“The family of faith is the greatest gift” parents can give their children, Fr Willie Purcell has said, as relics of Sts Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St Thérèse of Lisieux, were welcomed to the Carmelite Monastery in Tallow, Co. Waterford.
The relics of the canonised married couple and their daughter St Thérèse were at the monastery from September 11-13, with three days of prayer dedicated to vocations, married couples, families, and the sick.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Fr Purcell said the example of the Martin family highlighted the powerful influence parents can have on the faith of their children.
“When you have a family of faith, then God works through that faith,” he said, adding that parents living their faith “have the strongest influence on their children” through baptism and “the witness of their lives.”
His comments follow Bishop Niall Coll’s call to parents to recognise the importance of their own witness in handing on the faith.
Speaking at a Mass for expectant parents in St Eunan’s Cathedral, Letterkenny, on September 8, Bishop Coll described parenthood as the “daily, quiet, heroic love” through which the Gospel is lived. He said faith in Ireland had traditionally been handed on “around kitchen tables, in bedtime prayers” and through the quiet example of parents, rather than first in classrooms or churches.
Dr Andrea LaFountain, an Irish psychologist and mother of five, similarly told The Irish Catholic that parents should look for opportunities to form their children in the everyday events of family life.
“If there is a roadmap, it’s simply take the opportunities on a day-to-day,” she said. “It’s in the moment, just in the moment.”
She said everyday disagreements and difficulties could become opportunities to teach children about “love, faithfulness, sacrifice for our brothers” and to ask – “What would Jesus want us to do?”
Fr Purcell also encouraged parents who worry that their own faith is not strong enough, saying this should not prevent them encouraging their children “to seek, to search in faith”, to attend Mass and to pray.
He also stressed the role of grandparents, saying they have “a vocation to their grandchildren” and remain “key people in the whole story of faith in the lives of children”.
