Grace Was, Is Now, and Ever Shall Be

by Dan Masterton

Last week, my wife and I celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. We, of course, wanted to step out on our own to celebrate and enjoy an evening together.

Now, we are blessed that our parents are able and willing to babysit often. I stay at home with the kids six out of seven days most weeks, but during my one day on-site for my part-time job, my dad and Katherine’s mom take turns covering the kids for the day.

Additionally, a grandparent sometimes will come take a girl to tumbling or dance class, take the kids out to a lunch, or make a playdate so we can run errands, take an appointment, or even maybe sneak a quick date. These chunks of aid are eminently helpful. However, my dad is 45 minutes away, and her mom lives out of state and comes up to her second home here part-time only.

So, one of my summer bucket list items was to find a non-grandparent babysitter locally, so that we’d have another avenue for covering the kids and getting out on our own once in a while. I turned to our excellent park district, whose employees are always so well trained and great with our kids. I looked particularly to our great swim school, where the young people are awesome with the kids, are trained lifeguards (so certified in CPR), and already have my kids for lessons. We worked it out with one of our favorite teachers to come over and do a little one-hour trial run and then hired her on for our anniversary night.

Thanks for reading A Restless Heart! Tune in next week to see if I can resist the urge to write about my kids! Odds are usually not great.

Our seven-year-old, Lucy, was excited for a new play-friend, and she understands how it’s just for a few hours and helps mom and dad a lot by letting us step out. Our clingier four-year-old, Cecilia, thought the babysitter would come but that mom and dad would stay home, too — alright, bonus play-friends! We talked her down a bit to straighten her out, and when the babysitter arrived, she had claimed her new friend for a game of checkers before our babysitter could even take off her sandals.

We made sure everyone was set and comfortable and scooted off to our cooking class and dinner. Honestly, we barely thought twice about the kids’ happiness or safety while we were away. We didn’t feel the need to check in, and we only got one text, after big girl bedtime: “Little update: everything is great!”

We came home at the appointed time with all three girls asleep and a smiling babysitter ready to head home. It was a piece of cake all around. The next day, they shared a bit about the fun and games they had while we were gone, and it sounded like a smooth, happy night.

Then, a few days after the fact, while we were driving to my seven-year-old’s ice skating lesson, Lucy blurted a story, as she often does: “Daddy, when we said our nighttime prayer, Miss *** said that when she got oil on her forehead she picked Saint Lucy. And her sister picked Saint Cecilia.”

Wait, did we accidentally hire a Christian, maybe even Catholic, baby sitter?! Honestly, I wasn’t thinking at all of what religion these young people might be; I just wanted a kind, warm, trained babysitter. But, hey, I’ll take it! Cool. Also, you gotta love a seven-year-old’s summary of Confirmation (or maybe her parroting of a teen’s simplified explanation of the Sacrament for a little one).

But wait, wait — did the kids make sure they said their bedtime prayer even when mom and dad weren’t home?! Whoa, alright! Way to go, kids! It wasn’t hard to imagine my scrupulous, self-aware, rule-following Lucy telling her babysitter that we say a bedtime prayer. It also wasn’t hard to imagine my bulldozer, brutish, hyperactively itinerant Cecilia telling the babysitter that she gets to say the bedtime prayer — Ceci often cuts Katherine and me off as we try to begin with the Sign of the Cross, and then Ceci proclaims the prayer with excessive volume and speed.

So, our bedtime prayer is simple — a basic formula my late mom made up for my brothers and me that I repurposed for our family: God bless mom, dad, Lucy, Ceci, and Brigid, all our grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, cousins, and all our friends. Thank you, God. Amen.

My tack-on is that I’ve long loved intercessory prayer, strengthened especially by the way the Notre Dame Folk Choir (which Katherine and I met as members of) would end every rehearsal with communal prayer and the invocation of Sts. Cecilia and Brigid(!). So at the end of our prayer, we have all our kids invoke all their patrons: St. Lucy, St. Cecilia, and St. Brigid, pray for us!

This is a little graphic I made to frame and keep at gramma’s house for the kids. It needs… updating.

I’d say we are fairly low-key and casual about our household faith. When I was a kid, my parents took us to Mass every week, sent us to Catholic school, and tried to set a steady, understated example of faith. That approach made a big impact on me, and it informs how I try to raise my kids in the faith. Our main habits are Sunday Mass, little chats in the car, prayer before meals, and bedtime prayer. And even without a reminder from me, even without a note on the babysitter’s agenda, the kids said their bedtime prayers on their own. Huzzah!

Sometimes, as Cecilia clumsily and proudly invokes the great women after whom we named these girls, I imagine these three saints in heaven jogging to meet each other. Perhaps there’s some usual meeting spot where they enjoy hearing earthly pleas for intercession. Maybe Lucy and Brigid are already waiting there and Cecilia is rushing to catch up. But they meet each other, embrace, and gently receive these loving pleas from the little mouths of my kiddos and our family. And it consoles me to invoke such women over and over again over the lives of my kiddos. And especially to imagine their mixed, sarcastic, good-humored reactions to our humble pleading.

And even more, I don’t think praying is like making wishes on a genie lamp; I don’t necessarily think prayer achieves things that prayerlessness fails to accomplish (I don’t think prayer saves houses from tornadoes while others are wrecked, and I don’t think prayer cures some cancers while others are stricken). I believe prayer is a self-opening to help you become more self-aware of God’s abiding presence, God’s ever-flowing love, and of God’s moving grace and Spirit which catalyze love as it moves in us and between us. I think prayers of intercession are the turning of our hearts toward models of faith — people who went before us who are so connected with God that their dwelling with God forever brings us to these realities of God with a different richness and directness.

I don’t think our night away and the kids’ and babysitter’s night in would’ve been disastrous without prayer. But I do think they were joyful and peaceful with prayer. I believe that such a small, simple, pure moment is part of an arc of grace. It can be tempting to think of grace and miracles as being wild, extraordinary, untold, epic events; I think more often of grace as the lattice grid that holds up the newly built and paved road, the wooden framework on to which drywall and siding are added in home construction.

And I don’t think of grace as something that is the response that only comes after some later stimulus. I think grace was somehow moving as we looked for and paired with a babysitter, as she first came over and played with my girls, and as we all enjoyed this night in two different places. I think this little moment of prayer is just as much as a root of grace as it is a destination. And I believe the sense and awareness of this trajectory of grace, of this movement and God and God’s love, is the power of prayer.

On Innocent Eucharistic Bystanders

by Dan Masterton

You know those stories and memes about families boarding a plane with a baby or a toddler and giveaways for nearby folks? For those who haven’t traveled with a little one in their charge, it can push even the least humiliate-able among us toward the edge.

Outstanding religious reporter and new dad Jack Jenkins pays witness to the phenomenon in this Thread.

In these stories, the parents will distribute little goody bags to those seated around them. It might include some snacks or treats, maybe a pair of ear plugs, and note from the family, or even “from the kid,” with a tongue-in-cheek apology and thank you. It’s their way of trying to preempt the frustration or anger of these innocent bystanders to the calamity that may unfold as the tiny human embarks on this flight.

The very-online-discourse that follows these sometimes viral stories would oscillate wildly, as such discourse is wont to do.

Thanks for reading A Restless Heart! Sometimes, my posts aren’t about parenting and children - right? At least a little of the time? Yeah I’m a Catholic dad. It comes out a bit from time to time.

The support would come: families need to travel, too, and it’s nice to think of others who didn’t choose to travel with little kids; it’s a conversation starter and small gift that can help smooth out or prevent conflicts before people get salty.

Then the criticisms would fly, too, from these others: I didn’t choose to fly with kids, and this fun-sized candy bar doesn’t change my annoyance at being near them; don’t try to apologize or butter me up because you know your kid is going to raise hell; figure out a way to keep your kid quiet, or maybe take a car or train next time.

Then there’d even be the meta-discourse: don’t apologize for your kids, just bring them and people can deal! As if confronting simmering problems that both sides are likely keenly aware of can never be a good thing… (Though I admit this put-my-head-down-and-parent and cross my fingers that others are chill is mostly my strategy with my kids on planes.)

While good conversations need to cover lots of ground and various angles, these little comment-section debates can lose the thread. That thread, I’d say, is that families and children need to travel by plane sometimes, and we all need to find our ways to accept and work with this as we travel, whether as parents of small children trying to optimize the transaction or co-passengers finding an understanding of it.

And that’s kind of how I feel about kids at Mass sometimes.

I hear and read stories about people’s awful experiences being scolded at Mass for their kids’ irreverence — criticisms of kids who can’t sit still, can’t stay quiet, or can’t focus on the readings or the Eucharistic prayer. I hear and read stories of some communities’ exceptional hospitality — pews with cards that welcome families and offer directions to nursing rooms, bathrooms, and quiet areas; hospitality ministers who offer special worship aids or assist with choosing ideal seating; Eucharistic Ministers who pastorally meet and bless pre-first-communicant children during communion.

As these stories of derision and affirmation swirl, I hope those who struggle to find comfort around kids at Mass as well as those who proudly bring their kids and/or embrace the proximity of others’ kids don’t lose the thread. That thread, I’d say, is that families and children need to be at Mass, and we all need to find our ways to embrace this as we pray at Mass, whether as parents of small children or simply as fellow Christians.

Kids need to be at Mass, and kids should be at Mass. Except for contagious illness, parents should never think twice about bringing their kids to Mass, especially not by discouragement from others’ real, supposed, or perceived annoyance! (I suppose we can debate the merits of “cry rooms” another time — it won’t shock you to learn I’m not a fan!), but even cry rooms are at Mass.)

This past Sunday, I was at Mass with all three of my kids and my dad, who wanted to join us while my wife was out of town. The two big girls were very into their trusty kids’ worship aids, but they were very high-need — questions about the activities’ directions, ostentatious desires to share their progress, confusions about getting wrong answers, and more, all while we grown-ups were doing Catholic calisthenics and juggling a nap-vetoing-six-month-old.

The church at our parish, St. Elizabeth Seton, in Naperville, IL.

We were in the second-to-last-row, about where we usually are in our church, and a middle-aged couple was right behind us. Though I never made eye contact or heard them say anything, my mind auto-completed some supposed thoughts of theirs as our activity swirled and our gazes rarely pointed toward the sanctuary. As they knelt down behind us and their arms leaned onto the top of our pew in prayer, I even loaded up my hypothetical reply to their supposed frustration that maybe you shouldn’t sit in the back row if you want to really focus.

In reality, all I received was patient smiles.

As I gave up trying to soothe my baby and handed her to grandpa for waking time, I tried to signal to him to unwrap her swaddle. He didn’t notice, so I signaled my oldest daughter to signal him. She didn’t notice either. So the man behind us tapped my dad on his shoulder for me and pointed him my way, without my even begging for the help.

When we reached the Sign of Peace and I finished crawling over church bags and kneelers and spilled crayons to greet each family member, I next turned around to these neighbors. As he shook my hand, the man said as his Sign of Peace, “You’re doing a great job.” Then as she shook my hand, the woman just said, “Peace, Dad.”

I just laughed at myself and my crooked operating system. In their Christian charity, they made my morning.

And in their simple gesture, they modeled what we can do for one another — all of us for every neighbor, but particularly innocent Eucharistic bystanders to parents and families and little kids at Mass. Abide in the communion together. Pay witness to the mess and joy and turmoil and laughter. And, when it’s not intrusive or presumptuous, offer the little bit of help that we might need and may not think to ask for.

I don’t necessarily want you to reach in and attempt physical touch as a means of calming my riled child down. I do want you to hand me the crayon my 4-year-old inadvertently rolled under your pew.

I don’t necessarily want you to advise me on how best to manage their energy. I do want you to smile, wave, and laugh as the kids catch your eye, or even affirm my kids (or my wife and me) if you have it in you.

I don’t necessarily want a long lesson on parenting. I do want to hear your stories of your spouse or partner, your kids, your days busting it to Mass, and how you can identify with the commitment we’re making to being here together as a family.

A friend joked, “A church that isn’t crying is a church that might be dying.” I think that might be true demographically.

I’d say instead, or even more so, any local faith community where its members are not in sync in their communal worship or their community life — especially in the ways that help everyone feel welcome as they are to strive to pray together — is fractured and disjunctive. A church that isn’t journeying together may be drifting apart.

When you see families and kids at Mass, whether it’s smooth sailing or a struggle, whether it’s quiet calm or cacophony, don’t be afraid to affirm, encourage, or compliment them — if for nothing else, than for their witness in showing up and being there together. I can attest that each positive comment can go a long way.

Collecting Another Martyr

by Dan Masterton

What Catholic doesn’t love a good saint? As for me, I’ve long been drawn to the martyrs.

The word martyr comes from old words meaning “witness,” as in the idea of seeing or knowing something and attesting to it by your actions and words. 

The canonized-saint-martyrs, or “red martyrs,” gave witness to our faith to the point of death. I think while the magnitude of a martyr’s death and the magnitude of such faith is something worthy of contemplation — and the book and movie Silence are one of the best ways to enter this reflection — most of us who live privileged lives because of our race, our country of origin or residence, our stability, and other reasons, too, will likely not find ourselves in any situation near probable martyrdom. 

Other martyrs — sometimes called “white martyrs” — give witness to the faith in a steadfast way that may cause them to experience resistance, rejection, ostracization, or other forms of hardship.

I think the spiritual life of those of us in such privileged positions as to be able practice our faith freely and stably are called to consider how we can then use our privilege to practice this faith boldly, confidently, and attractively. Especially for Catholics, who rarely feel called to street-corner preaching or overt acts of proselytizing, our stronger evangelization comes from lives lived with great charity and service, that are ripe with strong relationships with self, others, and God.

I believe the examples of the saints — from those who lived full lives to death from natural causes all the way to those cut down by the perpetrators of persecutions — offer an accessible and helpful way to consider how to live this out. I feel drawn to the martyrs because I find their challenging circumstances, rather than shaking them down to shells of themselves, embolden them to profound apostolic creativity and inspiring resilience. And that’s what I want to grow into in my heart of faith.

My personal favorites?

St. Maximilian Kolbe is the Marian messenger of Auschwitz whose persistent fidelity led to humble Masses within the concentration camp walls, offering himself up for others’ chores and work, and ultimately volunteering himself as a victim for a punitive execution by the guards — and his prayerful vision showed him the awaiting dual crowns of red martyrdom and white martyrdom, an interesting combination that earned him the distinction of being a “martyr of charity.”

St. Óscar Romero is the justice-seeking advocate of the Salvdordan campesinos in the country’s civil war, who wrestled with being a permissive leader for an entitled Church and ultimately chose instead to call out injustices, challenge oppressive and violent rulers, and stand with the persecuted and faithful poor of his country to the point of being assassinated by these threatened leaders.

And now this past weekend, I had the chance to meet a new hero. While in Oklahoma City, celebrating the ordination to the priesthood of my wife’s cousin, we joined him at the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother, where he celebrated his second Mass (after his first at his home parish) as a votive Mass to Bl. Stanley in the chapel where the altar is built on Bl. Stanley’s tomb.

Bl. Stanley is a modern martyr. He was a diocesan priest of Oklahoma City who wished to serve in a diocesan mission Guatemala in the mid-late 20th century. After war broke out and he persisted in ministering in to the indigenous people in their village with charity and love, he became a marked man and was recalled home to the US. He insisted on returning, famously declaring that “the shepherd cannot run.” Shortly after his return to his community there, Bl. Stanley’s home was attacked, and he was killed. The local community in Guatemala asked that his heart remain there, so his heart was interred with them while his remains were buried in Oklahoma, now within the shrine built in his name.

As we joined in the votive Mass, I was taken by the beautiful mural painted above the altar in this chapel. There, Bl. Stanley and Christ reach out for each other in their heavenly bond. Gathered around the two is a beautiful chorus of diverse martyrs, celebrating the deep and wide reach of Christ to the hearts of people all across the world in all times.

After Mass, I sat down up front to bask in the witness of these men and women. There I picked out Maximilian and Oscar, mixed in with others — I thought I spotted St. Peter, perhaps Blessed Miguel Pro, and St. Joan of Arc. If you look closely who do you see?

 

The Martyrs Mural in the chapel of Bl. Stanley Rother Shrine

I could stare at these communions of saints all day, spiritually orbiting around the witness of each heart and relishing the strength of their gathered witness as it speaks to mine. It calls to my mind the luminous high altar built around the pilgrim’s statue of St. James at the cathedral in Santiago, Spain, the church at the end of the Camino pilgrimage routes; it invokes the compilation of tapestries in the Cathedral of the Holy Angels in Los Angeles that mixes canonized saints with ordinary, unnamed people, all go whom face the altar; it also awakens in me the starkly cold yet inspiringly warm sense I had in two visits to St. Maximilian’s death cell in Auschwitz.

The contemplation of such witness can ground our faith today, point us toward the faith we must strive to live tomorrow, and remind us of the great faith that is possible. It’s a faith that’s been modeled by these profound witnesses, these sisters and brothers who go before us.