October 4, The Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
As is my custom when making the announcements every Sunday at mass, I begin by requesting everyone to pick up a bulletin and visit our literature table for information regarding the parish. More recently, I have called attention asking our parents/grandparents and others to pick up a copy of Magnifikid!, our weekly children’s religious education booklet. I mention the current copy or past copies are wonderful resources for our children’s formation in faith and learning about the Christian life.
This announcement regarding Magnifikid! has brought to mind my own formation in faith as a young child many years ago. My Mom and Dad were faithful Catholics who instilled the faith in me and my siblings throughout our upbringing. My Dad attempted to attend mass every day before going off to work. Early on I was fascinated with our home parish church building and the process of the mass. I always wondered what the liturgical color of the day was and the chalice the priest would use. Back in those days, each priest had his own chalice and I made the determination of what priest l liked the best by the chalice he had. I took seriously my Catholic education in both grade and high school—though in my adolescent years, I did drift away a bit while I was trying to “figure things out”— pretty normal for a teenager. But even through this time, Catholic values and morality were always in the back of my mind and calling me to do what was right. This early life formation had a great impact on me in my young adult decision to seek a religious vocation and responding to God’s call in my life. When I look back, the progression during my formative years to where I am now makes a great deal of sense.
As many of us worry and are concerned about lower church attendance and fewer vocations to the priesthood and religious life, the onus is on us to be formators in faith to our young people—to instill in them God’s presence, God’s gifts and blessings and the moral responsibilities we are called to in caring for creation and each other. We are to be those Catholic mentors for the next generation. This is a challenging task in our electronic driven world of cell phones, social media, artificial intelligence and the internet. I can hear our young declare “Why do I need to spend time praying for something when I can find what I need on an internet search?” Closely related, this electronic world has brought about greater isolation and loneliness. We need to promote the values of community and the face-to-face encounter with each other. Many other challenges promoting the faith need to be addressed.
Going back to my Dad, he used to say when departing from a person or group, “Keep the faith.” In today’s world as we address the crisis in faith, we need to teach the faith to the young and tell them to hold it dear to them for the rest of their lives and then pass it on to others for their formation.