Catholic Activity: First Confession

Teach your children the significance of the Sacrament of Penance (sometimes called "Reconciliation"). Remember to record the date so the child can keep this as a personal anniversary.

DIRECTIONS

Then there is the first Confession. To turn such a day into a "holy day" we parents should prepare ourselves for it by special study and much prayer in order to be able to give the child an even deeper understanding of what he is going to do when he kneels down and confesses — not to Father So-and-So, but to God, Himself — all the wrongs that cloud his young conscience. When he is going to hear for the first time the momentous words, "Thy sins are forgiven!" we help him realize with chalk and blackboard what will happen to him. We write down a list of sins such as a child may commit, and then we take a wet cloth and erase them completely and ask the child, "Can you still read what was there? Just like this God will erase your sins from His memory. He will forgive them completely." We cannot do enough to impress the young soul with the tremendous happening at the moment of the "Ego te absolve." Of course, the child should remember the day of his first Confession and always later celebrate this anniversary as a private feast day just between himself and God.

Activity Source: Around the Year with the Trapp Family by Maria Augusta Trapp, Pantheon Books Inc., New York, New York, 1955