My Dearl Little Sheeps #3: School Children

My dear little sheeps,

I was reflecting the other day about my role as your Spiritual Father. One of my joys as your Sacred Pastor is to visit our parish school. I can hardly wait for the new school year to begin.

I encourage all the children to ask me questions. They neatly write their questions with a #2 pencil on a 3x5 card which allows me to choose the questions that are the most relevant and of course avoiding any kind of scandal. So, in a classroom of 34 children and 45 minute periods, I of course can answer in depth three of their questions with the remaining 40 minutes of class time devoted to encouraging vocations among the young men.

Oftentimes, as the little 3rd graders sit in my lap during one of my school visits the children will want to know if I was born a priest and could say the Sacred Mass when I was their age. No, I assure them, I was just a normal little boy like them who went to Holy Mass every day of my life, sometimes twice on Sundays, just as they do.

As an aside, our school's third grade teacher, Miss DeSilva, still teaches the children to stand when I enter the room- such a show of spontaneous respect from these little ones-don't we all wish for those days long gone when all children practiced this kind of respect for priests? And Miss DeSilva, I must congratulate you in public for how well you are getting along in learning English. Take some of the $18,000 year salary you are paid and celebrate your mastery of a new language. How proud your parents in Mexico must be that you get to work so closely with the Holy Priests in educating the young in the United States. Muy buena! (Very good girl!)

I get questions from all ages, even those curious eighth graders, just at the bloom of manhood and womanhood, will ask me if I even had a mother, "with the way you act and all" as these young ones say in their vernacular way. No, children, I indeed did have a mother who from the day I was born predicted that I would be a Holy Priest. I tell them that I even enjoyed video games as a teenager, playing exciting games like "Pong" and so forth, spending many a quarter on fast paced pinball machines at the mall arcade. We would take these semi-monthly "free day" breaks from our studies as teenage seminarians. I assure them, that even if they play video games all day long, that God is still calling them to a joy filled life as a celibate priest.

Several of the kids like to say that I am "whacked" as a loving homage, I believe, to my just-like-them upbringing and faithfulness to my vows. Such a loss for the church it is that we no longer have high-school seminaries where these young men can be disciplined, molded and shaped while they are still young into fine priests. I mean I lived in the barracks-like seminaries since I was their age and look how good I turned out. Of course, I share all of this out of Divine Humility to encourage these youthful boys.

Of course, we encourage all of you who are parents to place your children into Catholic Education at our parish school. Of course, if you cannot make that sacrifice (and I am sure that God will understand your explanation when you meet HIM in heaven) then our CCD or “Formation” department will also do some good for your children.

Leading you onward,

Father Ty Rolean, OMFG
Pastor, St. Palter Catholic Church