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Mass transforms the pattern of our daily lives: I share the cup with someone I might avoid sitting with at the ballpark. (Family Life).

Article Excerpt
My husband and I have five children. We've become the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of the Sunday Two-Step.

It goes like this: Whatever blood has been shed at home ("I don't care if is hot, you're not wearing ripped jeans to church") or in the car ("If you slap her one more time, you're doing the dishes all by yourself next week") on the way to Mass, the two of us know how to exit the car in the parish parking lot smiling and waving and looking, as our oldest child once described it, his teeth clenched, like "The Happy Christian Family Goes to Mass."

We know how to pinch discreetly as we pass through the carved oak doors leading into St. Mary's, and to hiss quietly and distinctly in the offender's ear, "I will discuss this with you when we get home."

The meaning is clear: We're in church and we need our church faces, our church demeanor. We can resume the fighting as soon as we cross back over the border, but for one hour, peace, or something that looks like peace, will prevail. Or you'll be sorry.

Our children, however, have steadfastly refused to dance. If they left the car angry, they entered church angry. They have been known to sit, slouched in the pew, arms folded, head cast down, broadcasting their discomfort to the assembly. I still remember the Sunday one of our teenage daughters stood beside me in the pew, careful neither to touch nor to look at me. At the Sign of Peace, I turned to her and said, "The peace of Christ be with you."

She looked at my outstretched hand, the hand of someone she neither knew nor cared to know, and sighed, "Whatever."

Well, truth be told, I didn't mean it either.

It's taken a while for me to see the grace here. But grace it is, the understanding that what we gather to do each Sunday is not separate from, but part of, our...