Last week, I wrote about the great contributions to the Church and to our young people that flow from our system of Catholic schools, both in the Diocese of Rockford and throughout our country.
As an extension of the work and responsibility of parents to raise the children that God has blessed them with, Catholic education is a deep, continuous and slowly evolving process whose good effect is often observed over time.

Gratefully, there are signs of the moral values and the love for Christ that appear among our Catholic young people with regularity. For example, from the Diocese of Rockford nearly 400 of our young people bussed to Washington, D.C., two weeks ago to march in defense of life on what turned out to be an exceptionally cold and snowy day.

By all accounts, our young people, many coming from our Catholic schools, didn’t see themselves as simply participating in some sort of excellent adventure or mere road trip. Instead they recognized that they were witnessing to the world about the value of human life and the injustice of the strong imposing themselves on the weak that is at the heart of what abortion is. Even at a young age they were participating in our national debate and working to change the world as Christ asks them and us to do.

Still, as a Church and a diocese, even as we celebrate the importance of our Catholic schools, they are not the whole story in the formation of our young people.

Throughout the Diocese of Rockford, each parish also offers a religious education program for our Catholic young people who do not attend Catholic schools. Currently, nearly 30,000 young people take advantage of those parish efforts to pass on the faith.

In many ways, parish religious education programs carry out in a modern form the experience of the Church over 2,000 years of transmitting the faith. That is, at the heart of evangelization is personal witness and sharing of the good news.

Such programs are, of course, organized and overseen, often by a director of religious education. How grateful we are to those men and women who step forward and offer their time and talent to ensure the organized and faithfully Catholic presentation given to those young people.

But typically the classes are taught by volunteer catechists. Those men and women live out the constant call by Pope Francis that we reach out to others, inviting them through the example of our faith and our lives, to meet and love Jesus Christ. Personal witness has been at the heart of transmitting the faith since Jesus first called the Apostles. It is really no different today.

Like the education in our Catholic schools, religious education programs need support. They require parish and diocesan funding, of course. But even more, they need the support and participation of the parents of the young people being taught.

If the lessons of faith are only taught in the classroom but aren’t lived at home, it is very hard for them to be taken to heart.

Parents, please pray at home every day as a family and especially with your children. You are the first teachers of prayer and of the presence and the importance of Jesus. Talk about our Catholic faith with your children and ask about what they are learning in religious education.

Your witness of accompanying your children to Mass each Sunday cannot be overstated. Sunday Mass should become a natural, can’t-miss moment of family life each week. So too is the sacrament of reconciliation.

And fathers, please be aware of how much your prayer and participation in the sacraments impacts your children.

Whether it is through Catholic schools or through religious education, our goal is the same. It is for all of us to pass the final judgment with Christ and so be invited into his kingdom.

Thanks to all of the teachers, administrators, parents, catechists and directors whose efforts make that possible.