As a new school year begins, I am happy to offer Holy Mass for all of you who represent homeschooling parents throughout the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Thank you for your presence here today and thank you, Father Canisius, for hosting this Mass at St. Gabriel's. I hope that everyone had a pleasant, restful, and productive summer and that you are ready for the challenges and hard work that lay ahead.
My desire this morning is first of all to offer you a word of thanks for your personal care and attention to the education and Christian formation of your children. When your children were baptized, you heard the words: "You are the first teachers of your children in the ways of faith. May you be the best of teachers, bearing witness to the faith by what you say and do." Those words have echoed and re-echoed in your minds and hearts as you go about the daily task of educating your children at home and ensuring that they have a solid foundation in the Catholic faith.
As it happens, the Scripture readings for today shed light on your ministry as educators of your children, not only in regular academic subjects but above all in the Catholic faith. Let us see what insights these readings offer for your prayerful reflection.
I Thess 2:1-5
. . . beginning with today's reading from Paul's 1 letter to the Thessalonians. Here Paul speaks about his anxiety for the local churches he founded, including and especially the Church at Thessalonica. Paul speaks about the struggles he experienced in preaching the Gospel. His efforts evidently met with a lot of resistance even though Paul's manner was gentle and affectionate. Paul says to the Thessalonians that he was determined to share with them the Gospel of God and to share something of himself with them as well.
Paul's care and concern for the Church at Thessalonica is mirrored in your care and concern for the domestic church of which you have charge, namely, your household - husband, wife, children, extended family. While it is true that the family is the basic unit of society, the Church has a more profound view of the family. It is a domestic church - a place of faith, peace, security, and love - a place where children are conceived in love and welcomed, where they are surrounded by the love of their parents, where conditions are optimal for them to grow into the persons God created them to be. You are, so to speak, "the ministers" of your domestic church which is not a closed circle but opens out to the wider church and society. After all, a parish is a family of families and a society is only as healthy as the families that comprise it.
Just as St. Paul labored, struggled, and experienced anxiety as he founded and nurtured local churches, so too you face many challenges in fulfilling your responsibilities as Catholic parents. That is why it is important to draw upon the support of the Church, the strength of the Sacraments, and the support of one another in your efforts. Thank you for taking your role as Catholic parents so seriously!
Psalm 139
The Responsorial Psalm offers another point for reflection. Recall what we said: "You have searched me and you know me!" Psalm 139 goes on to say, "O Lord, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar . . . ." Indeed, the Lord knows us better than we know ourselves.
As you go through busy days, filled with activities and punctuated prudential judgments, it is well to take time for daily prayer and in the midst of that prayer to ask the Lord to help you see yourselves as he sees you, to free you from any and all forms of self-deception, to give you a pure and limpid heart, well-formed for the task of forming your children. Daily prayer and reflection in the presence of God, the knower of hearts is essential to the task and ministry you have embraced, as I know you know.
Matthew 21:23-26
Matthew's Gospel picks up where Psalm 139 left off.As you recall, Jesus condemned the scribes and Pharisees for trying to shape the law of God to meet their own preferences and for seeking appearances rather than facing reality. As we listen to Jesus' words, we realize that such things can happen in our lives as well.
But as we know, children have a way of unmasking the inconsistencies of their elders and they have a nose for recognizing all forms of hypocrisy. This is true when children encounter adults even casually but it might be even truer when you are with your children all day long, on the days in which everything is going along swimmingly and on those other days when things might not be going so well. No one of us is perfect (except the Lord and the Blessed Mother), so all of us, myself included, must pray to be delivered from serious inconsistency, compartmentalization, presumption, & hypocrisy. Such deliverance renders us pure in spirit, teachers after the mind and heart of Christ.
Holy Home of Nazareth
As we bring these few reflections to a close, we do well to remember how the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph taught Jesus, how they instructed him in the faith, taught him to read, and gave him a skill. In the Holy Family of Nazareth, we find a school of faith and love, a school in which the humanity of the Incarnate Son of God was formed. My prayer is that your domestic church, your family, will resemble the Holy Family of Nazareth as your children grow in age, grace, and favor before God and humanity. And may God bless you and keep you always in his love!