Church Life Today

One of the surest ways to incite wonder and love for the Lord in our children is for us to rekindle wonder and love for the Lord in ourselves. As mature Christians, we have a responsibility to instruct our children––to model and share our faith with them. For many of us, this begins as a daunting and uncertain task: we might question our own faith, or feel awkward in our wording or mannerisms in sharing faith, or recognize our own lack of knowledge when it comes to Scripture or the particularities of Catholic doctrine. I felt all those things myself when it was time for me to begin forming my children to reverence our Eucharistic Lord and welcome him in the Blessed Sacrament. But starting some years ago, I took on this precious and challenging responsibility in a new way, when I began reading Scripture with my then six-year-old son to help him prepare for his First Communion. In particular, we read and wondered at 12 biblical episodes of God feeding his people: six from the Old Testament and six from the gosp