My wife and I were getting ready to go to confession with the three oldest girls. The boy, who is six, said he wanted to go too.
“You can’t,” the girls told him with the glee that nine and ten year old girls take in telling younger brothers they can’t do something. Sometimes I think their perfect job would be at amusement parks telling little boys they’re too short to ride this most funnest ride evah.
The boy started getting upset saying he wanted to confess and why do the girls always get to do all the fun stuff. Now, don’t get the wrong idea. This wasn’t a coll to holinesss,. This was him being angry that he didn’t get to do what his older sisters did.
My twelve year old told him that he’d have to admit all the bad things he’d done. Well, as you can imagine this gave the six year old some pause. His pause gave me pause.
He thought for a moment and I started piling everyone into the van. We went to Church in silence for the most part. Silence is a relative term when you’ve got five kids. Silence means nobody cried, screamed, threw up, or dropped a drink.
We kneeled down in the back and prepared for confession. My four year old girl made a great show of genuflecting and made sure I saw how holy she was. The girls started filing into the confessional one at a time. (Remind me to talk to the ten year old about keeping her voice down in confession. Thank goodness she’s one of the well behaved ones or it could’ve been really embarassing.)
Just before it was my turn, the boy leaned over and said “Pleeeeeeeeeeeease!”
“You can’t,” I whispered and stood up.
“I’ve done lots of bad things,” the boy pleaded. “I didn’t tell you all of them.”
April 4, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Matthew – good story. My daughter turned 6 in November and was asking if she could receive first holy communion all last summer. We told our parish priest that she was asking, and he gave us a first communion catechism and said if she learned what the 2nd graders need to know, she could receive. Well my little girl passed with flying colors and now receives Jesus regularly as well as going to confession.
April 4, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Too funny. I would be dying of curiosity at that point. Did you make him 'fess up once you got him home?
April 4, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Great Story Matt π
@ Anonymous. About a year ago, our now 6 year old starting telling us how badly he wanted to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. My wife and I were so proud, but didn't really know where to proceed as even at 4 he was way ahead of the minimal requirements I recall for my First Communion save 1st Penance, so we insisted he would also have to know the Nicene Creed and then explain some of what it meant, and if he did that we would talk to the pastor about him receiving early. Poor little guy tried so hard, right up until this past Advent when all the words changed!
He's been resiliant though and has worked hard to learn all the new responses π
April 4, 2012 at 4:34 pm
ha! too cute!
my 9 yr old son came out of the confessional a few weeks ago and he plopped down beside me in the pew. he looked frustrated and i asked what was wrong. he whispered, "5 Hail Mary's again! what do i have to do to get an Our Father?!"