It is the smile that gets me. My son’s smile. He had a big smile that matched his saunter as he exited the neighborhood fire station this past weekend. After waiting 40 minutes in line, he had just voted early in this year’s presidential election. Significantly, he had voted for the first time. Most importantly, he had brought his Catholic faith into the voting booth.
We moms and dads pray a lot. Even when we live our own faith lives well and even when we are examples of good disciples of Christ, the faith of our children is not a given. Our kids grow up and decide for themselves whether this God who is love is relevant to their lives. Perhaps one of our most persistent parental prayers is the salvation of our children’s souls. Yet we know the statistics.
In “Going, Going, Gone: The Dynamics of Disaffiliation in Young Catholics,” researchers report that 74% of former Catholics left the faith between the ages of 10 and 20. Age 13 is the median age when kids “check out” of the faith. Yet a separate study noted that millennials whose parents are married are 78% more likely to attend church than their peers who are from what society calls broken homes.
The statistics affirm what our hearts tell us: strong Catholic marriages build strong Catholic families, which lead children to vocations in marriage, the priesthood, and consecrated life.
What is it about Catholic marriage that sets our children up for success in catching faith?
God loves us and created us for relationship with Him. We fall short because of our fallen human nature. God sent His son, Jesus Christ, who restores that relationship for us. Because we stay in relationship with God through Jesus and Jesus’ bride the Church, our salvation is possible.
Throughout Scripture, God compares His love for us using the metaphor of the love of the bridegroom for His bride. Spousal love is God’s favorite way of speaking of His love for us. Jesus’ first miracle was done at a wedding feast. Christ instituted the sacrament of marriage and elevated the nature of marriage. The grace of the sacrament helps the married couple be an image of God to their children and to the world.
“A sacrament is not just a thing, but rather a field of divine co-presence; it causes the two-in-one unit of the couple to become three-in-one. The partners are not lost in wonder; looking into each other, but fascinated by jointly looking towards the triune God.” Father Klaus Demmer wrote this in “Christian Marriage Today.”
A field of divine co-presence! That gets me too. Imagine the elevation of their vocation when married couples live in this divine co-presence. The triune God transforms the souls of husband and wife. The triune God transforms the souls of the children. This is why a strong Catholic marriage sets up our children for catching and holding faith.
I stand first in line to admit that I do not always remember or cooperate with grace in my marriage. Will you join me in jockeying for that front-line position? We can be poor examples to the world and to children of good Christian disciples. Marriages fail a little every day and sometimes all the way for all days.
In our failure, we have a God of second chances. The Church teaches us that as Christ’s followers we pray always, read the Bible daily, receive the sacrament of reconciliation regularly, attend Mass and receive Him in the Eucharist at least weekly, and serve those on the margins intentionally.
Doing these small things, we can help ourselves, our spouses, our children live eternally with God in heaven.
