Seton Magazine Catholic Homeschool Articles, Advice & Resources
No one will be saved unless he practices the Charity of sharing the Faith with others. Parents have the principal responsibility to share the Faith with their children. The purpose of teaching the children the Faith is to prepare them for Heaven.
Children are brought into this world for heaven. This is why you are parents. You are parents for eternity.
How are parents to share the Faith with their children?
The first condition is that you yourselves must have the Faith. It is fundamental to Christianity: the Faith comes from those who already have the Faith.
What a difference between having the Faith and having the Faith deeply, clearly, firmly…having the Faith of martyrs.
No ordinary Faith will survive in today’s world, only heroic Faith.
God wants to use you parents as the principal channels to share the Faith with your children. But the means and the degree of efficiency of communication of your Faith will depend on how strong your Faith is in your own hearts and minds.
Home education of your own children is not easy. It is demanding; it requires heroic virtue.
But given that holy virtue of Faith in your own hearts and minds, God will use you for understanding the Faith, teaching the Faith, practicing the Faith, and if it is God’s will, dying for the Faith.
Living in our materially developed nation—how this needs to be said—the greatest risk we have is that as we become materially more advanced, more consumer-conscious, more intoxicated with the things of this world, the more liable we are to forget that we are on earth for one reason—to reach heaven, and there is no way to reach heaven without the Faith.
You are parents that you might be, in the providence of God, the channels of grace of the Faith for your child.
But your own Faith must be strong.
I have three recommendations. First, pray, pray, pray. Believing parents, praying parents are courageous parents. Praying parents are united with God and capable of communicating to their children what God has given them.
In the name of God, pray, pray much. Pray from the depths of your heart. Live in the presence of God. Pray.
Second, know your faith. Faith is not some cerebral possession of a body of ideas. Faith is a living infused virtue. Faith is a gift of the supernatural life.
But unless you know your Faith and understand the knowledge of your Faith, you will not be able to share with your children more than you have.
God uses only believing parents to reproduce believing children. God uses only strong believing parents to provide strong believing children. God uses only heroic believing families, with parents who have paid dearly for preserving and deepening their Faith.
We are living in the most critical age in the history of Christianity. You must know the Faith, study the Faith, learn the Faith.
Third, Jesus Christ during His visible stay on earth said, “I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.”
Eucharistic parents are the ones whom Christ will use to communicate the Faith in Jesus Christ.
Assist at the sacrifice of the Mass as often as you can. Receive Holy Communion. This is the principal means of the petition of the Lord’s prayer: give us this day our daily bread.
Receive Holy Communion every day. Spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament every day and hold your children in your arms.
Jesus, help us to pay the heavy price of home schooling here on earth so that we may reach the home for which our homes were made, in that eternal dwelling place to which dear Jesus you are calling us to join You for all the ages of eternity. Amen.
