On the Lips of Infants and Babes, You have Found Perfect Praise

The other morning after one-year-old Sophie finished nursing I sat her next to me on the bed while I tried to finish my morning prayers. Bella came in and wanted me to read to her so I distracted her as I often do by reading my psalms out loud so that she felt included and could pray along. After a while she wandered off again. But I continued to pray aloud. Then when I got to the Glory Be at the end of the psalm, I noticed Sophie looking at me and rubbing her hand over her belly in a deliberate way. Was she trying to make the sign of the cross? It seemed likely. She's started doing some basic baby signs for "more" and "all done".

I decided to try an experiment. When I sat her down for breakfast, I moved her hand in the sign of the cross and folded her hands together as I prayed a blessing over the food. She beamed happily at me as we prayed. That night at bedtime I paused before nursing her to pour a little holy water in her palm and again moved her hand through the sign of the cross and then up to bless me and then down to bless baby Benedict in my belly. She laughed joyfully, clearly excited as I helped her to pray. She sat in my lap as I prayed, not anxious as she usually is at that time, crying for milk, but smiling and peaceful. When I finished praying then she was ready to nurse.

The excitement in Sophie's eyes was almost the same as when I understand her attempts to speak or to sign "more" or "dolly" or "daddy". But there is something more there as well. A divine spark, dare I say?

When Bella was about this age we began praying night prayers with her. She started to try to make her own prayer gestures, folding her hands, attempts to bless herself. It seems clear to me that children as young as one can have a desire to pray and that by helping them to use their bodies to pray, even if their lips cannot, we do them a great service which they receive with joy and gratitude.

It makes me so angry therefore when I see well-meaning people say we needn't bring young children to mass because "they don't get anything out of it anyway." And this is of children of 4 or 5 years, much older than my girls. They are so wrong. Children who are still unable to speak words may still praise God and yearn for His presence. They can and do express religious yearnings that are not mere imitation but surprise me and go beyond what I expect they are capable of doing or understanding. Two-year-old Bella loves to look at holy images, to kneel and fold her hands and pray, to bless herself with holy water and to genuflect in front of the tabernacle. When I have taught her these things she takes to them eagerly. Not out of a desire to please me and follow my orders but because she is given a language to express what is already in her heart.

So please, take your children to church. Teach them to sing and pray, help them to move their bodies in prayer, pray for them and with them. Help them to know and love God and to praise Him. It is never too early for them to learn. And you may be surprised at how much you learn as well.

Simple Advent Prayers

This Advent when we light our Advent wreath we are saying this simple prayer from Faith and Life 1. We used it for a few years when my older girls were small:

Thank you, dear Jesus,
for coming down from Heaven to save us.
Thank you for Christmas time.
Help us to get ready for your coming this year.
Amen

Here I found another prayer suitable for younger children:

O God,
as light comes from this candle,
may the blessing of Jesus Christ come to us,
warming our hearts and
brightening our way.
May Christ our Savior bring life
into the darkness of this world,
and to us, as we wait for his coming.

Advent Boxes

Last year I put together an Advent Box for my Little Cherub, full of things that she could take out and explore.

This picture shows the contents of the box ...

• Nativity figures - I have a set of squishy plastic figures for toddlers bought when my eldest daughter was tiny.
• A wooden Santa figure that looks fairly St.Nicholas-ish.
• Various small board books telling the Christmas story.
• Pictures of the Five Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary
• Pictures of St.Nicholas, St.Lucy, the journey to Bethlehem and the Immaculate Conception
• Board book about Hannukah and a dreidl (I include these as my husband is Jewish)

Little Cherub loved her box, and played with it regularly throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons. Here she is enjoying herself with the Santa figure ...


This year, at two-and-a-half, I think she will enjoy it even more.

Advent Ideas

Advent is a wonderful season to focus on with toddlers as there are so many elements that appeal to little ones - advent calendars, candles, Nativity figures that they can handle, and so on. Whether you are starting to build family Advent traditions from scratch, or wanting to make some changes, you can find a great starting point in this series of posts by Karen Edmisten:

• No Panic Advent: Part 1 - the Jesus Stocking
• No Panic Advent: Part 2 - dates for your calendar
• No Panic Advent: Part 3 - O Night Divine blog
• No Panic Advent: Part 4 - keep an Advent file
  
• No Panic Advent: Part 5 - the Jesse Tree
  
• No Panic Advent: Part 6 - including secular traditions
  
• No Panic Advent: Part 7 - Advent Wreath, Advent Calendars, prayers and other traditions

There are lots of ideas here, but as Karen says " do not -- I repeat, do not -- feel pressure to do it all. No one does it all. You might want to pick one or two new things on which to focus -- and then, have fun with them." And remember, nothing engages a toddler more than fun!

Visiting Our Lady Around the House

Our house is filled with images of Our Lady and our young ones particularly enjoy making a little walking litany around the house on the way up to bed. They take turns identifying the particular title of Our Lady and everyone responds in song "Ora Pro Nobis" (pray for us). Once in a great while, we do a longer form which includes a special intention and a related song at each spot. Some of these, by the way, are not the official names of the pictures, but titles of Our Lady that seemed appropriate to the image.

Our Lady of the Annuciation

We pray that more people will say yes to God.

Song: Gabriel's Message







Our Lady of Fatima

We pray for devotion to Our Lady and for the repentance of sinners. We pray in reparation for offenses committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Song: Immaculate Mary (Fatima version)






Our Lady of Good Counsel

We pray for teachers and parents.

Song: Alma Redemptoris Mater







Our Lady Seat of Wisdom

We pray for students and all who need truth.

Song: Hail Holy Queen







Our Lady of Lourdes

We pray for devotion to the Immaculate Conception and for all who are sick or disabled.

Song: Immaculate Mary






Our Lady of Guadalupe

We pray for the unborn, for refugees and immigrants and for all who are oppresed or in danger.

Song: Santa Maria del Camino






Mother Thrice Admirable

We pray for faith in young people.

We don't have this picture hanging anywhere in our home yet. The girls really wanted to include her because of their involvement in the Schoenstatt movement through some local girls' groups. They also know some special songs associated with her that I don't know yet.




Our Lady of Perpetual Help

We pray for the suffering and the dying, for soldiers, for those in prison and any who find themselves in difficult circumstances.

Song: Hail Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star

Unless

My father came to stay with us for three weeks, following the birth of my daughter. He was a great help as I recovered from my c-section and bonded with the new baby. He did some housework and kept me company after my husband returned to work. But most of all he helped with the care of my two-year old, Isabella. He slept in the guest bed in her room and got up with her in the mornings so that I could catch a little more sleep. He fed her breakfast-- and sometimes lunch as well-- got her dressed, changed her diaper, took her on walks, read her stories, put her down from her nap, and did much of the lifting that I could not do.

Recently he sent me this meditation about his experiences with her, written to share with others in his spiritual direction class. I'll reprint it here:

I begin to wake to the gentle whimper. She is awake and I am sure her diaper is very wet. I hope that she will go back to sleep. As she sees me get out of bed she begins to talk in happy tones and I begin to tell her it is night and she needs to go back to sleep after she has her diaper changed. She lies down quietly and I go back to bed. But not for long as she hears her Daddy getting ready for work. "Daddy go work. Daddy go work." So it is time to get up. I fix her some breakfast and she sits at her little table. She looks up at me and says, “full of grace”. I think for a second and realize that she wants to pray, to bless the food. So we make the sign of the cross and bless the food.

While she is eating I get my Liturgy of the Hours, sit on the couch, and begin to pray Morning Prayer. Very shortly here she comes into the room and I think that is the end of Morning Prayer. She walks up to where I am sitting and stares at me. I begin to read the psalms aloud and she climbs up beside me and sits motionless while I read the prayers.

We are going for a walk and she runs to the door, whining with anxiety, wanting her coat and the stroller. I dress her warmly and place her in the stroller. We start down the busy street with many cars passing. We hear a siren that is getting louder. She turns in the stroller and says, “full of grace”. We stop and say a prayer for the person in distress. We are going to the large Catholic cemetery about 10 blocks away. When we reach the cemetery I take her from the stroller so she can “run, run”. After about 30 minutes of walking in the cemetery, I hear a car approaching and yell to her that a car is approaching. She quickly moves from the street to the grass and patiently waits for the car to pass. Then I tell her the car is gone and we proceed on our walk. The car stops a short distance in front of us and a woman gets out and walks to a grave covered with a large mound of flowers. She is almost prostrate on the grave, obviously full of grief. As we approach close to that grave the little girl turns to me and says, “full of grace”. We stop and pray with the lady full of grief.

When we return to the house, I take her into her room to change her diaper. She looks at the crucifix on the wall and says, "Jesus." We go into the living room and she opens the drawer on the coffee table and takes out a number of prayer cards, and names each of them: John Paul, Mary, Jesus.

On Sunday we go to mass. On entering the church she puts her tiny hand into the holy water and with assistance makes the sign of the cross. At the elevation of the body of Christ she points and says, "Jesus Christ." As we leave the church, she points the statue and says, "Mary," after kneeling in front of the tabernacle. After we return home, I am sitting on the couch and she comes and stands in front of me. I reach down to pick her up and as I do I look into her face and see that she is full of grace, a little baptized child without sin. She is full of the Holy Spirit which she has repeatedly shown throughout each day.

“Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”

I was surprised at how closely his experience mirrored my own. I've observed that once I have taught Isabella a particular prayer practice-- blessing herself with holy water, praying a Hail Mary when we hear a siren, kissing the crucifix that hangs over her bed-- she almost immediately begins to be the leader while I am the (all-too-often reluctant) follower. She reminds me to pray, and pushes even when I don't find it terribly convenient and even when I'm not feeling very prayerful.

I've just begun reading Sofia Cavaletti's The Religious Potential of the Child and find that Cavaletti's approach in developing the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd also mirrors my own experience. The belief underlying the method is that the child has his own relationship with God and that our function is to proclaim the Word and then listen with him to the unfolding of that Word. Cavaletti chooses what parables and images to present to the child on the basis of what the child himself has shown to be attractive, what fills his own inner need.

Although The Religious Potential of the Child does not take into consideration the child under three, I feel that the methodology of exploration with the child, allowing the child to lead us even as we proclaim the Word to the child, exactly matches my own methodology with Isabella.

Little Cherub's May Basket

I ended up putting my Little Cherub's May Basket together out of things I made or already had at home. I lined the basket with blue paper and filled it with a set of laminated pictures of Our Lady (I sewed a little bag for them from a scrap of blue fabric), a Rosary in a box, a prayer book, a knitted Mary doll, and a pack of hair elastics.

I didn't manage to find everything on my list, which means I already have some ideas for next year!