Our priest smiled. “It’s so good they’re comfortable here,” he said.
“A little too comfortable,” I added as I scanned the sanctuary for anyone they might be disturbing.
“No,” Father assured me with sincerity. “It’s good that they feel at home here.”
Our parish is our family’s home away from home. It’s where I received every sacrament except baptism. This church is where my husband and I both grew up and where we met as teenagers in youth group. It’s where we got married, had our children baptized, and where we’re now seeing our older kids enter more fully into the sacramental life of the Church.
Though St. Vincent de Paul in Stirling, New Jersey, is home, I didn’t have close relationships with the priests and staff when I was growing up. I don’t know that I would have articulated it this way then, but the clergy and those who served during Mass were kind of like professional religious to me. They were involved in a way that I wasn’t, and I saw a kind of divide between them and myself. I didn’t think it was a bad thing, but I did feel separate.
Thanks in large part to a formative youth group, in high school, I began to see that I could have a role in serving the church. I joined the music team to play for Mass on Sunday nights. I went on retreats and then learned to help lead them. For brief periods in high school and college, I served as a lector and Eucharistic minister.
As an adult, I have discerned that I am not called to a particular charism but rather called to serve my home parish. At different times, that has meant lecturing, organizing the spiritual library, helping organize meetings for other moms, putting up seasonal displays on the Pro-Life bulletin board, running a station at vacation Bible school, and signing my husband up to teach a CCD class (I was asked, but I was nursing a baby at the time, and the logistics didn’t make sense).
Because I am called in a way that my mom was not—and this is certainly not a judgment on how she and my dad raised me; each of us is uniquely called to holiness—my children are growing up with an experience significantly different than mine.
My openness in one arena—first, simply coming to a moms’ group to get to know other people in the parish—has opened many doors to other ways my family and I can serve. My oldest started altar serving as soon as he was able. My kids all help carry in groceries for the food pantry and gather their coins for the Good Counsel Homes baby bottle they keep on their dresser.
They also see that sometimes Mom speaks to parents at other churches about their own religious formation, sharing themes of my book, Don’t Forget to Say Thank You. They helped stuff bulletins for my first book signing, which was graciously hosted by the parish. Our pastor is a friend who comes to our home to say Mass for my homebound father-in-law, then stays for dinner (and sometimes helps cook).
For my children, the church is not just a place you go on Sundays but also a community that is an important part of our identity. Our church is not just a place where we go to be spiritually fed, but where we help feed others.
The way we parents live out our faith is the first example our children have regarding being Catholic adults. Sometimes it means capitalizing on our strengths and giving of our talents. Other times, it means getting out of our comfort zones to give more than we think we can handle.
Either way, when we live lives that are truly centered on Christ, we give our kids the hope that they can live the joys of the Faith as well. We show them that we are only just getting started.
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