First Penance

Jesus brings us mercy and forgiveness

On Saturday, December 10 over 100 St. Mark children celebrated First Penance.  In the moments and days afterward, I asked them how they felt and their responses were somewhere between “good!” and “awesome!” Everyone likes to be forgiven, even second graders!

Grace permeates the moments surrounding this and other Sacraments, even when the moments don’t feel graceful. For example, these very same students minutes before Penance were on pins and needles, nervously going through the Penance dialogue and examination of conscience as they waited in line (some for 45 minutes). But when the time came and they found themselves moving from the front of the line to the priest, they were ready. God’s life, love, and mercy are shared in this Sacrament, which each child felt “good” or “awesome” about. God was there in the preparation before, the celebration of, and the peace found after Penance, bringing forth new life and joy.

These children remind us that the feeling coming from confession trumps the anxiety leading up to that moment, and that forgiveness of sins is both possible and important. May their witness be an example to us all!

Active Waiting

A little more from our friend Henri Nouwen:

Waiting is essential to the spiritual life. But waiting as a disciple of Jesus is not an empty waiting. It is a waiting with a promise in our hearts that makes already present what we are waiting for. We wait during Advent for the birth of Jesus. We wait after Easter for the coming of the Spirit, and after the ascension of Jesus we wait for his coming again in glory. We are always waiting, but it is a waiting in the conviction that we have already seen God's footsteps.

Waiting for God is an active, alert - yes, joyful - waiting. As we wait we remember him for whom we are waiting, and as we remember him we create a community ready to welcome him when he comes.

image credit: CmdrFire

Penance 101

As we gear up for our First Penance celebration (and the parish-wide Advent Penance celebration), it's time to brush up on why we go to confession.  Take a look at this 5 minute video to review why in the world we should go to confession instead of only asking God for forgiveness on our own.



Where do you need healing?  Where is God calling you to new life?  Is there something you did that's weighing you down?

Solemnity of Immaculate Conception - Mass Schedule

Tomorrow, December 8 is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.  Come and celebrate at St. Mark in Vienna.  Here is our mass schedule:

• Wednesday, December 7:  Vigil Mass at 7:30pm
• Thursday, December 8: 6:15am, 9:15am, 5:30pm and 7:30 pm

Website Wednesday: CatholicMom.com

This is how it looks using Google Chrome

Reviving a Wednesday theme, let's take a look at a great Catholic website for all parents that will help you include faith in your life.  CatholicMom.com is for more than just moms.  Click around the menu long enough and you'll soon realize there's something for everyone: Mom, Dad, teachers, catechists, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

One of the strengths of the website is that it's updated with regularity.  If there's something going on in the Catholic Church, odds are there's an article, activity, or idea to incorporate it into your family.  You can see from the screen shot that there's a section on Advent.  And for the Immaculate Conception, they have a short article explaining history and some of our beliefs about the day.

Digging a little deeper, here are a few of the sections I'd like to highlight that are useful.

Sunday Gospel Activities
Encourage your children to learn about the Good News at home by utilizing one of the activities present in CatholicMom's incredible collection.  Organized by month and then by Sunday, the Sunday Gospel Activities provide something for many ages.  Your child is in the coloring phase?  There's a weekly coloring page (PDF). Kids love word searches?  They've got the word search (PDF) market covered.  Simple crossword?  You bet (PDF).  There are even what they call "mass worksheets" for children ages 7-10 (PDF) and 11-14 (PDF) to help them get more from that weekend's liturgy.  I wouldn't recommend coming to mass to fill these out, but still these can be great for getting ready for mass or processing afterward.

Movie Reviews
Multimedia play a big role in the life of children in the 21st century.  But as with anything we're exposed to, we need to be aware of what that media does to us and to our children.  CatholicMom's provides a tiny section on movie reviews that will review newly released DVDs as well as films still in the theaters.  Past reviews include the re-release of Dumbo, Super 8, and The Help.  While not updated with every movie that comes out, movie reviews do come in from time to time and appear on the front page of the main website.

(If you're very interested in other good film review sites, Catholic News Services reviews films as does a Christian website called Decent Films.)

Blog
Probably the greatest strong of the website is the blog that's updated every day.  It also happens to be the front page of the website.  A variety of articles will educate and entertain you, providing you helpful articles for parents and some opportunities to grow in your own faith.  Since that's along the same lines with what I hope to provide here on the blog, you should definitely check them out!

A hub for all things Catholic, CatholicMom is a solid resource for you and your family.

If you have a website you recommend, leave a comment or send Isaac an email:

Prayer as Seeking Depth

Prayer: elusive but important

Raise your hand if you struggle with prayer.  Now that all our hands are raised, where do we go from here?  (You can put your hands down.)

Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI, is an author of many spiritual articles and books (his most famous/best selling being The Holy Longing).  This Advent, he is writing a four-part series on prayer.  Below is an excerpt from part 1 called "Prayer as Seeking Depth."

In our more reflective moments we sense the importance of prayer; yet, we struggle to pray. Sustained, deep prayer doesn't come easy for us. Why?

First of all, we struggle to make time for prayer. Prayer doesn't accomplish anything practical for us, it's a waste of time in terms of tending to the pressures and tasks of daily life, and so we hesitate to go there. Coupled with this, we find it hard to trust that prayer actually works and brings about something real in our lives. Beyond that, we struggle to concentrate when we try to pray. Once we do settle in to pray, we soon feel ourselves overwhelmed by daydreams, unfinished conversations, half-forgotten melodies, heartaches, agendas, and the impending tasks that face us as soon as we get up from our place of prayer. Finally, we struggle to pray because we really don't know how to pray. We might be familiar with various forms of prayer, from devotional prayers to different kinds of meditation, but we generally lack the confidence to believe that our own particular way of praying, with all its distractions and missteps, is prayer in the deep sense. 

 Interest piqued?  Read the rest on his website.

Part two can be found here.

image credit: mojoey

Something Hardly Noticeable: Advent Reflection from Henri Nouwen

To prepare us for, or to continue reflecting on, the second Sunday of Advent, below is a reflection on the working of God by Henri Nouwen.  You can sign up to receive daily reflection similar to this at HenriNouwen.org

Something Hardly Noticeable

"A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him . . ." (Isa.11:1-2)

These words from last night's liturgy have stayed with me during the day. Our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable. God, who is the Creator of the Universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness.

I find this a hopeful message. Somehow, I keep expecting loud and impressive events to convince me and others of God's saving power; but over and over again I am reminded that spectacles, power plays, and big events are the ways of the world. Our temptation is to be distracted by them and made blind to the "shoot that shall sprout from the stump."

When I have no eyes for the small signs of God's presence - the smile of a baby, the carefree play of children, the words of encouragement and gestures of love offered by friends - I will always remain tempted to despair.

The small child of Bethlehem, the unknown young man of Nazareth, the rejected preacher, the naked man on the cross, he asks for my full attention. The work of our salvation takes place in the midst of a world that continues to shout, scream, and overwhelm us with its claims and promises. But the promise is hidden in the shoot that sprouts from the stump, a shoot that hardly anyone notices.

Image Credit: Peter Renshaw


iGracias! - A Latin American Journal (December 2, 1981) © Henri J.M. Nouwen. Published by HarperCollins.