Your 24/7 sacrament

Most of us try to hit Mass every Sunday and reconciliation a couple times a year. The grace of baptism and confirmation is always with us, but not always top-of-mind. While some sacraments dance on the periphery of our lives, marriage is our in-your-face sacrament, our 24-hours-a-day sacrament.

Marriage is the only sacrament not conferred by a priest, deacon, or bishop. Rather, the husband and wife confer the sacrament on each other. There’s something both holy and practical about this. After all, 10 years into marriage as you argue in the kitchen about whose turn it is to drive across town to ballet class, there will be no priest in the kitchen to settle the dispute.

Choose life

I start every grocery list by scribbling: Milk. Bread. Eggs (cage free only, says the vegetarian daughter). Life.

That last item? I bought six boxes of it last week, on sale. Though the boxes have gotten smaller lately, a bit worrisome, six of them still ought to carry us through a few weeks.

“I came,” says Jesus, “that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.”

Life, the cereal, has exercised a magnetic hold on my daughter for more than a decade now. Her dogged loyalty alone should qualify her to star in a commercial. Nothing—not even hot oatmeal—can lure her away for long.

Looking down at one’s list in the grocery aisle each week to see “Life” scrawled there has a definite salutary effect. As I scour food labels for lurking sodium content, for the iniquitous Trans Fat and his nearly-as-nefarious henchman Saturated Fat, Life reminds me that none of this food-policing will extend my life indefinitely. Saints Francis and Jerome were sometimes portrayed holding a skull to point out the nearness of death, but as for me, I’m going out to buy Life in the grocery store.

When parents get a “do-over”

When I was in grade school, playing kickball at recess, every so often a player would yell “do-over!” after messing up, and get to try the kick again. You would yell this only in specific instances, such as if you stumbled on your approach and the resulting kick was extremely weak.

Yelling “do-over” for a strong kick that had been caught for an out was quickly dismissed as unworthy. Do-overs were for mistakes and missteps that were uncharacteristic of the kicker’s normal ability.

My husband and I just took a parenting do-over.

Calling all feet

I won’t forget the first time the whole churchful of us washed one another’s feet at Our Lady of Mercy Church on Holy Thursday. Some sat cemented to the pews, determined that no one have a chance to snicker at their bunions, their ugly toenails. Others took off shoes and socks and walked haltingly, bare toes on marble, up the aisles, to where someone washed their feet and they, in turn, washed the feet of the person behind them. The choir began to sing.

A white-haired man knelt and took my 7-year-old daughter’s foot in his huge hands. Singing to her all the while, he poured water over her foot and tenderly dried it. “En la arena he dejado mi barca,” he sang, looking her in the eye, smiling, “junto a Ti buscaré otro mar.” (“All I longed for, I have found by the water. At your side, I will seek other shores.”) I pondered stealing the foot towel to dry my tears.

Try for a Lenten moment

If you’re feeling discouraged because your effort to give up chocolate was thwarted by the coworker who brought the birthday cake to work, don’t lose heart. Lent is not a pass/fail class. Rather, it is a journey of becoming closer to God through prayer, sacrifice, and generosity. Seeing Lent only as a 40-day block can prevent us from taking advantage of Lenten moments—opportunities that arise each day for us to deepen our relationship with God. Here are a few:

• Prayer. Between now and Easter, look for five minutes alone with your spouse. Face each other, hold hands, and ask your spouse what he or she is most worried about. Then together pray an Our Father, slowly, for that worry. Then do the same for your worry, followed by a prayer of gratitude from each of you.

• Generosity. Almsgiving is the traditional way to be generous during Lent, but generosity can be practiced in small moments throughout the day—flowers for a teacher, a plate of cookies for an elderly neighbor, a thank-you note to a priest who inspired you with a recent homily.

• Sacrifice. The strong among us are able to sustain a 40-day fast from sweets, chips, or alcohol during Lent, but the rest of us need to start small with our sacrifice. Try a focused, one- to three-day fast from something you truly enjoy, but for a purpose. Give up your afternoon Diet Coke for three days straight and pray for your oldest child. Skip sweets for a day and make a point to learn more about those areas of the world affected by hunger.

—by Annemarie Scobey, from the pages of At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home. Winner of the 2012 Best in Class award from the Associated Church Press, as well as a First Place General Excellence award from the Catholic Press Association for the past three years running. Here’s a sample issue.

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No stereotypes need apply

The kids in the Catholic seventh grade classroom—Hispanics, Filipinos, African Americans, and my own Irish American offspring—took on a project to highlight three aspects of their cultural heritage. As the teacher listened to the kids brainstorming, he turned to my child and said, “Three cultural traits of the Irish? That’s easy: drinking, drinking, and more drinking.”

The next day we met with the principal, who turned pale as she listened. The teacher apologized to my husband and me. There were no fisticuffs.

Because we had known our kids would encounter this stereotype, years earlier my husband and I had planned and executed a preemptive strike. We cast about for a way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day that leaned on the faith, stories, and music of Ireland rather than on the “Irish as carefree alcoholic” caricature—especially offensive because of the destruction and grief that real alcoholism cuts through many Irish families, including ours.

We decided to host a party for our extended family and some friends, asking everyone to bring a song, a poem, a story, a dance from their own culture or another’s. We laid out the good tablecloth, said grace, served dinner. Then we dragged chairs into the living room, and waited.

Pope Benedict XVI: Keeping an eye on the kids

It tickled me that Pope Benedict’s resignation brought the 85-year-old pontiff onto the radar screen of even teenage girls.

Text from daughter: I heard that the pope resigned!!!

Text back from mom: I heard that. I wonder if he is the first to resign?

Text back from daughter: Clare says the first in 600 years!!

The pope does not normally loom large in the lives of adolescents (nor, perhaps, their parents, unless we make an effort to read about him). But Benedict XVI, octogenarian scholar that he was, often spoke movingly of the challenges facing our children and young people today. He understood their spiritual hunger.