Saturday, May 12, 2018

Seventh Sunday of Easter - May 13, 2018

I have frequently made a request of parents to bring their children to church, and I ask them not to feel the need to take them out when they cry. I must also recognize that some people do find crying to be distracting. I try to remind them that the noise of a crying baby is a sign of God’s gift of new life.

I suppose I don’t mind parents taking their children to the cry room, but it should be a place to quiet a child down. Once the children are quiet, I would hope that the parents would bring them back into the nave, the body of the church. Many times, however, our cry rooms are used for other purposes. I learned shortly after I got here that families with children had a hard time using the cry rooms because there were other people in them. The reason, I was told, was that it was difficult for people to hear in church. That explanation made sense since I knew that our sound system was not up to standard. Now, however, our new sound system has made it possible for people to hear in church. For anyone who has been going into the cry room in order to hear, I would like to offer an invitation to come out and try joining the rest of us in church.

Having people in the cry room is not the most important issue that we face, but there is a point to all of this. The liturgy is the work of the Church gathered together as a family. The unity that is part of such a gathering is best expressed when we are all together. If we go into separate places, it is harder to consider ourselves part of the larger community. Certainly there are times when practical needs require a certain separation. I have seen that happen in some places when there are larger crowds than the church can hold. In such instances, closed circuit television screens have been set up in a separate place so that overflow crowds can still take part. Something like that, of course, has happened with the Penguins in the playoffs, when large screens have been set up outside PPG Paints Arena, and the same has been done in some places for large crowds. In other instances, I have heard of people who, for medical purposes, cannot risk infection from large crowds of people. I understand the medical need, and I leave that to people’s own judgment. Such instances, however, should be the exception and not the norm. In most cases, we come together as one community, which is better accomplished when we are in the same space.

If we can come together into the nave of the church, we can free the cry rooms up for their original purpose, as a place for parents to take their crying children. In that case, as well, they become a temporary refuge, and the parents bring their children back into church when they have settled down.

It is not my purpose to give anyone an old-fashioned case of “Catholic guilt,” nor to shame anyone into feeling like something is wrong. Rather, it is my hope to bring our parish even closer together to share with one another the most powerful and dramatic gift of the Eucharistic Liturgy. Our celebration becomes ever more joyful the more we share it with one another, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to share it with all of you.
                                                                               
                                                               Father H