But do we have to act like 6 year olds?

This year I didn't sleep all night before Pentecost mass, and I was (understandably) falling asleep during the mass. I remember getting the hiccups during the Eucharistic rite, and I had no doubt in my mind that God loved me. I suppose that was the best I was going to be able to do that day. It’d be ridiculous for me to look at that and say “you didn’t pray that mass like you should have, and it was most inappropriate to be smiling wildly because you were hiccupping.” It’s okay to love God like a 6 year old on occasion!

I ended up at St. Alphonsus church in Brooklyn Center at 5:30 this Sunday for mass. I should include that it was 5:30 pm, because the story would have been different 12 hours earlier (and a average 50 years older... there seems to be a positive relationship between mean age and quality of sacred music). I got to mass very early, knowing that I was going to have difficulties praying such a mass. God is good to me though, and I was laughing from the very beginning: the entrance hymn was in 5/4 and it reminded me to no end of "Take 5". To actually pay attention to the mass I had to wipe the thought of the ridiculous entrance from my head, otherwise I'd substantially back up my claim that "The Gather Hymnal" ripped off Dave Brubeck. What else could I have gotten out of that ridiculous song than a good laugh with God!

I'm a big fan of child-like love of God, because it makes all the sense in the world. It's not paradoxical in the least to say that God, the fountain of all intellect, is sometimes best approached by children with little intellect. It came as a bit of a shock to me to think that I could sit in the chairs at adoration, but that's what God wants from us: he wants to live with us. God is everything, which means that he is both a God you can sit in a chair and talk to, and he is a God that you must kneel before and wonder at. He is a God that you can say "I love you" and he is pleased, but he is also a God that you have to understand. He is an indulgent God, and gives his children every little thing they want, but he is also a demanding God who expects you to deny yourself everything.

It’s great that we can act like children around God. We can even have wild swings of temperament around him and make great resolutions that no man tied to his intellect would keep. Such abandonment is so pleasing to him. But you can’t live that. It’s not as if there are rules for such things (you can only laugh at the entrance hymn once a month) either, which makes it all the more difficult. The 5:30 parishioners of St. Alphonsus act like 6-year olds every Sunday, where as the 10:00 parishioners of St. Agnes never act like 6-year olds (even those who are properly aged for such behavior). I can’t hiccup my way through mass every day, but I can’t be mad at God for not being able to pray the mass either.

So yes, you do have to act like a 6-year old every now and then.