Maurizio Chiodi: sharing prayer with the children (3)





Even before accompanying and letting the children participate in the celebration of the Eucharist parents need to introduce their children to domestic prayer, making them pray and above all really praying with them

We are happy to publish online the contribution of Maurizio Chiodi proposed during a spirituality meeting dedicated to the families of the “La Pietra Scartata” Association and the Ai.Bi. Amici dei Bambini and reprized in issue no. 12 of the semi-annual magazine “Lemà sabactàni? – contributions to a culture of hospitality“.

The notes proposed by Fr Maurizio Chiodi – professor of moral theology at the Pontifical Institute “John Paul II” in Rome and the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy in Milan, author of the book Drama, gift, welcome. Anthropology and theology of adoption (Edizioni San Paolo, 2020), inspirer of the La Pietra Scartata Association and its first Spiritual Advisor, as well as editorial director of the magazine “Lemà Sabactàni?”- have as their sole purpose that of favoring and inviting every Christian family to live the ‘extraordinary’ experience of prayer.

With prayer, it is certainly not a question of burdening families with further duties, burdens to bear or obligations to observe. On the contrary – observes Chiodi – «prayer is upstream and downstream of the gift of the Spirit: ‘upstream’, because it is like a place that prepares space and time to welcome the Breath of God, who gives us himself, and ‘downstream’ because it is the fruit of this grace that slowly shapes and transforms our life, making us the image of the Son who is the image of the Father“, As the apostle Paul says”and all of us, with our faces uncovered, reflecting the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are transformed into that same image, from glory to glory, according to the action of the Spirit of the Lord“(2 Cor 3:18).

The seven stages in which the text is proposed and which will mark the precious reflection of Fr Maurizio Chiodi, highlight the original and constitutive relationship between prayer and faith, the family as a ‘place’ of prayer and a privileged form of education to the faith, the resistances and objections that stand in the way of those who want to introduce themselves to prayer, the link between family and Christian community, the concrete forms of prayer.

Third stage (To read the second HERE)

  1. The ways, times, places, forms of prayer

In its ordinary forms, prayer requires – much more than a few beautiful words – special attention to ways, times, places, forms. We dwell on these ‘doors of access’ to the experience of prayer, trying to pay attention to its various profiles, from community to personal, from that of a couple to that with children.

5.1 The ways of prayer

First of all there are the ways of prayer. It is clear that, in the Christian community, the prayer of the Eucharist is the evident and explicit implementation of our being the Lord’s Church, called to remember the saving event of his Easter with gratitude. In this respect, the Eucharist is the climax and theorigin of every prayer and also of education in prayer: as the Second Vatican Council says, it is the sacrament “source and summit [fons et culmen] of the whole Christian life “(Lumen Gentium11 b).

For spouses, participate together to the celebration of the Eucharist it is an important and decisive, ordinary and extraordinary occasion for living that grace of the sacrament which they welcome every day and which thus spreads throughout life. Participation together – if possible – can be a precious opportunity to perform some revelatory gestures of the grace that binds one to the other and both to the Lord: to prepare (first) to listen to the liturgy Word with the lectioshake hands during the Our Father, exchange the sign of peace and perhaps a small note of gratitude at the end of the celebration …

Here it seems to me that the also deserves a special mention participation in the Eucharist of the whole family, with children – even if this discourse does not concern those who are already adolescents, for whom other questions arise, nor those who are too young. It is in fact evident that, from the educational point of view, what is the culmination and origin – the Eucharist – does not necessarily have to be proposed from the beginning, even if it is towards it that one tends.

In any case, even before accompanying and letting the children participate in the celebration of the Eucharist parents need to introduce their children to domestic prayer, making them pray and above all really praying with them. I think this is an important aspect: it is important that parents, from the beginning, do not just ‘make their children say’ their prayers, but that they themselves pray with them.

For this reason, parents should not be surprised or worried too much if children, especially small ones, disturb or pray badly during prayer. Don’t you pray (only) for They. The goal, praying with the children, is not so much to make the children pray. It is the parents who, first of all, pray and their children also pray with them, obviously taking into account in a decisive way that, in those prayers, the children are also present. Parents, by praying, share this beautiful thing in life with their children, just as they share, in the appropriate ways and times, of course, many other beautiful things in their life.

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Maurizio Chiodi: sharing prayer with the children (3) – La Pietra Scartata