Never Graduated from Growing in Faith
By Fr. Isaiah Schick
Now that the new school year is fully underway, the halls of St. Joseph School are again bustling, and our religious education and sacramental preparation programs are getting off the ground. While many of the youth of our parish are taking seriously their growth and formation in understanding their faith more deeply, many of us adults think that we have graduated from that same responsibility – but we haven’t!
Each and every one of us – priests included – have the responsibility to regularly invest in growing our faith in seeking to deepen our life of prayer, by growing in our intimacy with Christ in the Sacraments, AND by seeking to understand what we profess to believe better and better each day.
There are more resources now than ever that allow us to do this with more and more convenience, so there is really no excuse to put it off – “I don’t have time” is simply not true. We all have 24 hours in a day (16 awake, more or less) – we choose what we do with them.
My invitation is to find a time to regularly invest in your own faith formation as an adult this school year and beyond – once a week is a really good start if daily sounds like way too much! This could be many things from joining a small group, to starting a Bible study, to listening to a good Catholic podcast driving to and from work and errands (like Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year or Catechism in a Year), to the many resources available on websites that have video content like Faithandreason.com, Ascension Presents (on YouTube), or FORMED.com (the latter of which you can access for free by registering for an account with our parishes here!).
However you choose to grow this year, don’t let September slide by without making a resolution to do what we are asking our young people to do – our example speaks much, much louder than requiring them to attend religious education classes while we go shopping or relax.