Catechetical Sunday - Family

Wisdom 2:12, 17-20; Jas 3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37

Today is Catechetical Sunday – it is celebrated across the United States – on the third Sunday of September every year since 1935. The Church sets aside this day each year to honor those who serve the Christian Community as catechists – a person who teaches – in the name of the Church – our faith to our children, teens and adults.

Evangelization and catechesis go hand and hand – they are the most important things – the Great Commission - that we as a faith community are called to do – the Church realizes how important evangelization and catechesis are and each of us needs to realize it too – if we, as the body of Christ, can do these two things right – then all the other social and moral issues we face today would be properly addressed and most likely resolved.

Catechetical Sunday is an excellent opportunity for each of us to rededicate ourselves to this commission that we share by virtue of our baptisms – to go out and evangelize and teach the whole world – to pass on faithfully all that Jesus taught – today is an excellent opportunity for each of us to think about our responsibility to share our faith with others.

Catechists who teach our children and teens assist the parents in our faith community, who are called to be the first teachers of their children in our faith.

While the catechesis offered within the family is ordinarily informal, unstructured, and often times spontaneous, it is no less crucial for the development of a child’s faith. “In a certain sense nothing replaces family catechesis, especially for its positive and receptive environment, for the example of adults, and for its first explicit experience and practice of the faith.” The catechesis of infants and young children nourishes the beginnings of the life of faith.

“God’s love is communicated to infants and young children primarily through parents." Parents have shared the gift of human life with their children and, through Baptism, have enriched them with a share in God’s own life. Parents have the duty to nourish that life – not just physically but spiritually too. Your faith, your attitude toward other human beings, and your trust in a loving God strongly influence the development of your child’s faith. Parents are catechists precisely because they are parents. Their role in the formation of Christian values in their children is irreplaceable. They “should speak naturally and simply about God and their faith, just as they speak about other matters they want their children to understand and appreciate.”

The Family – Parents – play a crucial role in nurturing faith in children. It is for that reason over the past couple Sundays there have been inserts in the bulletin that focus on the family. It is for that reason and the reality that the family is under attach today and that the definition of marriage maybe decided by a small politically active group that the Archbishop has asked that we talk about marriage today.

• In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses the relationship of child and parent to teach an important lesson about our relationship with God. To those listening to Jesus, it was not the innocence or the inquisitiveness of the child that first came to mind but rather the reality that children had no rights, no rank in society. Children were utterly dependent on their parents.

• Jesus is teaching his disciples that just as the child is utterly dependent on his or her parents, we too are dependent on God, our father. Like all good parents, the needs of his children and the desire for all good things for them are what God desires for you and for me—his children.

• As a church we share in society’s responsibility for nurturing and educating our children. The Church knows from its work on the frontlines in providing education, foster care, healthcare, and counseling, and child protection what makes for good healthy environments for children and what helps children to thrive.

• Research in the social sciences has found that the best environment for raising children is a home with a biological mother and father married to each other in a caring relationship. The Church has always known this. Every culture identifies marriage and family as the fundamental building block of society.

• Before the time of Jesus, in the time of Jesus and since the time of Jesus, all societies have shared the common understanding that marriage is the fundamental building block of society, that marriage creates the best environment for raising children.

• Today, though if you read the newspapers, follow blogs or watch the news there is a lack of understanding of the meaning of marriage. Often times this can be seen in the couples who come to prepare for marriage and it is not surprising given the way marriage is portrayed on T.V. and in the movies. It seems that people think about marriage in terms of “what’s in it for me?” or more worried about planning the perfect wedding.

• It’s important that we understand the meaning of marriage. Marriage is more than just a contract—a civil union. Marriage is a personal relationship with a public significance. Marriage has been raised to a sacrament by Christ. Married love imitates Christ’s love for the Church. We speak about the family and the domestic church as a school of love.

• We know that today, conversation about marriage is heated, difficult and, for some of us, deeply personal and at times painful. I speak out of love for Jesus and for all of you whom I serve.

• Our teaching that marriage is the unique human institution that bonds men and women in a permanent relationship is not meant to discriminate against our homosexual brothers and sisters. Our teaching affirms what society has always believed and known to be true as Jesus points to in today’s Gospel.

• Just as strongly as the Church stands for this definition of marriage, it stands in opposition to any unjust discrimination of homosexual men and women. The Church welcomes any person seeking a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.

• Our teaching affirms what society has always believed and known to be true. That in marriage men and women experience a natural synergy in which they cooperate and bond physically, psychologically and emotionally. This union is a is an experience of what it means to be fully human, it is only man and woman together in marriage that imitate Christ’s relationship with the Church. (Ephesians 5:32)

• This natural and human reality transcends history and culture; it originates in natural law and cannot suddenly be redefined by a small group. In looking at life through the eyes of a child as Jesus asks us to do in today’s Gospel, we can see the importance of the married love of a man and woman.

• We know that mothers and fathers are not interchangeable. Every child has the right to a mother and father and a right to share in the unique gifts that a mother and a father bring to a family and to a home. Remember the age at which you were fascinated by knowing where you came from. We know that mothers and fathers play differently with their children. We learned different things from our mothers and our fathers. Sadly, it is true that some children don’t know their mother or their father, society has never, up until the present time, intentionally deprived children of a right to a mother and a father. But that could all soon change.

• Marriage matters, it is more than just two people who love each other. It is more than legislating rights for a small number of people, rights that can be achieved with other legislation. Marriage between a man and a woman is essential for our children and there is no reason to define it otherwise.

• By virtue of our Baptism, we are all called to give witness to the Gospel and to the love of Jesus Christ and in this way all of us are catechists of the Good News of Jesus Christ. We know some people, and perhaps this is true for yourself, that you do not think with the mind of the Church on this issue. All of us who have gathered at this table to share in the Eucharist desire a deeper union with Jesus.

• We are called to pray, to study, to think, to converse about this issue which is of such great importance with our children and with society. We are called to learn of the Church’s teaching and experience and to call on the Holy Spirit’s gifts of wisdom and counsel. Like a child we are called to be utterly dependent on our Father’s love. We are called to love all of our sisters and brothers, to meet them where they are in charity and to speak the truth to them in love.

It is indeed a good day to rededicate ourselves to evangelizing and catechizing, it is a good day for each of us to think about our responsibility as parents, as Catholics and as children of God to share our faith with others.