Recently my son and his second grade class rocked the third sacrament like a bunch of professional Catholics. They even scored some wine on the way back to the pew , a coup that gave them major cause for celebration as they high fived each other and snickered. We let them have their tiny victory and waited for the reception afterward to use our morality speeches about alcoholism and the perils of ending up living in a wilted cardboard box underneath a highway overpass. Triumphant, they ran away to the jungle gym hopped up on super sweet cake and juice boxes.
Just a few months prior to this we had a completely different group on our hands. Somber and racked with guilt, these same children waited endlessly on a seemingly never moving line to confess their sins . I had jokingly mentioned to my son that any sin forgotten is a black spot on you soul that grows and rots until it crosses the border from venial to mortal. Then you are shit out of luck. This was the example given to me (minus the shit out of luck line) by Sister Angelica, hater of children, and destroyer of dreams. Her harrowing account of what could actually happen to your sparkly little soul in days flat was astonishing. You could actually feel your airway start to constrict with fear when she spoke of the fate that clearly awaited anyone with a poor memory or a bad case of the confession booth jitters. Hell.
You were going to hell, where you would be hung upside down over eternal fires, prodded by evil imps with spears, separated from everything and everyone you loved and be made to listen to that "rock and roll" on an endless loop. This fear was instrumental in helping us hone our memorization skills, and our ability to repeat the Act of Contrition flawlessly. The ignorant few that made the mistake of writing this prayer on their hands for quick reference just in case they had a senior moment in the booth paid dearly. They were rewarded with a swift crack on the head and an extremely painful hand washing ritual that made Karen Silkwood's radioactive scrub down with metal sponges, poisonous disinfectant and men in hazmat suits seem a breeze by comparison.
That is why my mouth dropped open when I saw what each second grader was clutching in their sweaty little paws. Cheat sheets. Steps one through eight with a bold, underlined title. "How to Go to Confession". After my initial shock wore off, it dawned on me. This was absolute brilliance. What I wouldn't have given for that tiny little life line when I was a freckled, pigtailed panic stricken kid. It made me want to find Sister Angelica (if she was indeed still alive) at whatever retirement home for angry nuns they stuck her in and paste a thousand copies of it to her window. Here it is you crazy loon, proof that tiny souls can still be wiped shiny clean and new even with the use of helpful hints.
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