We had a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in our living room, and we'd say our family prayers before that statue. For Catholics, statues and holy pictures depict our spiritual relatives and remind us of them. No one has any photos of Jesus, so statues and paintings are the next best thing.
When they were teens and young adults and were searching for their own faith, our children peppered us with questions and with their doubts, and we answered to the best of our abilities, trying not to get too defensive. You carry your children with your own faith for many years. But eventually they have to own - or disown - their own faith.
I've talked to other parents of my generation, who raised their children the same way. We're glad we did. To teach a child about God, about actions having eternal consequences, grounds a child, gives him or her a moral and spiritual lens through which to view the world and personal life. To witness to a child about how faith in God has affected your own life makes faith real for him or her. He or she will eventually have to make their own decisions. But it's a parent's responsibility to give them a foundation on which to build their own edifice of faith and moral values. .
My friends and I have seen our children go in many different directions faith-wise. But our children still take questions of faith and values seriously.
The world my children grew up in used to move far more slowly on Sundays, without many work shifts or sports practices. Society's values have shifted away from Church on Sunday. It's funny. People will prioritize Sunday sports games and entertainment and arrange their calendars and sacrifice time and money for these things. But not always for Church. Not always for prayer.
So many children today are not hungry for good food or a trip to Disney World. They have those things. But they're hungry for God, whether they've been introduced to God or not. They know, deep down, that something is missing in their understanding of life.
When God asked us to prioritize worship and prayer in our lives, it wasn't for God. It was for us. To regularly remind us, and re-ground us, about what our spiritual perspective needs to be in this increasingly pleasure-oriented, consumeristic, over-sexualized, and violent culture. This increasingly pagan culture. Our children and grand-children and friends live there, are influenced by it daily.
Society's "Gospel" is: Happiness. Convenience. Power. Things. Me First.
Today, our world is still first our family - children and grand-children - but often their friends and our friends and neighbors as well. Our attitudes, our words, our works still give them a lens through which to see our understanding of Jesus' Gospel, and a lens through which to see the false values of the "Gospel" of society. .
Can they see through us that belief in God gives us a special identity as a child of God? That knowing God as our Father widens our perspective to see the whole human family as our family? What happens to a grieving child in Syria or an Ebola victim in Africa matters because that person is my brother or sister. We have the same heavenly Father. We ARE our brother or sister's keeper.
When we talk to our children or grand-children or their friends about Christmas, do we only ask what they want? Or do we talk about using some of our money in charity to the poor?
As an Italian-American, I've always been fascinated by missionary Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. Born in 1850, in the province of Lombardy in Northern Italy, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart and obeyed her Pope's request to bring six nuns to the United States to be missionaries, to spread the Gospel of Jesus by ministering to the Italian immigrants here. A long way to go to preach the Gospel with words and actions! No phone, email, Skype, Facebook, to use to stay in touch with relatives and friends. Only letters that took months to reach a loved one.
Italian immigrants had their own ghettos throughout the United States. They worked at the most menial labor and faced much discrimination. There was a mass immigration of Italians to the U.S. in the latter part of the 19th century. The U.S. descendants of the mostly Northern European Protestant original settlers viewed the mostly Catholic Southern European Italian immigrants with suspicion and disdain. In fact, Congress passed legislation in 1921 and 1929 to restrict immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe but not from Northern European countries.
These immigrants desperately needed help. At the time of Mother Cabrini's death, she and her nuns had founded schools, hospitals, and orphanages throughout the country, including Columbus Hospital in N.Y.C., and her order had established houses in England, France, Spain, the U.S., and South America. Cabrini is the Patroness of Immigrants.
I'll bet she'd be actively caring for America's latest, most-despised immigrants today, especially the ones who come from South of us, who still speak Spanish like the original Italian immigrants spoke Italian until they learned the language. Many of the older ones never did get a complete understanding of English. She'd be doing what Jesus asked, teaching them about Him in her words and actions of love.
Like Mother Cabrini, we must be ready to hear God's call to preach the Gospel of Jesus, no matter where we are, no matter who we're with, through our words and actions of love, through sharing our faith humbly and honestly. Because it's the very last, most important thing that Jesus asked us to do.