sharing the faith with family - 6th week easter tuesday

The first reading tells of the imprisonment of Paul and Silas in Philippi and how in the middle of the night, while they were praying and singing, there was an earthquake and the doors of the jails flew open.  When the jailer saw that the jail doors were opened he drew his sword to kill himself for his failure, thinking that the prisoners escaped under his watch.  But Paul told him that they were all there and that there was nothing to fear.  Because of this the jailer knelt before Paul and asked, what must I do in order to be saved? Paul said to him, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you and your household will be saved.”  And so the jailer brought Paul and Silas to his house, and his household were all baptized, and they rejoiced at having come to the faith.

There are instances when the most difficult persons to convince and bring to the faith are the members of our family.  There are instances when the parents can be so devoted, they are daily mass goers, they are daily communicants, they pray often, but then the children and even their fathers, the husbands do not even go to mass on Sundays.  It must be difficult finding ourselves in that situation, a situation when you cannot share the faith with the people you love, a situation when you can be together with your family in everything – eating, shopping, vacation … you are together - except in church, except in prayers.  Today we can only recall this with nostalgia.  Today some of us can only imagine the joy of the jailer when he and his household together rejoiced in the Lord and in their common faith and devotion.  Gone were those days when as a parent we could still force our children to pray the rosary with us, or wake early on a Sunday morning to go together as a family in Church.   

Why is this happening?  Probably we are not religious enough.  We may not have fallen short in our reminders but we may have fallen short in our examples, in our silent witnessing. 

Probably we don’t value religion as much as our forefathers valued it before us.

Probably our children are rebelling, and in their effort to express their individuality and independence they oppose even the good we try to impose on them.  I really don’t have answers.  But I just want to bring this up because isn’t it in everyone’s heart that we can also share our faith, our love and devotion to God especially to the people we love.  Isn’t this in everyone’s desire?  Perhaps it is good to be reminded of this reality if only for the reason that we should not give up or tire in leading our loved ones back to the church, back to the sacraments, back to the devotion we had when we were younger, when the world was not as complicated as this.  Perhaps this reading is a reminder that we should not give up in explaining the faith, in witnessing to the faith, in living out the faith so that people especially our household will be attracted to the faith because of us.