Good morning. The reading for this morning is about faith. It poses a question for each of us regarding our own faith journey. A question we may find ourselves being called to throughout these forty days of Lent. To have faith is to believe, and yet we don’t always respond so readily as the man in this morning’s Gospel. I know I don’t. And as a parent reading this scripture passage about this “royal official” who‘s faith allows him to call upon Jesus to heal his dying son I find myself drawn to thoughts about my own parenting. I find myself wondering about the challenges that face our children and whether as a parent I have sufficiently prepared our children for effectively sustaining their faith. For all of us it is difficult at times to believe, to fight the distractions the secular world presents us with. Like the Servant of God Dorothy Day, it is gratitude and love that draw us back time and time again. To say ‘no’ to the trappings of a secular lifestyle, to fight the good fight against evil, to do God’s bidding requires us, as Dorothy Day reminds us, to be “fools for Christ’s sake.” As parents do we sufficiently prepare our children for this fight against evil? Do we sufficiently prepare them to live lives that reflect God’s design for them? Dorothy Day wrote that “we have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love…” As parents we have all known the pains of not being able to always have the answers, of not always having the means to provide, of not always being present when we’d like to be, of not always being able to protect them, but we hopefully provide them the tools along the journey that enables them to find the love and gratitude necessary to maintain their faith and to respond to God’s desires for them. As parents we teach our children that a disciplined life of prayer and the Eucharist will provide them everything they will need to be “fools for Christ” and be prepared to fight the good fight. Make a good day!
Today we recall the good life, gifts, and works of Saint Gaetano Catanoso.
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