The sins of our fathers......

Religion is something I generally don’t like to discuss as everyone has their own belief set, which is as it should be, but I just can’t resist sharing some of Max’s views on this topic. This week as Max prepared to make one of his sacraments he managed, in typical Max fashion, to provide us with his own special take on matters all the while lending a bit of levity to what most consider serious business. As Max prepared to make the sacrament of Reconciliation (in the Catholic Church this is when we go to the priest to confess our sins, we often refer to it as Confession) we decided we needed to help Max practice for the big event.

In order to coach Max we found ourselves constantly quizzing him on the basics: how do you make the sign of the cross, how do you say a rosary, etc., etc. So one day on the way home from catechism I decided to broach the weighty topic of what constitutes a sin so I asked Max, “What is a sin?” Without missing a beat my son responded, “Something you do.” He went on to explain that I, his father, his sister, and even his dog commit sins and lots of ‘em. Now I don’t deny that I have my fair share of discretions but I was shocked that Max truly believed he was without sin, after all I live with this kid and have seen first hand some of his shenanigans. But there you have it -- Max felt he would simply have to make up a few sins to tell the priest. He asked me if I thought he should go with stealing and killing – I suggested that unless he wanted the Sheriff’s deputies to come knocking on his door he might be wise to go with the classics: disobeying your parents, fighting with your sister, etc. But Max felt these sins were too boring and would not work for him. So he decided he would help us out by confessing our sins and be done with it…..

Fast forward to Monday evening, the big day! We take Max to church were he filed in with all the other 2nd graders while we watched from our pew. When the time finally came for him to go up to the priest Michele and I laughed as we watched Max carefully select which priest he would go to, almost as if he was deciding who would go easiest on him. After much consideration Max joined a line and waited his turn (as best as Max can wait his turn). Because I was a bit nervous about how Max was going to do I found myself examining how the other children were doing, I went so far as to time how long each child spoke to the priest – on average it was under a minute. Great, it seemed that this would be fast and easy as the priests were trying to rush everyone along.

Not so much for Max….when it was his turn he calmly made his way up to where the priest was sitting as if he was important enough to make Father wait. After a few seconds I noticed the priest broke out into a laughing fit, now he hadn’t done this with any of the other children so I was a bit concerned. Father continued to laugh with Max until I actually thought he would pee his pants. This went on for nearly five minutes! I considered going up to the front of the church and pulling Max by the hand back to his seat. Finally with a hearty pat on the back the priest blessed Max and sent him on his way to do his penance. I must admit it took a while for the smile to disappear from the priest’s face. Once he had completed his prayers and we were on our way home I asked Max what he had discussed with Father. He told us that he had indeed confessed our sins for us because as we know he didn’t have any of his own. Great….the priest was laughing at us and our sins NOT Max and his. Something tells me it’s going to be difficult for me to show my face at Mass this Sunday……