AFTER CANA

By Blake Sittler

Think back to the fond memories you have of your family going to church.

I remember waking up Sunday morning and walking quietly around the house, hoping not to wake my parents. That way, I figured, if they slept in until 8:45 a.m. we would never make it to 9:00 mass in Landis.

Of course, we always made it.

When we got there our parents would bookend us to keep us four boys in line. During the sign of peace, we would all shake hands as a family. When we brothers shook, we would squeeze each others’ paws until there was no peace left to be exchanged.

My main positive experience of church was altar serving. I felt important going into the special room to put on the robes and cross. I liked being able to move freely about the church when everyone else was glued to their pew. Even as a child, when I served altar, I felt like a participant rather than a recipient.

Nearly 20 years later, I was a young dad bringing our youngest children to church. What stands out in my mind from those times are the feelings of stress and frustration of trying to get out the door. I remember the embarrassment of the kids crying in church or running around, nearly tipping over candles or knocking over statues.

I experience again the heat rising in my forehead when one of my kids whined for the 10th time in less than 59 minutes, “When is it going to be over? Can we go now?” As my daughter Elizabeth said to me during one of our conversations about mass, “Don’t get me wrong, dad, I don’t hate God. I just hate church.”

In a perverse way, one of the most faith-sucking experiences of our marriage has been taking our kids to church.

The importance of practising our faith in the context of a broader community is a value to us but celebrating mass in a full, active and conscious manner has not always been a faith-nurturing experience.
I recognize that mass is a discipline but disciplines can be forced upon us or we can take them on voluntarily through an interior decision.

Young parents are raising their families in an environment and context vastly different from that of their parents and grandparents. From the early years of the fourth century when Constantine made Christianity the state religion right up until at least the 1970s, if you were Christian, you went to church on Sundays. You went because of social pressure. You went because of fear of punishment. You went because you needed the protection of the landowner for whom you worked. You went because there was no other viable, socially acceptable alternative.

Indeed, many altruistically went because of their deep and abiding faith in loving God — a God who they believed would punish them if they didn’t go — but a loving God nonetheless.

Christian families now have a choice as to whether they go to church or not. I am not saying the choices are equally valid, but the existential concept of a non-practising Christian now exists. We can bemoan this fact or we can respond to it.

When my kids grow up, I don’t want them to just go church. I want them to want to go. I desire to plant in them that mustard seed of faith that recognizes that we find God in many places but especially in community.

The Sunday parish is a family of families. Some of those families are traditional with a mom and dad with kids, but what is most spectacular about the Body of Christ gathered on Sunday is that there are many who are not. There are single people, divorced people, widows, couples in second marriages, families with adopted or foster children. There are homosexuals and common laws.

There are couples who sit in pews holding hands and smiling through the readings. There are couples who sit far apart either because of a fight they had before church or because of a rift that will lead them to separate in the next few months. I want my children to see that the kingdom of pilgrims proclaim together “that I have sinned through my own fault” and who pray that Jesus “only say the word and I shall be healed.”

My children are now heavily involved in our parish. This past Sunday, my six-year-old, Reuben, came back from children’s liturgy that was being led by my 12-year-old, Gabriel. As I picked up Reuben, and he set his head on my shoulder, I looked over to see my 10-year-old, Elizabeth, smile and wink at me from her seat with the other altar servers.

It has taken us a few years to find this equilibrium in the practice of our family faith. I hope that my children’s minds will fill with warm memories of this form of prayerful gathering; enough warm memories to get them through any difficult times they may face as they take their children to church.

Sittler works for the Saskatoon diocese in the office of Ministry Development and sits on the Diocesan Marriage Task Force. He and his wife Brooke have three children. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at aftercana@sasktel.net