My two previous Flocknote emails noted that Faith Formation is not easy. Jesus commanded, “Take up your cross,” and we know how that turned out for him. 

Faith Formation is disciple preparation. Jesus directs us, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” That is what we are supposed to say to our children, that is what faith formation is for.

What might happen if our children listen?

Our children might take to heart the church’s cry to welcome the stranger. Maybe call Catholic Charities to sponsor a refugee family and help them resettle in our community, and so put the immigrant in the center just as Jesus embraced a child.

Our children might volunteer at Life Choices crisis pregnancy center and ask tough questions such as, “We saved the baby. What are we doing to save the mother?” and so put child AND mother in the center.

Our children might get their MD degree but skip a lucrative medical practice and go instead into public service in epidemiology, researching vaccines and face masks, heeding the pope’s words, that getting vaccinated is an act of love of our neighbor. And so put our neighbor in the center.

Our children might march in the shoes of the civil rights marcher John Lewis, who never tired of saying, “Keep picking them up and putting them down.”

We hesitate. Faith formation is disciple preparation? What about getting First Communion and Confirmation and calling that good enough? What about learning the Ten Commandments and staying out of trouble?

John Lewis said, “Get into good trouble.”  Jesus said, “Follow me.”

If Faith formation is disciple preparation, how will we ever teach our children to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Jesus, since we ourselves so often avoid it?

Well, we can listen to Jesus. Sunday mornings we have faith formation between the 9:00 a.m. Mass and the 11:30 a.m. Mass. This year, while children are in the classrooms, parents meet in the Parish Center for their own faith formation. This is new. An hour each Sunday to listen to the Lord. 

We all, in fact, ought to always be learning about what we profess, we all ought to listen regularly and carefully to the Lord through his Church. Through Bible study, spiritual reading, faith reflection, we listen and prepare.

Every Sunday Mass, Jesus gathers us as he once gathered a nobody child into his arms. In the sacrifice of the Mass, Jesus offers himself to the Father, body and blood, soul and divinity, even as he offered himself on the cross for the salvation of a self-centered, violent world. He puts us in the center and joins us to his glory.

In Christ,

Father David