By Jack Shea
A woman, in her late forties and stylishly dressed, approached the priest as he stood outside the church after the 9:45 am Mass. “That baby screamed throughout your entire homily. Why didn’t you do something? You should have told the parents to take the child out. Didn’t that crying bother you?”
In fact, it did bother him. He lost his train of thought a couple of times, but he managed to get back on track. Preachers quickly learn to override the baby competition. This does not mean they win the battle to be heard. It just means they don’t stop, break down, and cry themselves.
But there is something profoundly disturbing about asking a crying baby to leave. Besides the embarrassment to the parents, there are deeper issues involved in this very minor moment of liturgy. Could it be that the nature of Eucharist welcomes crying babies?
There may be dozens of practical reasons why babies should be left at home, but there is one overwhelming reason why they should be present. They are one of us. Crying comes with the baby territory. (Actually, it comes with the adult territory, too; but we repair to the bathroom and do it more quietly.) People may try to quiet babies, but nobody begrudges them a good wail. When they are there, the human condition is rounded out. And their occasional or sustained outbursts remind us of a fact that liturgies often leave us in doubt about. We are alive.
Excerpted from Daybreaks, Daily Reflections for Lent and Easter, written by Jack Shea, copyright ©2008. Used with permission of Liguori Publications, Liguori, MO 63057. 1-800-325-9521. www.liguori.org
For information about this booklet of beautiful reflections, please click this link: http://www.liguori.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=10975
