For a child...

Once again in Church today I was distracted - or attracted, whichever is apt, you decide - by a child or rather by the way it was handled by its father.  No sooner than the Mass began I realised there was a man holding a small baby girl sleeping in his arms, beside me.  Nothing new about that I suppose, but the way he was holding that baby was so odd.  Once or twice I almost extended my hand to prevent the baby from falling off his arms, so precariously was he holding the baby.  I realised he must not be the father or he has never held his child, ever before!  As the Mass proceeded I realised there was another relative of this man standing right behind him, once in away peeping above his shoulder to look at the baby, but saying nothing about the weird way he was handling that sleeping child.  During the Gospel reading, it was too much for me and I turned to the man and asked him where the mother of the child is, clearly intending that he hand the child to its mother for safety! He showed his hand somewhere among the women and smiled!  By now I had realised that the child was not fully normal.  But it still was a child. The worst was yet to come!

During consecration, he was making the sleeping child squat on the ground - the child is still sleeping, it has not yet learnt to sit and is dropping, head first, like a pole with a round bottom!  I turned to him, picked up the child, made the father sit properly and put the child reclining on his lap.  It was right during the consecration time, I didn't at all feel the need to say 'sorry' to Jesus.  I just had to do this!