Go Fish

O God, we earnestly ask you
to bless this archdiocese with many priests, Brothers and Sisters
who will love You with their whole strength
and gladly spend their entire lives to serve your Church
and to make You known and loved.

Bless our families, bless our children.
Choose from our homes those needed for your work.

Mary, Queen of the Clergy, pray for us,
pray for our priests, Religious, and deacons.
Obtain for us many more. Amen.

A few nights ago, we had our parish Priest over for dinner and to bless our house. Max really likes "Father Cookin" and was very excited that he was coming over. When Fr. Creagan sat down to dinner, Max broke out into his new favorite song, "Peace Like a River". I'm so glad he chose that instead of one of his other favorites, the Bumblebee song. This one includes such lyrics as "I'm squishing up my baby bumblebee. Won't my mommy be so proud of me?"... not quite as endearing.

When dinner was over, Father began the house blessing and asked Max to hold the bottle of holy water. Talk about a way to win points with our little guy! Max was very proud to be given such an important job. As Fr. Creagan was leaving, he asked if Max wanted to keep the holy water. Did he ever! He quickly disappeared upstairs with the bottle while Paul and I cleaned up. After a few too many minutes of no noise from upstairs, we went to check on him and found a puddle of holy water on his bed. What was he doing?

"Making it holy."

Max seems to have an innate love of holy things. He always points out pictures of Jesus and Mary. He loves to hold my rosary and kiss the crucifix. He has already told me he wants to "carry Jesus" in the procession at Mass. The other morning, we were lying in bed chatting before getting up to get dressed. I asked him if he'd had any dreams last night, which I've never done before. He thought for a minute and said "...Yeah." so I asked him what his dream was about. His answer? "A playground!"

Was there anyone at the playground that he knew? "Jesus."

What did Jesus say to him? "Go fish!"

Such simple words, how could he know how Biblical they were? Could this really be a message from Jesus to my 2 year old? Or was the message meant for me? Maybe since it's the Year of the Priest, God is calling His future shepherds a little earlier than usual...who knows?

Whether or not I just got a divine announcement about my son's future vocation, we'll keep praying hard for vocations, and for holy priests.

He said to them, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men" -Matthew 4:19