane
Margaret:
How very blessed you are to have such a lovely parish. I can truly appreciate the necessity of orthodoxy…until nearly three years ago, my family and I had nothing even remotely close to it. The sacrament of Confession at our old parish church was never conferred until children were in the 6th grade, and Confirmation in the 12th grade. My children were the only ones who ever received Confession before 1st Holy Communion, and were derided for doing so by the DRE and other parents. A succession of three priests allowed this, in contradiction with Church teaching.
It was heinous. We suffered for many years before moving to a community that follows the teachings of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
We will keep your darling girl in our prayers as she prepares to approach our dear Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Praying for you also during your retreat…
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Thanks Margaret. Our parish program isn’t quite so helpful. That book is exactly what we need. Thank you for the post and the help. We’ll keep you in our prayers this weekend.
You’re very blessed to have such a great program. Have a great retreat!
You are certainly blessed to have a great parish. I absolutely think we can be fun, silly, and a bit sarcastic, but still be spiritual and holy. I love coming to your blog because it feels “REAL”.
My {m} just had her First Reconciliation and is in the prep phase for Holy Communion. We are doing a novena just prior to her special day. I never did this with my other girls. The Church that we are members of now is really quite special too. If it can take a non-Catholic (my husband) to go through it’s RCIA program after nearly 13 years of marriage and 20 years of togetherness (with moi), then that is pretty darn COOL!
This is a busy SPRING for us spiritually. EXCITING STUFF!
You will be in my prayers this weekend Margaret. When you get back and if you feel the Spirit moves you….could you maybe blog a little bit about the Spiritual Exercises? I’ve been interested for quite some time now and would love to hear a first hand experience.
First Communion and First Confession have a special place in my heart. I joined the church a few months after marrying my husband (11 yrs ago). It was one of the most rewarding nights of my life. I think it was even more special because my father-in-law was the wine distributer. Very Awesome.
I’ll be praying for your daughter!
thank you for being honest about your faith. I admire you for that. Way too many people are just so scared or really dont care I guess about their faith and you are telling the truth. Good for you. I have a conversion story very similar to yours. A confession knocked me back onto the path to God. How blessed we are and how we must pray and pray for those not yet on that path.
I will be keeping you in my prayers this weekend as you participate in Spiritual Exercises. My husband is going on his first retreat this weekend for the Exercises, and I will be going on my first retreat for them in March.
I would be interested in hearing your conversion story. I also lived an extremely sinful life before my conversion, and although I know that I have been forgiven, I still pay the price for some of those sins today.
Anyway, God bless you!
That last picture is absolutely precious!
Praying for you this weekend.
How fortunate you are! We are still so new to our area and parish hopping. I can’t wait until I find where we should be. The program sounds wonderful- thanks for sharing!
And I can’t wait to hear about the retreat. I am going to start researching one in my area because I really, really could use one. (Did I stress ‘really’??)
I’m bookmarking this for future use!
Stop by my blog and see your award!
Enjoy your time away from home and with God. I’ll remember you at Mass.
I wish we had a program like that in our parish! I had to work really hard to get my son his first Confession before his first Holy Communion, and they made me feel really silly for insisting on it. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get him in since – I realize that he doesn’t have a lot to confess at the moment, but the grace is still there – and if he does it regularly now he’ll be more likely to do it as an adult. He really wants to get in too – I’m hoping that Lent will offer a time when the “people in charge” will be more open to it. Of course, I can understand – we have to share our priest with two other parishes and he doesn’t have a lot of time – so time to hear confessions is almost nil. In fact, I’ve only had the chance to go once since he came to our parish about a year ago. It is frustrating…
I was just browsing the blog world when I came across your blog, and this post, and I gasped. I recognize that church! In fact my husband and I have been attending since we moved to the Twin Cities in August. What a small world! Wonderful blog by the way, I am really enjoying reading the posts. 🙂
I don’t have a chance to read the whole post, but I hope you have a wonderful retreat!
Margaret
Thank you so much for your post. I am about to prepare my fifth child for her sacraments this year. (Yes I have the privilege to do so myself)anyhow I HAVE that book!!! And I have never opened it!!Tell Jean thank you, I am going to use it this time, so her teaching has spread to Australia:)
Prayers for your retreat. {{}}
I used the 1st communion novena booklet for my 1st 2 years ago and now am looking for it for my #2 child. I have misplaced it. I understand it is from oremus but it is not on their website and I hear it is out of print. I would love to buy it or just copy it (or just find it!!)
I wrote a novena for use by the children in our parish leading to their first communion and found your post when I was doing a search for ideas for one on a different theme. Our theme was “As Flowers Wait the Sun” and involved flowers. I’m looking for some ideas for something a bit different. I’m glad you like that idea; my families did, too.