Through our children's eyes

By KAY WINCHESTER- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

I will never forget the "jingle, jingle, jingle" Mass.

It happened on the second Sunday of Advent, back when we still lived in Vermont. My son, James, was not quite three and a half years old.

The church where we attended Mass, Holy Family in Essex Junction, was not a huge building, but we always sat in the very first pew anyway, because that's where a pint-sized toddler could get the best, most unobstructed view of all the activity going on in the sanctuary.

Because James could see so much from his vantage point, I spent a good amount of time during Mass pointing things out to him. There were two reasons for this: On the one hand, as a Catholic school teacher, I saw this as an up-close-and-personal educational opportunity for his religious formation; on the other hand, as the parent of a preschooler, I was also hoping to keep the normal wiggles and squirms of a curious youngster under at least a modicum of control by keeping him interested in what was going on.

Most of the time, it worked. This particular Sunday, however, I was pointing things out as usual and, as we got closer to the consecration, I whispered to James to "listen for the bells. That means we're at a really special part." (We happened to have some very enthusiastic young altar server/bell ringers at the time. I knew they would not disappoint.)

As I had hoped, James got very quiet. He stared hard at the altar, every muscle in his little body tensed for the sound of those bells. The church was silent as Father Michael pronounced the words of consecration and elevated the host. The bells rang...and to my horror, my briefly-quiet toddler suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs, "JINGLE, JINGLE, JINGLE."

God love Father Michael. He never so much as batted an eyelash, although I think he did crack the tiniest of smiles. And when Mass was over, he made a special trip to our pew to see James.

"You really liked those bells, didn't you?" he chuckled. James nodded enthusiastically and said, more quietly this time, "Jingle, jingle, jingle."

It wasn't until I was buckling him into his carseat to go home that he announced, "When I grow up, I'm going to wear a purple dress [vestments] and ring the bells."

Well, my son did not go into the priesthood, but, by the fourth grade, he had become an altar server -- and, sure enough, at his first Mass, he was the one who rang the bells.

As Catholic parents, we promise at our children's baptism that we will bring them up in the faith of Christ. That is an awesome privilege and also an awesome responsibility -- one we can sometimes feel overwhelmed by. On those days, it's good to remember that if we take one step toward that goal, God takes a dozen. All we have to do is ring the bells, and encourage our children to ring them, too.

Jingle, jingle, jingle.

(Ms. Winchester is a parishioner of Holy Mother and Child parish in Corinth/Lake Luzerne and a writer for Vermont Catholic magazine.)[[In-content Ad]]