fun at church: when your 3-year-old asks "Does Father feed us because church is so long?"

daughter #1 'helping' her dad in the chancery office when she was 1 

• Just this Sunday, my six month old pulled at a ribbon decorating a tall candle on the tetrapod - it immediately spills hot wax all over... my dress, the floor, and thank God not her little bare legs or my own! I was next for communion so I received after a quick wax check, closing my mouth on the spoon because I'd completely lost my composure. My three year old then prayed after liturgy that her family not get burned.

• My husband boldly took over singing a hymn as the cantor received communion, but he didn't know the rest of the verse so he fudged it with until someone else jumped in. 

• Three year old regularly grabs large handfuls of blessed bread. When we visit other parishes that puts smaller trays or larger chunks out, this can cause her to take a third of it.

• My kid has done the handful thing too! Or digs through the basket to find a satisfactory piece. *face palm* She's better about it now, depending on how hungry she is...

• This tike, Harry, has a knack for knowing priests. I remember when I was with some folks, and Vespers had been more or less canceled. The kiddo kept looking through the door, saying "Father Michael.." When Father George came back from sabbatical, he would mutter "Father George... Father George.. Father George Gray.."

• My son at about 15 months had picked up a 'salty' word from, I  ashamed to say , my mother. Right in the middle of the consecration he decides to use his new word very loudly many times. So, I 'go over' another word with him loudly enough to be heard for a few pews....  "FORK, yes, fork, it goes with spoon. Can you say spoon "

• In Dublin, at Fr. Serge Kelleher's Ukrainian Greek Catholic mission at St. Kevin's Oratory, in the basement of St. Mary's Pro Cathedral. He had a young parish, consisting mainly of Slavic families from all over, many with infants and toddlers. As the Oratory was not built for Byzantine worship, they had a collapsible Iconostasis, on the same level as the nave. During the Divine Liturgy (conducted in a mix of Slavonic, modern Ukrainian, and Irish Gaelic, one little boy, about 18 months old, was fascinated by Fr. Serge, and kept crawling over to the Royal Doors. Three times he crawled over, and three times one of his parents retrieved him. On the fourth try, however, his parents were distracted by his baby sister, and he managed to crawl all the way across the floor, under the doors, and right up to Fr. Serge, standing at the the Holy Table. He tugs on Fr. Serge's Phelonion. Fr. Serge looks down, and, in mid chant, bends over, reverses the baby, gives him a pat on his bottom, and sends him back out, under the doors, to his parents. Fr. Serge never missed a beat, and the Liturgy was not disrupted.

•  I wait for the days when my children will ask if giving money to the church is tipping God

• We help prompt our daughter to pray to Jesus after receiving communion. Once she said, it's time to eat donuts, Jesus!

Thanks, readers, for sharing some funnies! Write more in the comments below!

....click here for more cute, crazy stuff from church-going kiddos.... 

Dormition of Saint Anne, mother of Mary the Theotokos

O godly, ever-blessed Anna, thou didst bear the pure Mother of God who conceived Him Who is our life. Thou hast now passed to heaven/ and art rejoicing in glory, asking forgiveness for those who faithfully honour thee. 

We celebrate the memory of the ancestors of Christ/ and faithfully ask their help; that all may be delivered from every affliction who cry: Be with us, O God, for it pleased Thee to glorify them. 

a feast day for the holy prophet Elijah

An angel in the flesh and the cornerstone of the prophets, the second forerunner of the coming of Christ, Glorious Elijah sent grace from on high to Elisha, to dispel diseases and to cleanse lepers. Therefore, he pours forth healings on those who honor him.

Prophet Elijah of great renown, seer of the mighty mighty works of God, by your command you held back the rain! Pray for us to the only Lover of mankind!

Elijah- man of contradictions- a saint before the time of Jesus, an 'angel in the flesh' 

Pray for us! 

Do it for God! a link to Brother Isaac's blog

"One sentence!

Once sentence was all it took to remind me that anything I am doing for myself and not for God is something I am doing wrong.  It is something that needs to be fixed.  The fix will bring peace and joy.

The simple answer solved an immediate problem but has relevance for every single one of my actions.  It doesn’t matter what I am doing.  It can be singing, cleaning, speaking, teaching, welcoming guests, etc.

The answer to so many of my problems is simple.

“Do it for God!” .....read the entire post at Brother Isaac's blog....

do Bi-ritual Priests strengthen or weaken priesthood?

"If I can unite in myself the thought and the devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russians with the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians. From that secret and unspoken unity in myself can eventually come a visible and manifest unity of all Christians." --- Thomas Merton 

"Many will remember Pope St. John Paul II’s words from “Ut Unum Sint, “the Church must breathe with her two lungs”–its Eastern one and its Western one. In writing this, our late Holy Father was referring to the need to unify the East and West as one Church to combat the dangers of secularism and grow in cultural, intellectual, spiritual, and geopolitical strength. To be clear, the pope was not specifically exhorting individual Catholics to become bi-ritual. His encyclical calling for a balanced resuscitation and cooperation between the main traditions of the Church arose from a predominance of the Latin tradition while the Eastern tradition became more obscure. But, in the effort to achieve this balance, it can fall to priests and teachers to open the minds and hearts of individual Catholics to the liturgies they are not familiar with. With this knowledge, the Church herself might begin to breathe more fully and grow in health and strength. It is to this end that a bi-ritual experience in the context of education can help further this holy objective by making the world of liturgy full and fulfilling to those for whom it has grown stale or, what is worse, stultifying." --- by GREGORY DIPIPPO .... continue at New Liturgical Movement