"What has happened" we all may say, "as our children begin to slip away from faith?"

“What has happened” we all may say, “as our children begin to slip away from faith?”

Of course it’s more than our children who have left the Church.  We may look to ourselves and find that we too may be missing something within our own status of showing by example that what we grew up with has become dull.  

Let’s take a moment and see an example of how man began with a corrupted sense of worshiping God first before trying his patience.  From the example of how men decided to build their own plan of worship without God, They said to one another “Come let us mold bricks and harden them with fire.”  They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for cement.  Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and make a name for ourselves;  otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.”  (Gn 11: 3 - 4).  How greedy and selfish man became when God was not around and how quickly he would fail without including the presence of his creator, God.  

Have we not also followed the example of our ancestors by reaching out for the wealth of power to control all we are able to corral under our influence?  Take a look around and view our offspring seeking the same treasures we chose to gather, forgetting God in our attempt to become top in our world.  Just like the men of Genesis who wanted to top their ideals and boast of all their attributes of gathering ill-gotten wealth at the expense of other people.  A humorous example of how we accumulate treasures that collect dust and eventually are discarded into trash bins.  People that move from the city dwellings to suburbs into two-garage homes.  Before they can settle in their garages are filled with the many artifacts that no longer have any value.  That is why when our children reach that same age their lives are loaded with more than physical trash.  Their lives are cluttered with the absence of spiritual possessions that place God and a life dedicated to their Church.  Is it any wonder why the Churches are finding a diminishment of attendance?  

Before we pronounce the wonderment of lax children forgetting God, we must look seriously into our own example of finding too much secular activity that has also taken us away from our faith.  Here may be the one criterion that has added fuel to a growing absence of what Church really means to us and should then filter down to the children we baptized then send them on their way to find God at their own reasoning and decision of faith, if by this time they no longer care.

I recently sent a contribution to “Companions of St. Anthony” and wrote them regarding the need for prayer of so many young Catholics who have left the Church.  Their response was a letter saying; “So many of us must contend with a lack of religious life in our offspring.  We pray for them and we must continue to do so.  St. Monica prayed for 40 years before her son, St. Augustine was converted.  We must also give our children and grandchildren an example of a devout and joyful Christian life, in hopes that, someday, with the grace of God, they will come to realize what they are missing.”  

To that response I say yes, let us also pray for the offspring we have sent into the world and ask God’s grace to be upon each of them, and us as well.

Ralph B. Hathaway