PIER – A FAMILY STORY
FROM SCHOOL OF LOVE FOUNDERS, MIKE & KRISTI DENNIHAN
Years ago, it must have been close to Good Friday, our then 3.5 year old daughter asked me, “what is a tomb?” Yikes. “Well,” I answered, “A tomb is like a grave.” “What’s a grave?” she asked… of course. Being a gentle father, I answered her, “A grave is where they put dead people when they die.” “But,” she questioned, “I thought dead people went to heaven when they died.” It was a good point. So I thought for a moment. “Hum…well, when people die their souls go to heaven, but their bodies get put into a grave.” I could tell she was trying to figure this out. So I continued, “That’s actually what death is. It is when a person’s soul goes away from their body.” And being close to Good Friday I asked her: “So, do you know what happened to Jesus when He died on the Cross?” She thought for a moment, and then she answered me (in question form): “Did His Soul go away from His Body?” Wow. I was so impressed that she had followed. “Yes, that’s awesome!” I said. But for fun (and a father’s pride), I asked her a question that no adult would ever think that a 3.5 year old would ever know: “So what do you think happened at the Resurrection?” She looked at me inquisitively. Then she answered me slowly as if questioning every word, “Did… His… Soul… come… back… to His Body?” I was stunned. I was stunned and so proud. “Adults don’t know this stuff!” I congratulated her! Here she was 3.5 years old, digging into the information of the Gospel because she took it at its word.
Your kids and ours have an amazing capacity for the Gospel, and a beautiful interest in it too! If we can begin them on a life-long journey deeper into it, we will be building saints. Exposure to Christ in the Gospels is an unparalleled blessing. You are doing a wonderful thing giving that exposure to your children.
After lots of good intentions, a handful of attempts, and a few different methods, we finally found in this format the kind of prayer we now use every day with our family. It was kind of the “long way” around to a method the Church has presented to us for centuries. This type prayer is taken from the spirituality of many of the great saints and spiritual masters in the Church, but has also been commonly used by normal, good, Catholic families through Church history. We are excited that you and your family are joining us and many others in a journey “into the deep.”
Duc in Altum,