By Thomas Creen, MJ • Phoenix, AZ
As a high school Spanish teacher, there are times when a student’s progress in the language is so pronounced that I have to ask what that student is doing differently. The usual response? “I am studying Spanish at home on my own.” So I ask all my classes to consider their favorite sport and imagine if the only time they ever played that sport or thought about it was during official team practices during the sport’s season. Then I ask them to think how good they would be at that sport if they treated it in that way. And it’s obvious that they would be pretty bad. So my point to them is that in order to excel at anything, you gotta do extra stuff.
The same goes with our Faith. Families have to do extra stuff to grow in the Faith or they’re gonna be pretty bad at it. If the only time a family thinks about the Faith is during Mass on Sunday, they are going to be amateurs. And that’s not good enough when we are talking about eternal salvation. We have to be pros. And in order to become pros, we have to do extra stuff.
Over the past year, several beautiful examples of families putting in extra effort for the Faith have come to my attention and inspired me. A group of Miles Jesu members and friends in the Chicago area organized a full-day retreat for their families at their parish. Another Miles Jesu member in Phoenix takes his sons on a hiking retreat into the Grand Canyon every summer.
Maybe that’s too much for some families. But everybody can regularly pray the Rosary as a family. Everybody can take time and read one paragraph of the Catechism together. Worth it!
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