I was sitting with my now eight-year-old, reading to her from her Reconciliation book about sin.
She asked for examples of mortal sins besides killing, and I wasn’t sure where I wanted this conversation to go, so I kept it simple and said, “Well, some people choose not to go to Mass on Sunday and do other things instead.”
And her response was shock and surprise: “I know I don’t go sometimes when I am sick, but why would anyone not want to go to Mass on purpose?”
“Well,” I began, “when you get older, you might not always want to go to Mass either.”
And while I delighted at her protest that she would never skip Mass, the thought of her unknown future was a sobering reality.
Plenty of proverbial ink has been spilled attempting to explain how to keep your kids Catholic. While our children have free will, there are some things parents can do to stack the deck, so to speak, especially through our own example and witness.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a short, excellent section on the duties of parents, which I highly encourage everyone to read (CCC 2221-2231). I will summarize a few points below.
Overall, I think it all boils down to two words: conversion and repentance.
Conversion
We all just finished celebrating the Christmas season — the celebration of the Incarnation in which God took on a face and a name. Love could now be seen. Love came into a family, the Holy Family, to show us how to love like God.
Now, in Ordinary Time, we parents are to make God incarnational to our kids by creating a loving family culture.
As a parent, you are God’s face to your children. Your goal is to introduce your children to their Heavenly Father, who loves them. If they develop a sincere relationship with the God who desires them, they are more likely to continue that relationship.
Paragraph 2225 of the Catechism says, “Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of faith.” We do this first by welcoming them into the mystery that we are trying to live out ourselves.
If you are going to be the mediator of God’s love and protection to your children, how is your relationship with God? Do your children see you praying and spending time in the Word? Do you pray with your kids? Are you letting God transform your heart to be more like his? Do you exude the fruits of the Spirit, such as love, joy, peace or generosity?
No one will do the above perfectly (see my next point), but it’s important that we are continually conformed to the image of Christ so we can bear it to our children.
We show them with our witness that the spiritual life is transformative and worth living.
We can force them to go to Mass when they are under our roof, but wouldn’t it be better to invite them on an adventure of a lifetime?
We can immerse them in the mysteries of faith by creating a culture of liturgical living — more on that next month.
Repentance
Paragraph 2223 of the Catechism states, “Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule” (emphasis mine). It also says in that same paragraph that parents have a grave responsibility to give a good example to their children.
Many of us grew up with an image that God was either a meticulous Santa who knew if you were naughty or nice, who would reward the nice and punish the naughty, or an overbearing father who demanded a lot of you and was disappointed when you failed.
As I have come to learn in my own walk with God, neither of these images is true. And neither of these bear witness to tenderness, forgiveness or respect.
God wants us to share in his divine nature! He reveals himself to us so we can respond to him and, thus, by knowing him, love him and others far beyond our natural capacity (CCC 52).
God knows we will mess up along the way. He experiences sorrow for our sins because they hurt our relationship with him and is concerned because the consequences could be deadly. But he has provided every remedy for our transgressions, including asking for forgiveness in the Our Father and giving us the healing sacrament of Confession. We must be humble enough to admit when we have messed up and ask forgiveness from our family members and God.
We are to be merciful as our Father is merciful, which means our homes are to be places where we model forgiveness to our children. We get comfortable going to Confession regularly. We ask forgiveness and give forgiveness. “Each and everyone should be generous and tireless in forgiving one another for offenses, quarrels, injustices and neglect.” (CCC 2227)
If your children are older, it’s not too late! You never stop being their parent. You can still give a sincere witness of repentance and the joy of the Gospel. When I think of my daughter growing up and possibly straying, I pray that, like the parable of the prodigal son, she will know of our love and mercy so that she can come running home to the Father’s loving arms.
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