Masses Today

6.30: Bridget Maloney, (Anniv).
11.00: Teresa Tully (High St.), (Anniv)
6.30: Pascal Seery, (Anniv)

AS I WAS SAYING...

At Christmas, we focus a bit more closely on children and our responsibilities towards them. The most positive thing we did in St. Augustine's this year was to introduce the children's dimension to the Sunday liturgy at the 11.00 Mass. (The children of school-going age retire to the Priory -with their leaders- for their own Liturgy of the Word.) The success of this policy is supported by the rather dramatic increase in the number of young children involved. The success is mainly due to the sterling service of our dedicated band of leaders.

It is quite a demanding task to lead this children's liturgy every Sunday. (For one thing, it means that you must forego your own adult Liturgy of the Word). While the system needs some fine-tuning, it works extremely well. There are a few aspects of the celebration and organisation that we could look more closely at:
(a) More volunteer leaders, particularly more males;
(b) The return of the children to the main body of the celebration could be better done. For example, it would make more sense if we could enable them 'to show off' their work to the congregation on their return every Sunday. This need not take any more than two or three minutes. (Aren't we obsessed with time?);
(c) The kids could be integrated on a permanent basis into the Offertory Procession.

Again, having said all that, our present system actually works well. There are two very obvious advantages:
(1) the children are taken seriously, and are addressed at a level appropriate to their age. Each can, more or less, receive individual attention. It must be insufferably boring for them to 'sit out' the Liturgy of the Word and the homily in the main body of the church.
(2) the main congregation is spared the inevitable distractions that bored children create and are! But, in addition, the return of the children (together with the fruits of their labours, like the Jesse Tree symbols) makes an enormous contribution to the overall celebration. It's a different and more universal celebration because the children are present.

With all this in mind, I was very interested to read a letter from one Fiona Cullen-Skowronski in this week's English Catholic journal, The Tablet. She writes:

At the Sunday family Mass in my parish, the children remain in the church for such important feasts as Christmas and Easter. For the rest of the year, the celebrant invites them to go to the presbytery after the opening prayer for their own Liturgy of the Word. This leaves the priest free to give a sermon vigorously refuting Freud without boring the little children! Children's Liturgy of the Word is far from being a containment exercise. It is an opportunity for children to encounter God both in silence and in exuberant praise, a chance to act out the gospel and to relate it to their lives, and to affirm their creed loudly. (We rap the Creed in my parish!) The children's Liturgy of the Word is a safe place for children to discover the richness of the gospel and of prayer.

This, I believe, sums up precisely the direction we have taken here in St. Augustine's. We too should view it as a positive step towards full celebration, rather than a negative exercise in child-containment. There's an important distinction.

-Dick Lyng.

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