Family Time and Eucharistic Adoration

My blog posts have gone from Lenten season 2023 to Lenten season 2024. 

When I started this blog, our kids were 5 and 10 years old. Now, our oldest is a 14-year old adolescent. Our youngest, at almost 9, still has the innocence and imagination of a child and often, I am touched by his insightful comments. I have realized, especially with my oldest, that as they grow up we need to foster independence, and so there is sometimes a tension between what is mandatory in our family and what they want to do. 

I love the season of Lent because it brings us closer to Jesus’ life, passion, death and resurrection. I am amazed when I think that he was a human like us, and I like to think of all the passages that the church brings to us. As a mom, the question is always there of how to make our faith real for our kids. Today, we are at the door of celebrating the Resurrection, so I wanted to reflect on something we did right before Lent began. 

With so much turmoil in the world and our own difficulties, I felt strongly the need to sit in the presence of the Lord for at least a few minutes. I grew up in Peru, a country with strong Catholic roots. In Lima there is a Eucharistic adoration chapel within a 5-minute walk of my mom’s house, an immense privilege. In San Francisco though, I didn’t know where I could find one. I Googled it and found one at the Church Star of the Sea, rated 4.8 stars on Google maps.

Initially, I was planning to go by myself, but then I figured: why not bring the whole family? We had promised to get boba with the kids. I told them that we could go visit the Church afterwards and that it wouldn’t last more than 15 minutes. I have to admit the enthusiasm was not really there, but I got general agreement for a short religious adventure. I wasn’t prepared for what we were going to experience.

We had been struggling a little bit with my daughter’s faith or what we perceived as a lack thereof. To our (my husband and mine) big surprise, the kids were extremely happy to experience another Church (this one is very beautiful). Since I didn’t have much time, I asked where the adoration chapel was and headed straight there with my husband. Our 8-year old son came with us, prayed for 3mn and asked me if he could go visit the Church to which I agreed. 

Beautiful Adoration Chapel at Star of the Sea Church.

We stayed with my husband in the adoration chapel for no more than 10 minutes. When we left and headed to the temple area, we found our 14-year old strolling in admiration of the building and of the beautiful statues inside the Church. Star of the Sea has a particularity which is the many status of the Virgin Mary. To our big surprise, our 8-yr old went through the entire Church gathering all the pamphlets about the Virgin Mary’s apparitions whose status ornate the template, and happily told me: “mom, look, this is so cool! I have gathered all of these for us to read!” I felt a little self-conscious of taking so many pamphlets from the Church, but I wasn’t going to stop my son’s enthusiasm. 

When we started reading the pamphlets at home, I realized that the Church’s priest had taken the time to write amazing recounts of the many Virgin apparitions in different parts of the world. I had to agree with my son that it was very cool. Even our daughter said she really liked the visit - we lit a candle to one of the Virgins. We left the Church with a happy heart, so grateful to the Lord to have allowed us to live such a nice experience as a family. Our daughter reflected on the statues of the saints, as she needed to pick one for her confirmation.

Lent started a few days later with Ash Wednesday and we were able to attend Mass with the four of us together. I went back to Star of the Sea and there was a renovation going on so I couldn’t access the Adoration Chapel. I wanted to be there almost every day but that wasn’t possible. Sometimes the Lord changes the path you wanted to take, for a good reason. During Lent, we used the nice MagnifiKid! Daily Lenten Journey to pray regularly, sometimes even in the car on our way to school. I continued with my prayers at home, knowing very well that my duty right now is to take care of our “domestic church”. And that living our faith as we are able to, with love and without stress, is what will impact our kids' lives.