Continued from last week...

The outcome in a third generation...

Having dealt with the first sign of my girl's spiritual questioning, I moved on. I pulled rank and she and her brother kept coming to Mass with me.

Her sacramental preparation was the next big cultural change. First Communion preparation was a big shock. I was given a booklet and a lot of encouragement from Sister, and told to go for it. I found it difficult. My own first communion had been a wonderful experience, but full of adult concepts that we'd had drummed into us. I couldn't find language now that worked for a seven-year old and I felt that the old language wouldn't do. Being state school kids, both of mine made their first communions separate to the St J's mob. They were very beautiful, personal ceremonies with just a couple of kids. Then we went home for a barbie. How very different from the formal ritual then magnificent first communion breakfast the nuns had put on for us in the parish hall.

Then came Confirmation. I took Madam with me to the presbytery on the Saturday the bishop was due. I had some typing to do and she just mooched around the place. When it was time to go, I went looking for her and she was in the garage. A man was there, casually dressed, sitting on an old carton, and they were chatting. He had her full attention. She told me later how he'd asked her name, and they had discussed the next day's ceremony. She'd told him she was doing a reading. She'd been pressured a bit, I suppose, because she was the state school kid! Apparently he'd made her a promise: "Let's do a deal. I'll pray a Hail Mary for you when you read, if you promise to pray one for me when I give my homily". Then this gentle man gave her a beaming smile and moved inside. He couldn't have known how shy and nervous she was about reading; he was just a naturally encouraging man.

On the day the bishop had visited my own class before confirmation, the sisters had been in a terrible tizz. We kids were excited but apprehensive. When the great man arrived at the classroom door, Sister swept down on knee and kissed the outstretched ring. She ushered him and his entourage in as we all stood to attention. We had been warned about being on our best behaviour. I was terrified in case he asked me a question.

I remembered all this in the garage that day, and I rejoiced at how a bishop had taken the trouble to stop and engage a little girl mooching around in the shadows, when he could have headed straight for the morning tea table in the parlour. How times had changed.

I don't think I'll go to Mass today...

Indeed they had. On the Sunday after confirmation Madam found me in the bathroom putting my make-up on. "Mum, now that I'm confirmed, I'm an adult in the Church. I don't think I'll go to Mass today". Round Two! I said, "fine", and kept on with the mascara.

Ten minutes later His Nibs came in from the garden. "*** tells me she's not going to Mass". "Yep". "Well what are you going to do about it?" "Nothing".

After a long silence, the flat-footed one retreated with his secateurs. Great moment in sport! And of course next Sunday Madam just got dressed for Mass as usual. Nothing more was said. Honestly, we might think we live our faith, but sometimes our faith 'lives' us. That was one of those times. My reaction was completely out of character for histrionic ole me!

Again we'd done the confirmation prep as a "family" — well a single-parent one — with another child and her mum. The kids, from two different state schools, became firm friends and still are to this day. They drew strength from each other when they fronted up to the Catholic high school where they knew nobody else. Both mums had brought pressure to bear at home and were rejoicing at moving into the Catholic system.

For the next six glorious years I watched my girl, and also my son, mature into wonderful young adults in that very Christian environment. Madam formed strong and lasting bonds with a fabulous group of girls. What struck me was the love, the loyalty and the integrity of these kids and their teachers. The kids were still going to Mass with there families. Big deal — so had I in high school. But it was the values they held, the way they related to each other and the world, that was so very different from my own high school days. The retreats they attended were a great confident boost to this Mum who still couldn't really speak of her personal faith to her kids. At least I knew someone was, if not me!

In late high school I had a chance to revel in this when the PP out of the blue asked my husband if we would be the Antioch adult couple. Every Sunday night for two years we'd be invaded by noisy, hormonal, guitar toting teenagers who taught me a thing or two about praying their way through all that teenage angst and idealism. I have my reservations about Antioch, but I take to heart something one of the other adults involved spoke of: the time-bomb effect. The level of personal sharing, reflecting on Christ and his message, and concern for each other just has to leave something embedded in these kids. In God's own time, the time-bomb will detonate. A simplistic take but one that I'll throw my lot in with.

Round Three and I lost...

Around the age of nineteen, we had Round Three and I lost. Madam was at uni, going out at night with her St X's gang and had a steady boyfriend. Mass was no longer on the agenda. I wasn't asked — I was told. In one generation, the tables had turned. That's how it was in society, too. Authority was a big stick that had lost its sting. It was time for Mum to bow out.

At least she was being her own person. Looking back, I was absolutely not doing that at her age. I had this self-image of myself as a "devout Catholic" and it fell apart almost instantly after I married. I felt what I now had on my hands were two young people whose lives were well and truly in the Lord's hands. No ecclesial walls were enclosing them. No fear, no sense of hell if they missed Mass when got hit by a bus on Monday. The question of religion and obeying had become a question of faith and personal integrity.

Madam married a non-Catholic bloke. His family and ours are very much of one heart and mind. His mum is a practising Protestant, a gracious and loving lady. We love them dearly. We celebrated a wonderful nuptial Mass with no sign of sectarianism anywhere. The two mums enjoy a joke about our different faiths; sometimes she asks me for a few Catholic prayers for a special intention, and vice versa. On her wall is a framed photo of the bride and groom sitting near the altar, holding hands and engrossed in what the priest was saying, with the stained glass Eucharist window behind them. Heaven on earth!

Our own married children have two children and a third on the way. I find this marriage the most wonderful Christian witness. No, there's no Mass-going but these two adults have a way of respecting each other, listening and deferring, that I hadn't seen in the previous two generations. There is a commitment to instilling marvellous values in the girls. My parents, and His Nibs and I also did that. But I don't think we managed to personally live it out like this pair have.

My girl is a fully-gospelled person. It's a different approach to life than my devout Catholic version. Madam hasn't ever known sin as we knew it to be in our younger days. I'm very glad of that! But I can tell by how she lives her life as a wife and mother and friend, that she knows love as Jesus describes it: no greater love than to lay down her life for another.

It's not a will about discipline or ritual, but about love — real self-sacrificing love!

Maybe I can explain it through the scriptures, where Jesus says "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven ... everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man, who built his house on rock". My kids have built their houses on rock, and they live the Father's will. It's not a will about discipline or ritual, but about love — real self-sacrificing love. I'm sorry for the Churchyspeak, but there is no better way to say it.

Unlike the two generations before them, self interest, victimhood, guilt complexes and preoccupation with externals do not prevail with my kids. I've often been embarrassed when one or other has pulled me up for being bitchy or judgemental about someone. They just don't do those things. It is glaringly noticeable. I am so proud of the loving way my girl and her husband serve each other and their little girls. And I am gobsmacked at the way my son has negotiated his marriage breakdown with a determination that there be no nastiness at all towards the woman who walked out on him. I can't believe his capacity for forgiveness and respect for both their personal dignities.

Madam continued to come to Mass with me at Christmas until the girls were born and it all got too hard. But this year, I've talked her into coming with the girls — on Saturday night, to avoid the bedlam of Christmas Eve with the little ones. Best I can do. I suspect too that Mum and Dad are secretly glad when I take the little one to Mass from time to time, so long as I don't expect them to join me! Interestingly Dad often wants to have a heart-to-heart with me about faith, the Pope, the latest happenings in the Church. He was very keen to send the first girl to a catholic primary school. I took that as a touching tribute to Madam and her fantastic friends who live exemplary lives devoted to their families and friends in a quiet no-fuss way.

A "resurrection" person...

My girl's life is hectic but she has a marvellous sense of balance. To use Church speak, she is a resurrection person. She's uncomplaining and optimistic. One of her favourite sayings is, "Oh well, that's life" as she heads off to work after yet another sleepless night.

She holds family meals as quite sacred. Even morning and afternoon teas are round-table gatherings, being present to each other. That's getting counter-cultural these days. It is she who insists that our family preserve the rituals that bond us; the putting up of Christmas trees, the advent calendar, the get-togethers for birthdays and family celebrations. She is the most motivated of us all. No, she and her girls are not at Eucharist on Sundays, but if that time ever comes again the symbols from which it draws its mystery are being embedded in the little girls' lives.

Maybe in God's good time families like this will recognise the value of Sunday Mass. I note with a grin how often Daddy attends the school's liturgies. It was Daddy who supervised the Caritas moneybox during Lent. Thank the Lord for that Catholic school, where the name of Jesus flows freely. But I am also prepared for the fact that they may never see Mass as relevant. I try to respond to a Church that encourages us to go out into the world as people of Mission, to live what we proclaim — to walk the walk. I try. My girl walks the walk — far better than I do — but isn't open to the language or the rituals that bind us. I have no answers as to why.

Institutionalised religion might have lost its hold on my children but the gospel hasn't...

I have a theory though. Institutionalised religion might have lost its hold on my children but the gospel hasn't. Massive family, religious and secular changes across three generations have impacted on them and everything is different now. We might be witnessing the disintegration of the institutional Church, but not the Real Church. Jesus told the people he entrusted the gospel to that he would be with them always. I see him in the lives of my children and others like them who live the way of the Gospel so much better than my parents' generation — or mine. And they don't even know they're doing it, it's so deeply embedded.

It gives me pause that they're not showing any interest in the person of Jesus Christ. But I'm not panicking. God hasn't left town. "I will write my law upon their hearts. They will be my people and I will be their God". Christ will find new ways to speak to these faithful ones, and through them. It might be a language without words or ritual for quite a while. Maybe even until another generation emerges, one with the benefits of growing up in a family of gospel-based faith rather than doctrine-based learning.

I hope Eucharist will reappear for all our young ones as something worth celebrating: The source and summit of their lives, something lived as well as idealised. I hope one day there will again be a strong and robust Church, but one where whole families live the Word Incarnate in the world, in fact and not just words. That will be a major change from the two generations I have explored in my articles. And the world will be a better place for it. If you want proof, go visit my kids.

Mixed blessings indeed!

NAVIGATION: Part I | Part II

Email this article to a friend	Post your feedback in our forum

Photo Credit: Main title and quotation image from stock.xchng. Photographer: Benjamin Earwicker, Boise, Idaho, United States

What are your thoughts on Wendy's reflection?
You can contribute to the discussion in our forum.

Wendy can be contacted at: wendy@catholica.com.au

©2006 Catholica Australia

[Member Contribution's Archive]