Max at Mass, Lenten Edition

The triduum liturgies are the most solemn of the Church year, and they all have plenty of long stretches of silence. Very prayerful and beautiful, unless you have two children under four who don't yet have the word "silence" in their list of vocabulary words. Then these solemn liturgies become one long exercise in patience and humility (at least, they can be... not sure I succeeded)

Max had some major volume issues at the Holy Thursday Mass. Thankfully, most of his outbursts were not severely embarrassing, but of course he chose the best (i.e. quietest) times of Mass to express himself... But I'll get to those details later.

Lucian was just one big squirm ball. I ended up taking him out of church during the Gospel, and he spent the rest of the Liturgy of the Word literally running from end to end of the gathering space. "Yeah, Mom," he seemed to be saying to me, "You bring me to a two-hour Mass that doesn't even start until 7:00, and you expected things to be different?" No, no... I just hoped...

In the middle of the homily, I suddenly saw Paul carrying a very unhappy Max out of the chuch for a timeout. He hauled him around the corner to a bench, then came back to try to hear part of Fr. Creagan's message. Suddenly, the hallway lights started flicking on and off. Hmm, wonder who that could be? So Max got moved to a bench even farther down the hallway, out of reach of all light switches.

But pretty soon, a little girl went walking down the hallway (probably to the bathroom or something else harmless) and Paul saw Max start to talk to her. As he got closer, he could hear our poor, tortured son saying, "Help me. Help..me. Help...me." Oh. my. goodness.

After awhile, we all ended up back in the church- Lucian had settled down, and Max was ready to give it another shot. Still a little unclear about the meaning of "Whisper", Max set about making friends with the people in the pews surrounding us. "Are you sort of nice?" he asked to the man directly behind him. Thankfully, the man answered in the affirmative. We don't want any sort of mean people around us during church, now do we?

Then during the Sign of Peace, Max took it upon himself to shake hands with everyone in his reach and proclaim a loud "Peace be WITH YOU!" to each of them, followed at the end by a resounding "Peace, PEACE to EVERYONE!!" That one drew some chuckles.

At this point, we were nearing the end of the Mass, when everything is quiet and there is a procession to carry the Eucharist to the chapel. Paul preempted some possible Lucian issues during the silent moments and decided to bring him out until the end of Mass, so I stayed with Max and did the best I could...

As I explained to him that the procession was to bring Jesus to the chapel, Max thought for a moment and asked, "Is Fr. Creagan Jesus?" Well, no, not exactly... I attempted to explain that Jesus was in the "Holy Bread" (Max's term for the consecrated Hosts) that we receive at Communion. "No, Fr. Creagan IS Jesus!" he argued, to the amusement of the poor souls trying to pray around us. I left it at that and decided we would discuss more later.


As the procession left the church, Max started to get very wiggly. He tried to escape a few times, and I barely got my hands on him to keep him in the pew. He took a break from wiggling long enough to tell me emphatically, "I want to go to the dance party!" Then there was no stopping him, so I gathered all of our jackets, Mass bag, purse, baby bottle, blankie, and hightailed it after him before he could get too far away. He beelined it directly to the chapel and I managed to catch him just before he ran in and began his own dance party right in front of Jesus, three priests, a deacon, the entire choir, and half of the congregation.

Whew.

The rest of the Triduum liturgies were much, MUCH easier than Holy Thursday, and Easter was absolutely wonderful. But I'll have to save those stories for another day. For now, I'll leave you giggling and sighing about how glad you are that it wasn't YOU at Holy Thursday Mass with my sons.