There is a time-honored (and somewhat terrifying) theory that the way a child beholds their parents will form the way a child beholds God. This concept of projection from parent to God was explored and expounded upon by philosophers like Heidegger, Marx, and Freud, taking on new relevance with the passage of time—especially considering that the most strident atheists in academia and history suffered absent parents at a tender age.
As Holy Week dawns anew, it brings with it the spiritual cycle of change, ever old and ever new—a redirection of life to everlasting life. What more is life than a series of conversions? A rhythmic turning back to the truth, requiring change and challenge. For people who are parents, the interplay of the old and the new takes on particular importance and drama when they turn to their children.
Fr. Robert J. Spitzer—a brilliant Jesuit author, scholar, and educator—encourages all Catholic parents to enshrine a picture of the Prodigal Son in their homes (he recommends Rembrandt’s masterpiece) to model both parenthood for them, and God the Father for their children. That parable is about God so thoroughly, so beautifully, and so simply. It is the good news of divine forbearance, forgiveness, and friendship. It is a story that should be present to every parent and every child as they experience the story of God’s presence and power in the world. Of course, the Mass is that story, and Holy Week is the beginning and the end of its eternal telling.
This Holy Week, Catholic parents are invited—as they are every year and every day—to remake themselves as images of the living God to their children in living out their vocation. There are two timely resources available this year that can help make that change happen in natural, accessible, and enjoyable fashion. They offer everyday opportunities for parents to do what every parent should strive to do and to be for their children: storytellers—just as Our Lord was. The one is a picture book by Anthony DeStefano, From Bread and Wine to Saints Divine; the other, an animated film released this Holy Week from Angel Studios, The King of Kings.
From Bread and Wine to Saints Divine
Anthony DeStefano’s book is a children’s meditation on the changing cycles of things in nature that leads up to the supernatural change of the Eucharist. In presenting the life-giving and wondrous changes of the world, it draws young imaginations to the ultimate change that we can know: transubstantiation. With lively illustrations and a lovely nursery-rhyme tone, this book affords an intimate moment for parents to encounter the mysteries of the world and the liturgy together with their children.
While From Bread and Wine to Saints Divine succeeds in connecting what DeStefano calls “the remarkable riddle of change to the awesome change of the Real Presence,” the story he tells is also the story of a child’s experience of the world. From melting ice cubes to birthday cakes to crayon art, the changing story that children are all a part of is tangibly presented before being integrated into the highest of all changes at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And even there—especially there—the children are given their rightful place as participants in the Mystical Supper and the Lamb’s divine play of making all things new.
As the season changes from winter to spring, so too do parents have to reorient, recommit, and resume the top priority of projecting who God is to their children. In reading and pondering over the ideas and images of this attractive little book, there is a kind of trans-substantial change that parents can assume as they quietly become Christ the storyteller to their children. Fathers and mothers can become the Father, bringing their sons and daughters to the Son.
The King of Kings
In theaters as of April 11th, The King of Kings is an interesting companion piece to DeStefano’s picture book, presenting the familiar biblical story from an unfamiliar perspective. It commemorates the little-known work Charles Dickens wrote for his children, The Life of Our Lord. The film’s bright animation and fairy-tale qualities will appeal instantly to young audiences, making The King of Kings a fine choice for parents to open their children’s minds to the redemption Catholics celebrate at this holiest time. Reverent yet exciting, with a surprisingly star-studded cast including Kenneth Branagh and Oscar Isaac, this children’s feature brings the Gospel to fresh life—though with slightly anachronistic twists given Charles Dickens’ Victorian presence among the swords and sandals.
Regarding the subject of parental storytelling in bringing Christ to children, this movie speaks to parents differently than DeStefano’s volume, but just as directly, as they undertake not only bringing Holy Week to life for their children, but also the overarching mystical charge of being Catholic parents. Besides the warm, fireside premise of a father telling the story of Jesus to his son, there is a striking moment that goes beyond this and hearkens to the objective of divine projection that parenting can affect.
At one point, Mr. Dickens’s son, who is immersed in the scenes of the story with his father as he narrates them, becomes lost in the tumult of Palm Sunday. He suddenly sees Our Lord looking at him through the milling crowd and, as the boy stands awed before the divine gaze, Christ suddenly becomes his father, and they are reunited. In this (once adults get around Jesus Christ transforming into Charles Dickens), the role of the parent is artistically and boldly suggested by the film: that it is in parents that children learn to see the Son of God—and of course, too, by extension, the Father.
Tell the Tale this Holy Week
Having enjoyed this film (which children surely shall), parents might then turn to their own bedtime story with their children. Taking up From Bread and Wine to Saints Divine, parents can become their own child’s soul-awakening storyteller, uniting the story of the Incarnation to Christ’s presence in the world, which finds its culmination in the Sacrifice of the altar. This is the ultimate mystical change that God has given us to accept with childlike faith so that we can change ourselves in entering into the divine life, on earth as in heaven—and, in turn, change our children into children of God.
Holy Week is a time to enter into that change, that renewed purpose to live out the story and to participate in telling that story by reading aloud or talking in the dining room or before bedtime prayers. God is a parent to all of us, and it is the duty of every parent to bring the parenthood of God to the children they share with God. Stories like From Bread and Wine to Saints Divine and The King of Kings represent the divine rhythms of the liturgy which is the living story of the Church and her faithful. In Mr. DeStefano’s words on this theme:
I’m always talking about the importance of rhythms and how our DNA is wired to be in tune to them—from the elliptical orbits of the planets to the divine activity of creation, death and resurrection, to the seasons of the year, to the simple rhymes in a poem! It’s a deeper subject than people realize, and the liturgy taps into that power!
Holy Week is a story told by the liturgy, and parents are called to participate in that storytelling. Using these two storytelling pieces, media already so beloved by children, parents can bring about a change in the story of this Holy Week—a change in their approach towards the change in their children from earthly creatures to heavenly ones. Parents must be ready to change—to change themselves into Christ, even in a moment, to change their child.
This Holy Week, in addition to engaging the beautiful liturgies of the Church, consider engaging From Bread and Wine to Saints Divine together with The King of Kings with your children. Become a storyteller. Become a Christ. Become a parent who makes God the Father apparent to His little ones.
Editor’s Note: To purchase From Bread and Wine to Saints Divine, by Anthony DeStefano, visit SophiaInstitute.com. To watch King of Kings from Angel Studios, visit Angel.com to find showtimes near you.
Photo by Tamara Govedarovic on Unsplash
