2025 Catholic Schools Week Supplement
From the heart: A child celebrates Jesus by writing a song about the gifts he shares
As a second-grade student at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in New Albany, Emma Brose wrote a song praising Jesus, getting help with the sheet music for the song from Katelyn Stumler, director of liturgical music for the parish. (Submitted photo)
By John Shaughnessy
As a second-grade student, Emma Brose felt so inspired about going to confession for the first time and receiving her first holy Communion that she did something that has touched the hearts of people.
She wrote a song that shares her love for Jesus.
“A few people said, ‘The song is so beautiful, it made me cry,’ ” says Emma, a student at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in New Albany. “And there’s this boy who’s in the children’s choir with me. He said, ‘How do you do that?!’
“I just love listening to the songs about God and Jesus at church, and I love singing. I’m always in theater, and that inspired me to write my own song. I just tried to put my feelings about Jesus into words.”
Consider some of the lyrics she wrote for “We Love You, O Lord”—lyrics that reflect the essence of the two sacraments that the now third-grade child received last spring.
“We praise you, O Lord,
“When we sin, he forgives us,
“When he forgives us, we come closer
“When we come closer, we will pray
“And say, ‘We love you, O Lord.’
“Dear Jesus, thank you for being the bread of life,
“For you’re the Savior of the world.”
She sang the song for the first time in public at a school Mass with the parish’s children’s choir in September, and later that month during a parish Mass.
“When I’m singing it in church, it makes me feel like I’m talking to Jesus,” says Emma, the 9-year-old daughter of Amy and Kay Brose. “I am very thankful for all he has done for us.”
As the director of liturgical music for Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Katelyn Stumler remembers the moment when Emma approached her about her song.
“She just told me, ‘I wrote a song, and I want to share it with you.’ I was really excited,” Stumler notes. “I remember when she first showed me her lyrics, which were just written out on a piece of paper by hand. I was truly inspired that such a beautiful prayer to Jesus had just come right out of her. And associating it with being in that year of receiving those two very special sacraments, I could just see how God was at work within her, using her talents and inspiring her to write this.
“And when I heard the tune she had come up with to go with the lyrics, I was really blown away—just how beautifully she had put it together. I asked her if it would be OK if we used the song for our children’s choir and use it at Mass to help other people pray and bring them closer to Jesus. It was really awesome, especially to see a second-grader come up with such a song.”
Using Emma’s lyrics and tune, Stumler wrote the sheet music for the song and the piano accompaniment for the piece—a collaboration that Emma described as “fun.”
Emma also notes that she wrote the song shortly after she received the sacrament of reconciliation and before she received holy Communion for the first time.
“It just kind of flowed when I was thinking about it. It just came out of me,” she says.
The joy of receiving both sacraments still lingers for her.
“It just felt like a sweet moment—both first reconciliation and first Communion,” she says. “I’m thankful for Jesus forgiving us when we sin. I’m thankful for him saving us from sin.”
Her gratitude for the gift of the Eucharist has especially deepened since the time she wrote the song, a time when she had yet to receive Communion for the first time.
“Now that I know what it’s like to receive Communion, I feel even better about my song.
“I feel closer to Jesus.”
(To view a video of Emma singing “We Love You, O Lord” with the children’s choir of Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, follow this link, tinyurl.com/OLPHEmmaSong.) †
