Heralds at Home The Domestic-Majestic Life
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. JEREMIAH 1:5
This was going to be a big year for my son and for me. He was to start preschool at St. Stephen’s this fall and I was committed to bringing him with me to church Wonder is our birthright. It comes easily in childhood— every Sunday, starting soon. I kept telling myself the feeling of watching dust motes dancing in sunlight… that, any day now, we were going to get serious about religion. We were going to begin. Then, the world RICHARD ROHR changed, the preschool closed, and church as we knew By Allison Seay it is gone for a time. Now what? I can hardly get my child Motherhood is my deepest, purest joy. To say I fully to eat a square meal much less tune in to worship online. appreciate or understand what is at stake in loving my child (He’s two-and-a-half; we do what we can.) And that business well is, I think, to dishonor what is at stake. After all, it is a about being a herald of faith and his primary minister? It has holy charge, as overwhelming as it is inspiring: parents have never felt more important and it has never seemed more difficult. the distinct privilege of being the first heralds of faith for their What, anyway, is a herald to do at a time like this, when life and children, first witnesses of the Gospel, first ministers to these the news as she knew it feels forever changed? It is a beginning, mysterious, marvelous, God-formed human beings. Like other indeed, but not one I feel equipped to navigate well. honorable responsibilities perhaps, the magnitude of this one, if I am being honest, is daunting even while I remind myself that One thing that has anchored me during this pandemic seaI am not giving my son anything that is not already his and instorm is to return to my study of the child himself, return to dwelling, nor am I tasked with anything I am not already deepthe work that has been most formative in my own spiritual life. down equipped to offer. I recalled with interest that when scholars Sofia Cavelletti and Gianna Gobbi, after apprenticing with Maria Montessori in Another way I think about it: I am not responsible for introducing Rome, founded the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd—a rich, my child to God so much as I am for re-initiating and nurturing contemplative religious formation for children—they came to the relationship that already exists. The challenge for me is in consider the present and future of the child in terms of the child’s finding ways to nurture it by means worthy of both God and my past. That is, their conclusions articulate beautifully the ways in son alike; the challenge for me is in learning to proclaim without which the romance and sanctity of the mother’s womb can guide shouting, to instruct without speaking, to observe without presently and insightfully the way parents and ministers and surveilling, to shepherd without hovering, to guide without ego, teachers imagine and prepare a learning environment after birth and to get out of the way on time and with love, relinquishing and into childhood. each to the other in faith. I can paraphrase it like this: The womb is that sacred place— Ministry to my own child—to all children, really—is at the root place that Christ himself once knew—where the unborn first of what I believe is my most essential work on this earth. And, I knows safety and warmth; first encounters light and darkness, think it is important to note, one need not be a parent in order sound and music, taste and aroma; is the place of perfect union to be a herald: while the Bible teaches that all of us are ministers of self, environment, and the human being that sustains him. by virtue of our Baptism, it feels truer to me to believe we are all Remembering this can guide us, the Catechesis teaches us, in heralds of faith by virtue of our humanity. preparing an environment that honors the already-consecrated child’s dignity, sanctity, and religious capacity. Montessori called The deep desire I hold for my son is as simple and as profound as such a prepared environment for children the “atrium.” wanting this child I have made to love his life and love this world, not simply because it was I who gave it to him, but because his My son would have entered an atrium at St. Stephen’s this year, existence, the existence of any child, is evidence of the world’s every Sunday morning. And there he would find sacred objects abundance. I want a child to love and believe in mystery and (a chalice and paten, a Bible), beautiful materials (wood and miracle, to know that he has within himself the very pearl of God. silver and glass and gold), natural things (pinecones and flowers and shells and rocks), and a trained catechist who would witness Of course, I also want my child to be happy and safe and well, and him, listen to him, live alongside him a common religious I want him to grow up kind and loving and good-spirited and experience. And he would hear, as all children of the atrium do, compassionate. And with common sense and a moral compass, and that everything he did in that space would be his own perfect, some decent table manners, too. One must start somewhere. private prayer. He would find work to inspire his awakening senses, would begin to penetrate mysteries of time, of life and +++ death, and he would be offered ways to satisfy his capacity for 18
SEASONS OF THE SPIRIT
