Natalia's Catholic Formation

You may or may not be privy to the information that I struggled a lot with my faith after Natalia's birth.  Postpartum depression and anxiety are no joke, on top of the usual stressors of major lifestyle changes that coincided with her birth: quitting my job, selling our house, and moving out of state and away from any family or friends.  I knew the clock was ticking for me to get my act together.  I wanted to raise Natalia with a strong faith foundation.  I knew there were too many benefits from "being religious" for me to ignore it and figure "she'll believe whatever she wants to believe."  Obviously, I cannot program her brain, so that goes without saying.  As she matures, she will form her own opinions on everything, faith included.  But I would be remiss if I didn't do my due diligence in introducing her to the beautiful, meaningful, rich faith that is Catholicism.  The onus of the responsibility for her faith formation would fall on Oscar, as I kept telling him, because I couldn't teach something I didn't believe.  So I am very happy to report that God has blessed me with a renewed sense of faith, just in the nick of time, I believe, as the below paragraphs will illustrate.

Crossing herself.

We don't talk much about God yet, as this would be hard to explain without resorting to some sort of metaphors appropriate for Natalia's age, and religion already boils over with metaphor.  I'd hate to have to unteach things later.  So I've found myself focusing on the second person of the Trinity - Jesus.  Jesus has a physical body like us.  We have images of Him we can look to, we can discuss what He did and what He taught. We go to Mass to visit Jesus.  Adults and big kids receive Jesus in Holy Communion.  We pray to Jesus (ie. "talk with Jesus") at home.  This is actually pretty good practice for my own faith formation, having struggled with the idea of Jesus-as-God myself.

Our nightly prayer routine has led to amazing progress!  The three of us kneel by the bed each night and say a few classic Catholic prayers.  We do the Sign of the Cross in Polish and Spanish, and then we pray in unison in English: the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be.  When we finish, we say goodnight to Jesus and Mary, followed by besitos (kisses) for Daddy and Mommy (and sometimes baby brother).  Half the time, this meant that Oscar and I kneel in prayer, while Natalia jumps on the bed, or plays with her stuffed animals.  But more and more, she's been taking her "friends" to the edge of the bed with us, holding their hands/paws together in prayer fashion, and presumably teaching them to pray.

Deep in prayer.

 A few days ago, she shocked us by reciting the first half of the Our Father all by herself, before we even joined her!  On Sundays, when it is time for the Lord's Prayer, Oscar always picks her up so she can be on everyone's level, and we hold hands and pray together.  Today, she was very confident and correspondingly loud in her prayer, especially emphasizing the words that we tend to pause on.  We were amazed and proud of our little girl having essentially taught herself.  I will be trying to capture her progress on video this week, as the first video I have is of our starting this tradition about a year ago, when she was around 2.

Another spiritual growth is with morning prayer.  I have begun to read from a couple of praye books in the morning, pause for some quiet reflection, sing a little here and there.  I tell her I'm speaking with Jesus, and when I'm quiet, I'm listening to Him, so she's started to be more respectful of this time, either whispering to me or holding the book I'm not holding at the moment and doing her own praying.  Friday, she visited the confessional with me, and we paid a quick visit to Jesus in the Eucharist at the Adoration Chapel, another opportunity to observe how others quietly sit and listen to Jesus.

Amen!

I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but a few weeks ago, Natalia also started walking up with us to Communion with her hands across her chest.  We showed her how the other kids who weren't big enough to receive Communion did that, and she was happy to start also.  The first two times, she got a blessing from the person distributing Communion, about which she was just beaming!  Today, she didn't get a blessing, but she didn't seem too upset about it, so that's good.  Ideally we should sit so that we go to Communion to the priest, since I believe there's some conflicting opinions on whether Eucharistic Ministers are "supposed" to give out blessings in the Communion line, so the hope is that if we go to a priest, she will be guaranteed a blessing.  But that would take us far away from the restroom... still, it's something we ought to consider, because as long as we go by the restroom before leaving the house or when we get to church, that shouldn't be an issue.

While we're on the subject of Mass "socialization", we've started giving Natalia cash to put into the collection basket, and now when she sees the basket, she asks for the money if we haven't already given it to her.  I've told her during the week that the money goes to help people, like the blind man in one of her books that is healed by Jesus. Depending on her mood, she'll shake hands with strangers for the Sign of Peace, but we don't force this.  She sees us doing it, so it'll become the norm soon enough.  And I've got to mention how she prefers flipping through the church hymnal and following her finger along lines of lyrics rather than reading her own books that we bring from home.  She also dips her finger in the holy water font and blesses herself - not exactly by making the Sign of the Cross, but more along the lines of Rafiki blessing baby Simba in The Lion King.  Still.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, we arrived early for Mass, and Natalia asked where Jesus was.  I started to tell her, but soon she said "there he is" pointing to our pastor!  I told our pastor after Mass that Natalia thinks he's Jesus, which gave him a little chuckle and he said that the separation would come.  I'm thinking if she sees different priests, different churches, Mass will become something they all have in common, not something that is tied to a specific person or place.  (As a quick aside, I am wondering now if religious ed is something I'm going to want to involve the church in, or keep it under the homeschooling umbrella.  I have a year to think about it before she becomes eligible for the church Pre-K program.)