Newsletter - 13th February 2022
Sixth Sunday in Ordinary time, Year C
“... and yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on Earth?”
Luke 18:8
I’ve always been intrigued by this question posed by Jesus in the gospel of Luke. It inspired a classic book on the religious education of children, Will our Children Have Faith? by John Westerhoff, which gives four stages of childhood faith:
Experienced faith – young children will assume the faith of their parents, what they are first exposed to
Affiliative faith – children will copy what they see around them, they will want to belong
Searching faith – will start to ask questions so they can decide whether they believe themselves
Owned faith – the child or young adult passes through the vital questioning period to own their faith
This is why we as a parish need to support parents in exposing their children to faith (Stage 1), to give children experiences of a vital, attractive God who loves them and calls them by name (Stage 2), and provide opportunities for children to share their questions (Stage 3).
At Christ the King we have been working on ways to do these things. Besides our traditional First Holy Communion and Confirmation sessions, we have the youth group (14-18) that meets every other Friday. Our weekly children’s liturgy during the 11:00 Mass helps children enjoy going to church. We will have our annual “Timothy” weekend on 5-6 March for children 7-11 which will be a way to experience the gospel message in a context of fun, prayer, and fellowship. We will be beginning the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd for children 3-6, an age when children are especially open to things of God. This program can eventually an expand to include children 6-12. Our Mothers and Toddlers group, a drop-in program that meets every Wednesday, is a way of supporting very young children and their parents.
Many people lament that their adult children have discarded the faith of their childhood. “What did we do wrong?” they ask. I heard recently that it’s not that parents did anything wrong, but more the result of changes in our culture. We have a big task ahead of us. Parents and parish must partner in big and serious ways to ensure that our children “will have faith.”
Nancy Wood ccn
Focus of the week
Bishops' Conference of England and Wales
Taking place on Sunday, 13 February 2022, the theme builds on that of the previous year’s Racial Justice Sunday ‘A Time to Act’, which reflected on the importance of everyone recognising themselves, their race, their culture and their history in the life of the Church.
Our aim, in 2022, is to continue these conversations about how we see others in the “Image and Likeness of God”.
NFG DVD: Where are you Dad?
In Martinique (Caribbean sea) the father is often absent, and women bring up their children alone. A telling figure is that there are three times as many single-parent families. In actual fact, Martinique suffers from a wound that goes back to the period of slavery, a deep wound that has become part of the collective unconscious.