Our Second Graders celebrated
First Penance this week.
Before we did anything, we came
into church, sat on the floor, looked up and saw the Act of Contrition
displayed in big, bold letters on the front of the altar. The kids were asked whether any of them had a
friend, and, thankfully, they all did.
“Ever do anything wrong to your
friend?”
“Yep.”
“Did you have to say sorry?”
“Yep.”
“Tough?”
“Yep.”
“Tough as it was, did it fix
things?”
“Yep.”
“Still friends and were you all
happy about that?”
“Yep.”
Then, we looked back up to the
altar and saw that in the very first words of our big, bold Act of Contrition
was the word “sorry.” And we discovered
that confession (Penance) is nothing more than God giving us a chance to
practice saying “sorry” while God listens in and says, “Perfect; now keep
practicing.”
The woman caught in adultery, the
scribes and Pharisees, and Jesus—the cast of today’s gospel. And the scene? Jesus doodles while he waits for somebody to
say “sorry.” But everybody seems to be
out of practice.
God knows our imperfections and
doesn’t need us to tell any secrets, and surely doesn’t need us to repair any
divine, hurt feelings. “Sorry” is not
about God; it’s about us. It’s about us
not faking it by playing the perfect to others’ imperfections and securing the
secrecy of our own sinfulness.
“Sorry”—we gotta practice!
First
Communion News
Mass Assignments for our First
Communion on May 11, 2013:
9:30 AM: Thursday (Roaring Brook) 2nd
Grades + Ms. Aurora/Ms. Metcalf’s Wednesday (Grafflin ) 2nd Grade
11:30 AM: Tuesday
(Westorchard) 2nd Grades + Ms. Galvin’s Wednesday (Grafflin) 2nd
Grade.
Love, Deacon Charlie
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