Sandra Cullen expresses very beautifully what it means for her as a mother to hand on the faith that inspires her life to her children.
At a recent celebration of First Confession in our parish the celebrant invited the children to give their parents a hug. He explained that when they share a hug with their parents, it is God’s way of letting us know that he loves us. I noticed one of the boys hug his parents, then go over to where an elderly visiting priest was sitting. The young boy hugged the priest and returned to his seat. Later the priest told us that the boy had said to him, ‘You have nobody here with you to tell you that God loves you, so I will give you a hug from God’.
It strikes me that this is at the heart of what handing on the faith in the context of the family is about. It is in the family that we learn about love and belonging, sharing and sacrifice, joy and pain, forgiveness and unity. It is in the experience of being part of the family that we begin to learn about the great themes of Christianity: incarnation, redemption, reconciliation, though we rarely use these big words at home. It is in the family that we learn about faith as trusting in ourselves, others and God.
There are many ways of thinking about faith; at its most basic level, faith is a meaning-making activity that is inherent in each of us. Faith or trust in life is what gets us up in the morning; it is what prompts us to respond to the person who says hello to us, it is faith in another’s words and actions that prompts us to believe them and to love them. For a believer, it is faith that opens us up to the possibility of responding to God in what we trust in, believe and do. Religious faith begins for each of us in the context of a family and its convictions about life.
In the context of the family, it is appropriate that we primarily understand faith as trusting, as having confidence in the love of another for us, of feeling safe and secure in our identity, of appreciating what is trustworthy. My role as a parent is to allow my children to grow in an atmosphere of trust, acceptance, love and understanding so as to give them every opportunity to be great people.
It begins with speaking a language of love and being conscious of the role of example (a tall order!). I have learned that the example I set, whether it’s about healthy eating, obeying the rules of the road, treating people with respect, attitudes to school, going to Mass, being involved in the life of the parish, etc., teaches much more than anything I ever say.
We know from psychology that a child’s primary experience of trust is the key to how they form relationships in later life. Their sense of themselves depends on the trustworthy nature of their environment. The child senses the parents’ values and attitudes long before the parents ever explain these in words and begins to interpret what happens to him in light of the meanings that the adults around them assign to these experiences. It is no accident that we use the expression ‘faith is caught not taught’.
The under-12s are at a very particular stage in their faith development: they need assurances about right and wrong but are beginning to understand motivation. They deal easily with an imaginary world and draw lessons from stories they like, formulas and rhymes. They begin to understand cause and effect and to think logically. They identify with heroes and heroines and generally look to the parents as the ones who know everything! They have a readiness for faith to which the family can respond.
What does it mean to me as a mother to ‘hand on the faith’? To ‘hand something on’ may suggest hand-me-down clothes or clearing out the rubbish in the attic that people no longer have a use for. However, it also suggests that I believe in something enough to want it to continue after my life-time. I want my children to have a family name that is connected to my wider family and the generations that have shaped me. I may also hand on physical resemblances, possessions, land, a business as well as those things that are not so tangible – values, attitudes, prejudices, political opinions, beliefs and faith.
To hand something as a gift implies that in receiving such a gift it is not for us to hold on to but to pass on in turn. Handing something on in the context of family suggests that all of our lives are connected between generations: the past is connected both to the present as well as to the future.
As a mother I have to give serious consideration to what my responsibility is in handing on the faith. Presenting our children for baptism called on us to be serious about what we were asking of the Christian community as well as giving serious consideration to our own faith stance. As the children have grown and are in the midst of preparation for sacraments, we are put to the pin of our collar to answer those questions that we have adult answers for but find impossible to explain to a child.
Why can’t we see God? How does the bread and wine change? Why does it still taste the same? Why do people have to die? Why do our friends not go to Mass? Why is there war? Why did Grandad die? We struggle to answer these questions honestly, in language that they can grasp, conscious that children require clear and precise answers while we may be more conscious of nuances and circumstances.
The gift that we can hand on to our children is the sense that faith begins in trust. We can create homes where faith is part of the everyday reality of the family, not just something reserved for Sundays or special occasions. We can have an explicitly religious symbol in our homes and we can mark the liturgical seasons by lighting an Advent Wreath or making a small Jesse Tree. We can draw the stations of the Cross during Lent and decorate a May altar. We can use the Trocaire box, get involved with a charity and pray together at meal times. We can read biblical stories or learn about the lives of holy people.
Increasingly, families who are committed to handing on the faith feel isolated, so it is vital that parishes are places of hospitality to families so that families can be supported in what they are doing with and for their children. It is within the family that we learn about faith as a relationship of trust. It is within the family that we learn to receive and show God’s love through the hug that shows us that we are accepted.
Religious educator Gabriel Moran expresses it beautifully when he says that the attitude of the parents communicates to the child that, ‘I and my people are not wrong. My way is not a false way. I know it is true for me because I have experienced it. I am going to show you a world that does exist. I want you to see that world because it is worth seeing. I invite you to join that way.’
This article first appeared in The Messenger (February 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
