Tour your parish church

If your children feel uncomfortable at Mass, do what you can to help them feel more at home. One step is to arrive early or stay late and give the kids a tour. Actually, it's best if you go when few people are around so you can explore without interrupting anyone or feeling ill at ease.

You might ask your Director of Religious Education or your pastor to lead you on the tour, but feel free to handle this yourself. Just show appropriate respect to the space and to any pray-ers scattered throughout the church.

Stained-glass windows are a good place to start. Look them over. Ask the kids for their reaction. If yours is an older style church, odds are the windows tell important stories of our faith. If you don't know all the characters or what's taking place, do some investigating with someone who would know. Or look for clues in a Catholic encyclopedia.

Move on to the statues. Identify each one as best you can. Again, if you can't identify one or more of these holy ancestors, it's a good excuse to do some sleuthing. Look high and low for other artwork and religious and liturgical symbols around the church, especially around the altar.

For example, grapes point to Eucharist as well as the scriptures that tell us Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. We all hope to bear good fruit in our lives.

Likewise, sheaves of wheat represent the bread that becomes the body of Christ at the Consecration. A lamb stands for Jesus, whose passion and death atone for our human guilt. The four evangelists are represented thus: Matthew as an angel, Mark as a lion, Luke as a writer or an ox, John as an eagle.

Look around: even churches with the most austere designs employ numerous symbols of our faith. As you leave, make sure everyone dips their fingers in the holy water. Remind them that at our Baptism we were washed clean and by blessing ourselves with this holy water we refresh our faith, our hope, and our love, each time we employ it.