I had been trying to catechize Rosie about Easter since the beginning of Lent.
Nothing seemed to stick.
Nothing ever seems to stick. Rosie is the most energetic, kinetic of children; she has to run around and pretend to be a ninja for hours every day. She climbs everything, jumps on everything, never stops moving before midnight and doesn’t sit still for lessons. When we practice phonics and arithmetic, she bounces on the bed or sofa as she calculates sums or spells out words. When I read to her, I have to stop between chapters so she can act out what she’s just heard, using her teddy bears as extras. She can’t even watch her beloved Godzilla films without playing another game while she watches– but she squeals when I think she’s not watching and turns them off. She has an uncannily good memory for Godzilla movies, the various types of kaiju monsters, and their powers and weaknesses, just as she has a good memory for spelling and sums as long as she’s not expected to sit down.
Every time I try to read Rosie the Bible, make her stand still for prayer or drag her along to liturgy, she’s uninterested. She can’t wait for it to be over so she can go back to jumping around.
I have despaired of ever teaching her anything about the faith more times than I can count. I suppose all mothers must feel that way.
One way or another, though, things seep in.
My friends and I have been having night prayer together, by each taking a turn to pray on a live video in our private group. Sometimes we pray Compline; sometimes somebody doesn’t have time or doesn’t know how or isn’t Catholic, so they just pray something else. I said that I would set up a little Tenebrae service of my own devising on Good Friday, praying some traditional Catholic Tenebrae responsories but also reading poetry and singing hymns I love whether they’re Tenebrae hymns or not. I said I would sing the Divine Reproaches because they are my favorite hymn for Good Friday, and I’d been too ill during the day to get to a Good Friday service and hear them sung.
I suspected Rose might enjoy Tenebrae, and I was right. I told her she could be my candle snuffer, reverently blowing out one candle after every reading. She could also shut off the lights and make the “Great noise” by banging crates at the very end. She was excited at the prospect of handling fire. She was especially pleased at the idea of a Great Noise, and that such a thing could be part of a prayer.
I started practicing the Divine Reproaches. I sang them over and over again while Rose played with her teddy bears. Then we set up candles in our icon corner and put on the live video.
Rosie carefully blew out the candles at the times she’d been told to blow them out. She stayed quiet, if not still, off camera while I prayed and sang.
When I went to sing the reproaches, she sang along with me. She remembered nearly every word, just from listening to me practice. She even sang the lyrics in Greek. “Hagios o Theos, hagios ischiros, Hagios athanatos eleison imas. Holy God, Holy and strong, Holy and immortal One, have mercy on us!”
At the end of the prayers, Rosie shut off the light and made the Great Noise. Then, before I could turn off the recording, she turned the lights back on and cheered.
We cleaned up the candles.
“You know,” said Rose, “That song is just like Godzilla Versus Mothra: Battle for the Earth.”
That puzzled me. “It is?”
“Yes, because the Mothra fairies are concerned about the people of earth, just like God is concerned with all our mistakes. And they keep telling the people what they did wrong and the mistakes they made over and over.”
“Oh,” I said. “And the people resolving to do better is like when we realize we were wrong and keep singing ‘holy and immortal, have mercy on us?'”
“Exactly,” said Rose.
“You understand it very well,” I said.
And, for her age, she does.
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