Parents and Teens (Part 1)

 “Parents are the first teachers of their children in the ways of faith.”
(Church Document on infant Baptism)

My sister Beth met her husband Tony soon after Beth graduated with a degree in
journalism, from the University of Texas in Austin. Tony, a civil engineer from Berkeley,
California had migrated to the boomtown of Houston, Texas to start employment in creating
drainage systems for new construction. Both devout Catholics, they met each other in the
parish folk group, began dating and married in November, 1981. Parenting began, with the
transitions and priority changes it brings, with the births of their two daughters, just over a
year apart.
When my nieces reached their late teens I asked my mother one day whether the girls were
still attending Mass with their parents. My mother told me that Beth would compromise on
most conflicts but Mass attendance was a strict family rule. Diana had a ring in her navel, but
she and her sister were at Mass with their Mom and Dad, and grandmother, each week!

•What are your family rules?

•What are you willing to compromise and what is inviolable?

•Does God and keeping the Lord’s Day holy through worship as a family with other believing families remain a top weekly priority?

Handing on the faith and the development of Christian moral character happens in the climate of a home where parents have each drawn deeply from the rich traditions of the Catholic Church. Week after week, Advent to Christmas, Lent through Easter season,
Pentecost, and Christ the King, stories of God’s loving interaction with his human creation are recounted, meditated on, and celebrated in song and sacrament. “God so loved the world, that in the fullness of time he sent his only son, that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.”

The heroes of the Bible: Abraham, Sara, Isaac and Jacob, Moses and David and the prophets, Peter and Paul, Andrew, James and John – responders all to God’s initiating and inviting Spirit; dance before us in the proclamation of the Word. The Lord of the dance, Jesus
our Messiah, is at the center.

It is at our Eucharist that we feast on God’s word and the sacred symbols core to our faith. It is in the sharing of the Bread and the Cup that our moral character is formed and matures, as we are transformed into what we see, and become what we truly are – the Body and the Blood of Christ.

Peace, Father Bruce