“Hey Dad, Where was the Tabernacle?”

My wife took some of the kids to Mass in the morning while I took some of the others, the boy included, with me to the later Mass. My boy is now eight years old and he’s a new altar boy and really paying attention to everything in the liturgy now. Our parish doesn’t offer an afternoon Mass so we had to go to another parish a few miles away.

Without going into much detail about the Mass, the music all sounded like Joni Mitchell songs and most of the intentions had to do with the proper care of our planet’s resources. As we were walking out after Mass he started asking me a question. He said, “Hey Dad, I’ve got a couple of questions about Mass.”

I said, “wait until we get to the van.”

My eleven year old daughter laughed and said, “Dad what was with those songs? It sounded like little kid music.”

“Wait until we get to the van please,” I said.

When we got into the van, the boy asked, “Hey Dad, where was the tabernacle? The priest was sitting where it’s supposed to be and I didn’t see it anywhere.”

I explained to him that I’d noticed it too and how the priest’s chair was elevated against the wall behind the altar. But I too had difficulty finding the tabernacle. But I told him it was down on the far aisle but he couldn’t see it because people were standing in front of it.

“Uhm,” he said. “Isn’t that kind of insulting to Jesus?”

I told him that I thought it was. He sat silently for a minute and finally he said, “Let’s not go back to that parish.”

We won’t, I promised him. We won’t.