Welcome to the second issue of the Fit Shepherds’ Newsletter. In the short podcast above, you will hear a short — less than 3 minutes — podcast on ways you can bless your children. For those of you who don’t have any children yet, please listen anyway as it’s good advice to remember for the day you do, and it’s also good advice to pass on to others who do have kids, even if you don’t have any. The person I interviewed in the podcast is James Healy, the director of the Family Life ministry for the Diocese of Joliet, and a nationally known speaker.
Here’s a short prayer to St. Joseph, a model of fatherhood, to inspire us:
Saint Joseph, look I am tired tonight,But somehow I think that you care;For being a father and one who worksAre things that both of us share.
It tires a man, yet the heart is high,For, Patron Saint, it’s all worthwhile.Its rich reward is a life full of loveAnd joyous light in a child’s smile.
O, father, worker, bear with me,Help me, Saint Joseph, to do my best,To love and protect my family‘Til work shall cease and heaven is rest.
Amen
Finally, here are some wise tips from Peter Kreeft, a theologian, on how to raise Catholic children:
+ Treat them as what they are. They’re the King’s kids. You’re His foster parents. They’re not pets, or problems, or products. You don’t “raise” kids, you raise cattle. Love the hell out of them. Love them twice as much every day as you did the day before.
+ Be Catholic yourself; you can’t give what you don’t have. Believe it, love it, live it. Don’t be ashamed of it, or worried about it. Actively assume it, like the air you breathe, so you don’t have to either push it, like a time share salesperson, or be skittery and worried about it, like someone accused in court. It’s not a product any more than your kids are. It’s truth and goodness and beauty. It’s a Person. His name is Jesus. If you don’t know Him, you don’t know the Faith and you can’t pass it on.
+ So get to know Him better. How? Pray more, and more honestly and passionately. For them and for yourself. God waits to give us good things until we pray for them.
+ Pray WITH them: at meals, at bedtime when they’re very young, and at special occasions, especially great joys and sorrows. When they’re young, give them short prayers to say every day.
+ The one thing parents always wonder about is: how strict and how permissive should we be? The answer varies in practice but not in principle. The principle is obvious: treat them like kids, not like infants OR adults, not like devils OR angels – OR animals. The basic principle of all practice is to treat everything and everyone as what they really are. To do that, you have to look at them, listen to them, and feel what they feel. You don’t read a book on parenting and then apply it, like a car repair manual. They’re not cars, and they’re not broken; they’re just slow and sinful and stupid, like you.
+ Assume high standards. Kids respond to that: to honor, to do the right thing just because it’s the right thing, and to actively refuse to do the wrong thing just because it’s the wrong thing, not because there will be rewards and punishments that YOU attach. Truth comes first, you and they come second.
+ Cultivate good Catholic friends for them and for yourself. Peer pressure is very strong for teenagers.
+ Talk to them about your faith as passionately as you talk to them about your favorite baseball team. Even if they show a little embarrassment at the time, they’ll remember and respect it later. Words are like seeds. They may not grow instantly, but once they’re in the ground, that’s what they do.
+ The main problem everybody has with the faith today is sex. Be both realistic and idealistic about that. Learn the Church’s Theology of the Body so you can talk to them from the Big Picture. The single most important principle in talking to your kids about sex is to be totally honest with them and with God at the same time.
+ Do what Mary did in the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple: put them in God’s hands.
