Katie's prayer: Hillsong United's "Came to my Rescue"

God of Mercy


Humbled I bow down

Yesterday, the Confirmation class was on “Jesus in the Mass.” I was super excited about it, all sorts of plans for the night to help bring to their attention that it’s Jesus in the Eucharist, not a symbol, not a representation, but JESUS! After some short fun intro stuff, I had them go over to the Church for the teaching. I told them to enter the Church like they would for Mass. After going through the whole thing, I went into the “what does this mean for us” part. I asked how many used holy water on their way in - 2 out of 16. I asked how many genuflected before they entered their pew - 1 out of 16. And no one, not a single person could tell me why they do either of those things. Let’s just say, not what I was expecting. I was expecting the lazy genuflect. I was expecting a few people to not know, but my few star kids to give at least some answer as to why.

It kinda hurt me a little. I mean, where are we (as a Church messing up so bad in their education that they don’t know why they use holy water or genuflect, if they do it at all? Why aren’t parents stepping up (like they should) to help with that obvious lack in education? And the one thing that bothers me the most - is the short 2 hours I had with them going to be enough to change their mindset the next time they enter a Church? Is my talk of maybe 20-30 minutes going to affect how they see the Eucharist? Did I do anything to make this more meaningful for them? Or is none of this going to even do anything? I mean, the 9-10 years they had of religious education before this - they had to have talked about the real presence, they had to have talked about holy water and it’s purpose, they had to have talked about the Mass... If that didn’t hit them, how am I?

Dear Jesus, I don’t know... am I making a difference in the lives of these kids? Are they understanding? Or are they just ignoring me like they’ve apparently done every other year of religious ed? I think by the end of the night, they got it... but is it going to stick?