Reverence, Within or Without

Sometimes I read blog posts that use the word “reverence” what seems to be a purely external way. It connotes silence, and careful movements, and kneeling for communion, and certainly has nothing to do with having a noisy or curious child in the pew with you. Other times I read blog posts that speak of reverence as a purely internal disposition, as remembering that we are in God’s house and consciously choosing to behave appropriately and to focus on God and the prayers at hand.

To be fair to those in the first group, they also care about having that internal disposition; in fact, their problem is that the curious child and its mother are not observing that blessed silence which is so conducive to a reverent state of mind in others, like them.*

In short, the problem I ha—that is, the problem the people in the first group have—is that other people are distracting them from their attempts to feel properly reverent….and they attribute that to the irreverence of the people who are distracting them.

As a father (oh, OK, I give up) I find this particularly difficult. I want to have quiet so that I can focus on God rather than on external distractions. I want my children to learn to behave in Church so as not to distract others from their prayer. But children can’t always help being distracting, and more to the point, when I go from being distracted to deploring another’s behavior to questioning their reverence (which is, in part, an internal disposition) then I’m starting to judge another’s holiness. And that’s always a bad idea. (I had to go to confession over this one.)

I still try to teach my kids not to distract others at Mass. But at the same time, I also find myself pondering St. Therese of Lisieux, who made it a habit to sit next to the person she found most irritating as a kind of mortification; and I remember that I am responsible for my state of reverence regardless of the situation.

Darn it.

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* This isn’t me, of course. Oh, no. There’s no way I’m that child’s father or that mother’s husband. Not today; it’s Wednesday. Ask me again on Sunday.