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How We Foster A Love for Christ and His Church in Our Children
by Carmen Marcoux
My husband James and I believe that fostering a love for Christ and his Church is our most important task as parents. We have found this also to be one of our easiest and favorite aspects of parenting. Children have a natural love for God and are so open and receptive to the truth when it is presented to them with clarity and with charity.
The Pulse of the Family
Faith-life is like the pulse of a family. It has to be regular and strong in order for the family to be healthy. At times when we've allowed distractions to interfere with our focus on faith we've seen how the bickering and squabbles easily multiply in our home. When we pump up our prayer life and get refocused on what's important: family life flourishes, the squabbles are fewer and there is peace in our home. And what makes this all work is that we must remember to keep Jesus as the heart of our home! After all, it is the heart that drives the pulse!
Family Prayer
Family prayer time is an important way to keep us close. We gather each night to pray as a family. Mealtime prayers are often an opportunity to reflect on the day and what's been happening in our lives and in the world and to lift these intentions to the Lord. We regularly offer up novenas for special intentions - which helps us to keep the rosary central in our prayer life.
Our Faith Community
We are very involved in our parish community. The faith community I describe in my book is modeled after the community we experience at Church - which I know is rather exceptional for a Catholic parish. The influence of this awesome community for our children is far-reaching. They see the Catholic culture as the norm, because the majority of people they know and associate with are Catholic. Their best friends are from church and so they experience the positive peer support to be Catholic and to openly express their faith with their friends. They look forward to Sunday mass and any other occasion we have to gather as a community. Sunday is reserved as a special day - free of work and enjoyed by gathering with family and friends and our worshipping community. Our children always look forward to Sundays!
Daily Mass
We also try to attend weekday mass whenever we can -- but as a homeschooling mother of six, living out in the country, I find it a challenge to attend daily. Still, our older children have a great love for the mass and are always eager to attend. Our younger children are normal - they get fidgety and bounce around in the pew and are hard to contain. They have not yet learned the importance or value of the mass, but that will come in time.
Frequent Confession
We try to get to confession monthly - but we are not always consistent with that, either. However, we have tried to make the experience of going to confession very positive, emphasizing the great opportunity it presents to us to receive God's grace and to get our souls washed clean again.
Bringing the Faith to Life
We love discussing the faith in our home. A great benefit to home schooling is all the wonderful conversations I can have with my children throughout the course of the day.
We read about the saints together and discuss their lives - my children have a beautiful devotion to the saints and are so keenly aware of their lives and the examples they give to us of holiness. I believe setting these models before our children is one of the greatest ways to encourage them (and ourselves) to strive to be holy. Being holy and desiring to be a saint isn't a matter of trying to be "better" than others - it is the way to give glory to God through our lives!
Home-Schooling Is A Lifestyle
There were many factors into making that decision to home-school, but the bottom line was that I love to spend time with my children. I knew the years would go by all too quickly! I wanted to be able to share in their childhood as much as possible. My husband was all for it and we have discovered many blessings along the way.
Home-schooling is not just a preference of how to educate your children - it is a lifestyle. We enjoy the easy pace of setting our own daily routines and adapting them to our family's changing needs. And, while our children certainly do have their squabbles, as all siblings will, they are truly the best of friends with each other - a bonus of home-schooling that will bless them throughout their lives.
I love the fact that we can share our faith with our children and establish for them a firm foundation before they "go out into the real world". I have seen them grow into bold evangelizers with a great deal of self-assurance and above all, beautiful, inspiring faith. They have not yet had to experience the negativity or hostility of the world toward their Catholic faith and morals. When the roots are deep enough and the stem is strong enough -- we'll send them out there! For now, we' enjoying each day that I am blessed to have the honor of their presence in our home!
Striving for Holiness
As a family we strive for holiness and a rich faith-life. Do we always succeed? No, we OFTEN fall short of the mark! But what is important is that the mark is there - the standard is high and it keeps challenging us to go higher!
The text above was taken from Carmen's interview with RoL. To read the full interview, click Building the Kingdom with Arms of Love: An Interview with Catholic, Canadian Author Carmen Marcoux.
Catholic writer Carmen Marcoux is the author of the novels "Arms of Love" and "Surrender," as well as a wife and home-schooling mother of eight. She and her husband James live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada with their children - Hannah, Rebekah, Mikaelah, Jacinta, Matthew, Gemma, Benjamin and baby Jacob. She can be reached at www.courtshipnow.com. Carmen's books "Arms of Love" and "Surrender" can be purchased in the RoL Marketplace.