September 15 is Catechetical Sunday, a day of remembering the Church’s great task of catechesis and those who are engaged in this work. Many parishes will take time during the liturgy to formally commission and bless Catechists, the volunteers who will teach Faith Formation classes, for the new school year. Far too often though, we miss a critically important group: parents.
The Catechism reminds us of what Catechesis is: “the totality of the Church’s efforts to make disciples […and] an education in the faith […] with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life” (nos. 4-5). In short, catechesis is about ensuring that the divine life instilled in Baptism grows into a new way of life. The main people who bear that responsibility in a child’s life are the parents, whom the Church deems the primary catechist of their own children. And so on Catechetical Sunday, it should be just as important to bless the parents.
A parent’s role in the religious formation of their own children is irreplaceable, nonusurpable, and not able to be delegated. Many parents like to think they have done their job by bringing their kid to CCD classes, but this is something that cannot be given over to the “experts,” even if they were commissioned and blessed during Mass. This is no knock on the army of volunteers who teach Faith Formation classes every year. They are rightfully recognized for their efforts. But parents are primary but often overlooked.
Parents are the primary catechists of their own children, and the primacy is both in the order of time and of importance. Parents are the first image of God in their children’s lives, the closest thing to an all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing being that they can see. Parents are the first to teach their children what is right and wrong, what we do and do not do, how to apologize, and how to pray. Studies continue to show that parents typically never lose that place of primacy and influence in their children’s lives, even during the teenage years. The number one indicator of what a child’s religious practice will be as an adult is their parent’s religious practice during their childhood. Parents are primary, which makes complete sense given that we are made in the image of God who is familial, defined in parent-child terms as Father and Son.
The Church highlights parental primacy during the Order of Baptism. There, parents attest that they are “undertaking the responsibility to raise [their child] in the faith” and that “they must strive to bring him/her up in the faith, so that this divine life may be preserved from the contagion of sin, and may grow in him/her day by day.” In the Church’s rites, parents are the only ones who ever make a promise to disciple a specific individual. If catechesis is the totality of the Church’s efforts to make disciples, and if parents promise to take on the responsibility of raising their child in the faith, then Christian parenting is an exalted form of catechesis. Catechetical Sunday could rightly be called Christian Parenting Sunday.
These words–catechesis, catechism, catechetical–have a common root in a Greek word meaning to echo. Catechists don’t invent a message of their own. Rather, they echo Jesus’ teaching. There is no need for creativity when it comes to the content, though there is ample room for creativity in the delivery. When Christian parents teach their child how to pray, they echo Jesus who taught his followers how to pray. When Christian parents insist on going to Sunday Mass even if their kids have other desires for the day, they echo the Lord’s insistence on the importance of keeping the Lord’s Day holy. When Christian parents show, more by their actions than their words, that receiving the Eucharist sustains and strengthens them, they echo Jesus’ words about receiving life by receiving him in Communion.
As Catechetical Sunday approaches, let us pray for the volunteers in our parishes who will give of their time to hand on the faith to our children. But may we not forget the primary Catechists, the parents, who also give of their time to raise disciples without the option to take a year off or to step down. These are the ones with whom our secondary Catechists will parenter over the course of the school year, and both deserve to be recognized for their efforts.
