Peter Kreeft’s neutron-star talk at Dowling Catholic High School on September 15 continues to emit dangerous radiation. Lots of people have shared with me the impact his simple and direct reflections had on them. One person the other day even mentioned that a particular phrase continues to ‘haunt them’ – ‘when he said you can’t give it if you don’t have it, I wondered how much of It I actually had.’
‘Raising Catholic Kids,’ has continued to spark musings in my mind as I have tried to unpack each of his 12 points and relate them to the lives of those parents I have most admired over the years.
Realizing how long it took to get from my first entry to this one, my hope is to offer some thoughts on all 12 points by, say, the year 2020.
Here’s #2: 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.
This one is so rich and overabundant that I will most likely need many entries to do it even a modicum of meager justice.
Me First
His first point is both self-evident and primal to the whole parental enterprise of handing on the Faith to a child: it won’t get into their spiritual DNA, and become a natural feature of their ‘Lifescape’ if Faith’s vitality does not naturally flow from the parents’ daily existence and imbue the minute details of life.
Catholic Christianity is not simply a belief system, it is a way of life that shapes every dimension of how we think and how we act. Hence, the ‘passing on’ of the Faith is not merely a matter of reading Bible stories with your child at bedtime, or saying prayers each day, or even going to Mass on Sundays. It infests and invades every gesture, every encounter, every choice we make throughout the day that defines our desire to love this child and form their worldview.
But I as a parent must first be convinced in order to be compelling, I must believe if I am to be persuasive. ‘You can’t give what you don’t have.’ To ‘have’ requires that I suffer the truth of Faith, and engage in the struggles that attend the confrontation of my own unique worldview and the Catholic vision of life. And to suffer the truth of Faith, you first have to come to know that truth – to learn, to pray, to reflect and then practice.
Rock of Ages
I remember an exchange I had with a priest in Tampa, Florida, who was sharing his vocation story with me. In particular, his story centered on his parents and the influence they had on his journey to priesthood. He said something like this, ‘What was most compelling about my parents’ faith was its concreteness. My mother had to work for a living, but chose to work at night so she could be with us during the day. What was most amazing was that she never complained about exhaustion, though as an adult I now realize how awful it must have been for her. She was always joyful. When I would ask her some times why she was so happy on a certain day, she would say something about each day as God’s perfect gift. My father also worked hard as a cab driver. What I remember most about him was that he never said an unkind word about anyone, though I came to know the difficulties he endured in his job. And every night, I would see him through the crack in the bedroom door kneeling at the foot of his bed; and when I saw him there, like an immovable rock, I felt the world was a safe place.’
What he found most compelling about his parents was that their daily existence exuded Faith. They did not believe in Catholic Christianity. They were Catholic Christianity. He also said, ‘whenever we asked them a question about this or that, they never said, The Church teaches… or Catholics believe… Rather, they simply answered with a Catholic answer that didn’t require the qualifier, The Church teaches, because they believed the Faith was simply reality. And one needs no special qualifiers for reality.’
That reminds me of a story about jazz artist, Louis Armstrong. When he was asked once what jazz was, he replied: ‘Man, if you have to ask what it is, you’ll never know. It’s in the bones.’ A Faith capable of parenting is like that; it’s just who you are. It’s in the bones.
‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’ – Lao Tzu
This is a lifetime project, a quest, a work-in-progress. And no one ever masters it entirely. We are all, as Kreeft said often during his lectures in Des Moines, inadequate to the task. God alone is adequate, and capable of supplying for our inadequacies.
Our inadequacy should not produce despair, but hope in God’s fatherly grace; our ignorance should not discourage us but make us hungry for knowledge of Christ; the length of the journey should not make us weary but thrilled by the hunt for that treasure buried in the field.
St. Augustine was absolutely right: ‘To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.’
How much of your faith is your reality?
Neal Obstat Theological Opining 