Picture at Colin and Z’s Home

by Mary Reed Newland, The Year and Our Children

Lent at Home

It is hard to keep track of this treasure that is laid in Heaven if you are quite small and six weeks drag out like six years. We have made this part of the effort visible for the children so that they might see that they were accomplishing something.

On or about Ash Wednesday, we dye lima beans purple to be used as counters in a jar. Beans, because they are seeds which, if put in the ground, appear to die only to spring forth with new life. This is what our Lord said we must do if we would have life in Him. He who seems to lose his life shall gain it.

The beans remind us that daily death to self in one self-denial after another is the dying that will find for us new life in Him. “Try to surrender your will to Him, dear, so He may have His will in you.” It is excruciatingly difficult, but one must begin.

And they do understand, because we have discovered that as they grow a little older, they no longer need the beans – they see in their minds what they are doing.

We dye little pieces of cloth to use as purple shrouds for our pictures and statues on Passion Sunday, as the shrouds are used in church. This is to remind us that with Passion Sunday, the last, most solemn and sorrowful week of Lent has begun.

One year we dyed a square of fine soft wool to make a cope for our Infant of Prague. (Instruction: You will now throw out the dye, like a good girl. Otherwise everyone in the family will be trying to dye things in purple.)

Next, we make a candelabrum for the Stations of the Cross. For children the Stations of the Cross can conceivably mean nothing better than continual bobbings up and down with prayers. This sounds frightful, but it is true.

We have somewhat the same problem teaching them to love and to know the Stations as we have with the Rosary. So we decided to make a set of candles in a candelabrum to be used after the fashion of Tenebrae, the dramatic service in Holy Week, to help them love the Stations and want to say them nightly during Lent (we live too far out in the country to get to church in the evenings).

Twelve candles in one long candelabrum, or two short candelabra holding six candles apiece are needed. The candelabra may be made a number of ways: a length of board with twelve holes bored for the candles; two shoe boxes with six holes apiece for the candles, or two candelabra made with plaster of paris, which is poured into two empty Kleenex boxes (one at a time!), and the candles (six of each) held in place for a few moments until the plaster hardens.

The box is easily pulled away when the plaster is hard. After twenty-four hours, the candelabrum is dry enough to be carried to wherever you will use it. We keep ours on the mantel. We use white candles. The candelabrum may be painted black.

Together with these, we use a crucifix and a booklet of meditations suitable for children, although we do not always read these. Often they are used only to acquaint the family with each Station, letting some member msupply a short meditation “out of his head.”

Whichever, the meditations must be kept short and, if possible, related to something familiar in daily life. We light all twelve candles at the start, and put out the other lights in the room, leaving one lighted in another room so that little ones will not be frightened by complete darkness.

After each Station is identified, we genuflect and say the traditional prayer: We adore Thee, O Christ, and we praise Thee, because by Thy holy Cross Thou redeemed the world. Other prayers are optional.

The Stations may be properly said in a church by going from one Station to another and merely making a meditation at each. For the sake of uniformity and in order to include what to our children is synonymous with devotional “praying,” we say, after the short meditation, an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be.

Then one of the children puts out a candle for that Station. They take turns, a different child putting out the candles every night.

When we have finished the twelfth Station, Jesus Dies on the Cross, the last candle is snuffed, and the room is in complete darkness. If you were there, they would explain it to you this way:

“It’s because He was the Light of the World, and when He died, the Light was gone out of the world.”

You start remembering – all the way back to Advent, when the wreath and its weekly growing light anticipated the coming of the Light of the World; back to St. Lucy, whose feast and whose name anticipated the coming of the Light of the World; back to the Christ candle, lighted at midnight on Christmas Eve to tell us that the Light had come into the world. He is our Light, our Sun, our All.

The Practice of Silence

The meditations for the Stations of the Cross are most fruitful if they relate to daily life some trial we are struggling with now. For example, our Lord’s silence when He was condemned to death, when He was tormented by the soldiers, or when He fell under the weight of the Cross – this can be related to that commonplace of childhood: bickering.

Bickering is a form of verbal cannibalism. The one who holds out longer with his pecking at another is victor, tor, having reduced the victim to tears, goaded him to losing his temper, striking, or some other form of retaliation, which is all reported as an unprovoked injustice as follows:

“But I didn’t do anything. Nothing. I just said…”

“I just said” is himself far more culpable, usually, than the poor soul he has goaded beyond endurance. There is no real remedy for this but silence on the part of victims. Abstinence from it on the part of attackers is the perfect solution, of course, but if someone does start, silence will stop him.

This, however, is awfully hard on the one who is silent, because this is how bickering goes (as if you didn’t know):

“You pig. You took the biggest.”

“I did not, and I’m not a pig.”

“You are too.”

“I am not.”

“You are too. Pig!”

“I am not a pig. I’m not. I’m not a pig I’m not a pig I’m not a pig!”

“You are too. You are a pig you are a pig you are a pig.”

“I’m not I’m not I’m not.”

“You are you are you are.”

This could go on for an hour if Mother didn’t begin to froth at the mouth. Whereas the silence treatment winds up the conversation (if you can call it that) as follows:

“You pig. You took the biggest.”

“I did not. And I’m not a pig.”

“You are too.”

Silence. In other words, you are a Pig.

O cruel silence … But children well understand that no one is really a pig; this is only a game to see who can make the other lose his temper first. It is ugly and mean; and the winner is usually the older child because he knows the extent of the younger’s endurance.

Out of his own store of unavenged wrongs, he chooses this way to refresh a bruised ego. If we have taught them what our Lord said must be the very basis for our behavior, we have the point of departure. “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.”

 Learning this, we know what we must know in order to put meditations on the Passion together with events out of daily life and discover how to use them. Then we can see – and children can see it – that to provoke a brother or a sister is to provoke Christ; to be silent under provocation is to be silent with Christ. It is not good to make such accusations while saying the Stations, but rather to connect the meditations with these real problems (names of particular children omitted), and return to the principles when we are on the scene of abuses that we must correct.

“You are teasing Christ when you tease your brother. It is the same. Whatsoever you do … , He said. You torment him just for the fun of it the way the soldiers tormented our Lord. Yet you really love him, as you really love our Lord. Keep these things in the front of your mind during Lent, and try to bite your tongue when you are tempted to unkindness.

“Each time you keep from saying something unkind, it is a triumph of grace, and our Lord will strengthen you with grace for the next time. There are powerful graces coming to us during Lent, and we must try to use them to rid ourselves of our faults so that on Easter we can be free of them, like the newly baptized are free of Original Sin.”

 Impossible? Not really, although it will probably take a lifetime to do it. But it is the goal, and especially during Lent it is the spirit of the preparation: to be as those newborn, on Easter morning. If we are spectators to such a moral victory, we must be sure to congratulate the hero.

“Darling, I heard N. today when he called you a pig and tried to make you angry. It was wonderful, the way you didn’t answer back and only walked away. You used silence the way our Lord used it, the way He wants you to use it. When you are silent in union with Him, you are growing in the likeness of Christ.”

 When Dominic Savio was silent before an unjust accusation, he shamed the other boys into admitting their guilt. This is often the effect of heroic efforts to reach out to Christ and bear hurts with Him.

Grace is the invisible ingredient in all these struggles for perfection. For every honest effort, one may put a bean in the jar. There are beans for all kinds of things: no desserts, no jumping for the telephone (a genius in our midst suggested this to eliminate violent jostling, wrestling, racing, leaping, and tugging – an excruciating discipline); no complaining about anything; doing chores promptly; no weekly penny for candy, and many more, including that magnificent and most glorious of all: coming when called. All who do this are known as St. Theresas.

Actually, when you scan the long list of them, they amount to what spiritual directors call the “interior mortifications.” Our mantel is bare this season except for the two candelabra with their twelve candles and the crucifix between them. Even the bread and the bakings speak to us of Lent. Crosses of seeds decorate orate the bread (because when you see the seeds, you remember about “die so you may live”), and on biscuit crusts and meat pies, symbols of the Passion are cut.

The Scourging

“Pilate scourged Jesus.”

Pilate was disturbed by the meek majesty of his prisoner. He turned abruptly and disappeared into his palace, then had Jesus brought before him – to remind Christ, that He was only a prisoner, nothing more.

“What is your crime?” asked Pilate, hiding his interest beneath the mask of official boredom.

Jesus replied, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

That was indeed his crime in the eyes of his accusers; their kingdom was very much of this world.

Pilate knew that Jesus was no criminal; but Pilate was a worldling, like the Pharisees. So he sent Jesus to be scourged.

God so loved the world as to die for it. Pilate so loved the world as to crucify Christ.

Do I love the world as Christ did – or as Pilate loved it?

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