Practices
By: Stephine Murphy
People often see deeply religious people as a mystery. How do those people live out their faith in such concrete ways and with such consistency? This is especially true in our modern world, where a Pew Report noted in 2017 that only 54% of Americans consider themselves religious. In my experience, many Catholic mothers find themselves at a loss as to how to make their family life more in line with the Church and their children more faithful, but the Church has given the faithful a great legacy of practices and tradition upon which we can draw.
The first and easiest thing that a mother can do is to make Fridays meatless all year in commemoration of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Many Catholics have misinterpreted Canons 1252-3 to mean that they no longer have to make reparation on Fridays, but that is not what the Canon says at all. We can choose to substitute a different penance, but we must do penance nonetheless. Abstaining requires some effort beforehand, but it quickly becomes practice. Pack a meatless lunch for your children at school and cook something without meat (or with fish) for dinner and discuss why we must make reparation. Even the smallest child can understand that we do it out of respect for Christ’s sacrifice for us and can point to a crucifix as an example of what that sacrifice was. As this becomes effortless for your family, consider giving up sweets or desserts as an additional reminder.
A second thing that a mother can do to order her home toward our faith is to make sure that the environment inspires the family. Most Catholics have a statue of Mary in front of the house, but the kids are just running by her while they play. I suggest that you include Catholic imagery like statues and art in your home. These don’t have to be expensive items either. One of my favorite images of Mary is a large canvas that I bought at TJ Maxx for $15, and I often pick up vintage plaster saint statues at rummage sales for good prices. Additionally, you could decorate your home around Catholic feasts and the liturgical year. Secular culture puts great focus on decorating your home for holidays, but it’s just as easy to ask a child to color an image of the Sacred Heart and display it throughout the month of June, or replace bunnies and eggs with Easter imagery for our great feast. These subtle changes indicate what you really want your family to focus on.
The last way I’d suggest altering your family life to the faith is through organized prayer. You are already making sure they get to mass on Sunday, but Catholicism is rich with beautiful prayer and practice. When the Covid quarantine hit, we started praying the Angelus as a family at noon. I set an alarm on my phone, printed out a coloring book for the little ones, and the rest of us used iBreviary on our phones to say the prayers until we knew them by rote. We also pray Night Prayer as a family before the littlest ones go to bed, and it provides us all good closure from the day. I’d like to say that we are a rosary-saying family, but maybe these other devotions will lead us to it!
For a Catholic mother, making small changes to your homelife can help your family’s faith life grow. It can be the basic building blocks: what you eat, what your home looks like, and what you do with some small moments together. I see the fruits of these changes in my own home. My children know what reparation and sacrifice is from abstaining on Fridays. They see the richness of Catholic art and our heritage of the communion of saints in our decor. And when they have a need, they find solace in the structure of an organized family prayer life. Everyone knows the famous quotation from St. Therese of Liseux, “do small things with great love,” and I’d say that implementing these small changes would show your children the greatest love of all: to help lead them to Christ.
