Sophie Prays

This morning as I was cooking breakfast I heard Sophie talking to herself at the table: “…I offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity…” I looked over to see her pouring intently over a little rosary pamphlet, her finger tracing over the words but . She was mashing up prayers from the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the Stations of the Cross (We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you… by your holy cross you have redeemed the world) and interpolating her own prayers, “I love you, Jesus,” when she couldn’t remember the words. It was so sweet that I grabbed my phone and started recording. The sound is pretty bad. You can hear the onions frying in the pan behind me and Anthony making noise over the the side, crashing the mixing bowls on the shelf. So I’ll try to transcribe what she’s saying below the video.

“… of the Father. We offer to you the Body… the Body and the Blood, the Soul and Divinity of your dearly… of your dearly beloved Son our Lord Jesus Christ that he loves us so so much [Anthony squawks] Jesus was just pretending he [squawk] the Body and Blood Soul and Divinity… Jesus, I love you so much… We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you of the [squawk!] immaculate sin of the Lord Jesus… Lord Lord… Lord Jesus Christ we love you so so so so so much with a big smooch and we adore you, O Christ, and we praise you [turns the page] by the holy cross … we… love you… with all the angels around you… We adore you, O Christ…” Then she notices me recording and stops speaking audibly. 

Sometimes I worry that I focus too much on Bella and that Sophie and Ben’s catechesis has been neglected. Then I observe something like this or when my sister’s friend asks about what she does at Christmas and Sophie’s first response is that she goes to Midnight Mass and when asked if she also goes to Midnight Mass at Easter Sophie replies no to the Easter Vigil. I think she’s learning by observing and by participating in prayer, by the books we read and by the art we look at. And she’s also learning a lot directly from Bella. I watch them play at being nuns and see that she already loves St Therese and St Sophia and St Rose of Lima and St Isabella St Teresa and Holy Mary. And probably a few others too. So, yeah, on second thought, I think Sophie’s catechesis is going just fine even if I have never got around to doing a single Catechesis of the Good Shepherd lesson even though I ordered the manual a year ago.