Day of Recollection for Parents of Faith Formation and Youth Ministry 10/08/16

Thank you to all parents who attended the Day of Recollection for parents of Faith Formation and Youth ministry. We hope you got a lot out of our session today. Here are the 10 tips we talked about for fostering the faith of your children.

10. Be present to your children. Inquire what they learned about in Faith Formation class. In a word: Stay home, eat together at least once a day, tuck your little ones in at night, and do things together as a family.

9. Be joyful witnesses to the Gospel. It's true, the saying that faith is caught and not taught.

8. Know your stuff. Take measures to ensure that the faith you're passing on is indeed the faith of the church and not well-intentioned but uninformed and unformed personal opinion.

7. Stick to the core message. To cite the Holy Father in Evangelii Gaudium: 'Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.’

6. Pray with your children. "It can be as simple as grace before meals, an Our Father and a Hail Mary and a Glory Be -- or any two out of the three -- before the children go to bed. But start with something."

5. Go to Sunday Mass together. Every activity on Sunday should be planned around Mass together. This communicates to young people pretty vital lessons about life: that life is not just about work, it's not just about sports; it's also about praise and worship of God. GO EARLY!!!

4. Read the Bible together as a family. Begin with a Gospel -- the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke -- and just do it a little bit at a time, a few verses.

3. Sacramentalize your home. Children are fascinated by rosaries, crucifixes, holy water, palms, candles, ashes, pictures and statues of the saints. These all point to the great mystery of the Incarnation.

2. Share experiences of faith among yourselves. Parents should talk to their children, age-appropriately, about their faith journey, about what the Lord is doing in their life.

1. Make Faith Natural. Pray over problems. Talk about God. Don’t keep God just for Sundays. Many of us aren’t comfortable praying out loud, or praying spontaneously, but whenever something comes up in the family, stop and pray.

THINGS TO DO

•Do a service project with your kids, once a quarter

•Watch a Faith-based movie together

•Enjoy lunch/brunch with your kids after mass on Sunday and talk about their favorite parts of the mass

•Post a note on the door that includes an inspirational message or bible verse

•Include a faith note with their lunch

•Visit the Missions

•Play your VBS cd in the car

•Listen to Christian radio