Dear Parents,

As your priest, I feel it's important to state without any compromise good Christian Education in Faith and Life in Christ starts with and depends on you. Special attention and early care are required by young children. The importance of beginning religious education at home from his or her earliest years cannot be over emphasized. How to pray and making time for prayer are learned from your own prayer. How excited and how proud and how proud we are when our children speak their first words, the first "mommy" and "daddy" are forever imprinted in our hearts as a day of great joy. How joyful and proud the whole church is when our children learn their first prayers, to call upon God, to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, to be enlivened by the Holy Spirit through prayer. From their first words of faith and prayer, from their first experiences of God in worship with you, from their experience of your faith and love for God in your home, our parish religious education programs have a foundation on which to build.

By taking good care for your child's faith at home, by making God a part of your everyday living, by making worship an integral part of your family life at an early age, you help them develop a loving, strong, healthy faith.

Healthy Faith and Religious Experience begin at Home

During infancy and early childhood your child depends entirely upon your home for his or her knowledge of God. Teaching your children about God, about His Son Jesus, about the Holy Spirit our Sanctifier, about the Holy Mother of God, about the saints are important first steps to a lifelong relationship of faith in God. Living in an ever increasing secular age God's Love for us as revealed in Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit needs to take root in your home. Your prayer, your unconditional love, your active life in the Church all communicate God's love for your child. Holding your child on your lap and praying with him or her can be the deepest memory of your own deep faith and love for God. Bringing your child to church and your participation in the life of the church is the greatest witness of your own identity with Christ in the Church.

It is wise to teach your Children to know God at an Early Age

Teach your children by your practice and example. If you start teaching your children to know God, then they already have a first hand knowledge and beginning of their own faith as lived in your home and family.

1. Pray every day with your child.

Your child will know you are a mother and a father who lives by faith if you pray with your child. Let them hear and see you pray.

2. Teach your child to know God.

You are the best person to teach your child to know God. Your child is a gift from God to you. Your faith and love and understanding is communicated by the way you treat your child with love and faith. Explain the feast days of the Church. Let them know that each Sunday is the day we worship God and renew our Covenant. Even if you don't let your child receive Holy Communion, bring him or her with you when you receive. Let them feel your closeness and oneness in Christ in Holy Communion.

3. Teach your child to love and respect himself or herself and to respect others.

You are the first moral guide for your child. How to live a life faithful to Christ and His Church begins at home. Basic self acceptance, basic notions of right and wrong, basic respect for others all begin at home. Your love, respect, and faith in God are already the greatest models and examples of a loving, respectful, faithfilled person your child can know.

4. Spend time with your child during the week to learn with him or her and affirm the teaching they have received each week in our parish catechetical programs.

One hour a week is not enough time to teach a life of faith. Yet with your support, encouragement, and faithful attendance the weekly program of catechesis and worship and singing praises of God becomes growth experience for your child of God's love and of belonging to God's Church.

Our catechetical program cannot be a success without YOU!

Thank you,

Fr. John

last updated 13 February 2000 Copyright © 1999-2001, St. Thomas the Apostle Church