Babies At Mass Revisited: The Monastery

[JamesAnthony]

Hi all… I’m the thread originator for the original Babies At Mass posting of a few months ago. Today I had to laugh… Remember when I said that, to find peace at Mass, I would try attending the service at a monastery? This morning I drove seventy miles west of here to attend Mass with the monks and any folks who happen to attend while at the monastery on a visit or retreat. I settled into a wooden stall up on the ambo, which is where the congregation sits; the monks have stalls adjacent to us. (There are also pews in the main body of the church, but daily Mass is held on the ambo.) Well, there I was, reading the Office quietly to myself before the celebration started, basking in the company of reflective adults silenty praying. You could hear a pin drop. It was Heaven ; ) Then, a couple of minutes before Mass began, in came an older lady with her two-year-old charge, complete with carriage, bottle, toys, and bag of necessaries-- and they sat right in front of me! Well, I smiled and continued concentrating, determined to treat this as a big jokey test from God-- but I knew what was coming… Sure enough, during the Mass, the little one got increasingly antsy: talking, drinking up the contents of the bottle, and climbing in and out of her carriage. The finally-full tot then proceeded to leave the pew and wheel her little carriage around, shake her toys, and generally entertain herself-- usually just out of reach of her caretaker, who frequently had to retrieve her. This was difficult because the older lady knelt on the hard floor from the end of the Sanctus to the Great Amen, though the rest of us stood, so she had to hoist herself up in order to go after Baby. As I say-- I was fine for 99% of the antics-- I really, really concentrated on the proceedings-- but the amusing part was noticing how tense and distracted many of the monks and congregants appeared! (I could see this easily because the monks are in the line of vision of the lay people.) She really was a sweet little girl-- I even shook hands with her during the Peace-- and I saw the humor in the whole episode insofar as my search for a quiet Mass seems destined not to bear fruit, as it were! Ah well… it was a good Lenten test!
Greetings to all… !
Jimmy

 

[LilyM]

Hi all… I’m the thread originator for the original Babies At Mass posting of a few months ago. Today I had to laugh… Remember when I said that, to find peace at Mass, I would try attending the service at a monastery? This morning I drove seventy miles west of here to attend Mass with the monks and any folks who happen to attend while at the monastery on a visit or retreat. I settled into a wooden stall up on the ambo, which is where the congregation sits; the monks have stalls adjacent to us. (There are also pews in the main body of the church, but daily Mass is held on the ambo.) Well, there I was, reading the Office quietly to myself before the celebration started, basking in the company of reflective adults silenty praying. You could hear a pin drop. It was Heaven ; ) Then, a couple of minutes before Mass began, in came an older lady with her two-year-old charge, complete with carriage, bottle, toys, and bag of necessaries-- and they sat right in front of me! Well, I smiled and continued concentrating, determined to treat this as a big jokey test from God-- but I knew what was coming… Sure enough, during the Mass, the little one got increasingly antsy: talking, drinking up the contents of the bottle, and climbing in and out of her carriage. The finally-full tot then proceeded to leave the pew and wheel her little carriage around, shake her toys, and generally entertain herself-- usually just out of reach of her caretaker, who frequently had to retrieve her. This was difficult because the older lady knelt on the hard floor from the end of the Sanctus to the Great Amen, though the rest of us stood, so she had to hoist herself up in order to go after Baby. As I say-- I was fine for 99% of the antics-- I really, really concentrated on the proceedings-- but the amusing part was noticing how tense and distracted many of the monks and congregants appeared! (I could see this easily because the monks are in the line of vision of the lay people.) She really was a sweet little girl-- I even shook hands with her during the Peace-- and I saw the humor in the whole episode insofar as my search for a quiet Mass seems destined not to bear fruit, as it were! Ah well… it was a good Lenten test!
Greetings to all… !
Jimmy

There’s an old saying - ‘if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans’. I think many of us, self included at times, get a bit fixated on our ideal of what Mass should be. When we do this we are forgetting the words of Christ ‘where two or three are gathered in my name there I am in their midst’. Nothing in there about requiring absolute silence, perfection of word or gesture or any such thing.