WHY ARE WE CATHOLIC?

So here’s the scene, nearly ten years ago - my five year-old child poses a question to me, asking, “Mommy, why are we Catholic? Why can’t we be Christian and go to Ji-E’s (2^nd Aunt) Church?”

Perhaps some of you have had a similar experience? How did you address your child? Did you dodge the question with your tried and tested response of “Mommy’s busy, go ask your Daddy?”

Neither was this appropriate, to buy more time, and bank on using those three magic words, “I don’t know”.

And so, stumped with that very pure and honest question, I searched in all of the three seconds I had, to reach out to the Holy Spirit for something to say. I wanted to adopt an open approach to my child’s spirituality and did not want to destroy her innocence and her natural curiosity of knowing God. Above all, I did not want to form strong opinions against others’ worship prematurely for a young child – after all, God is God, wherever He may be and God is Love.

To my relief, what came out was most definitely not of my own wisdom. Whatever the Holy Spirit provided me that very instant, in response to that tiny frame of a darling five year-old then, it seemed to have completely satisfied her searching heart. I expressed that together with her daddy, on our wedding day, we made a promise to God that we will bring up our children in the Catholic Church. And so I asked her if she would agree to allow us to, at least, fulfill our promise and then when she was all grown up and she still wanted to go to Ji-E’s church, we would be open to that - She agreed.

Now that did not mean that I had managed to push off the issue and neither did it mean that if I prayed hard enough, perhaps I would not need to revisit this till her teens or later, or better yet, that she might completely forget and not bring it up ever again. Instead, it only made me realise that what really happened then, was the beginning of a huge job ahead of me. Now I had been tasked to ensure she had the opportunity to completely experience a Catholic childhood and to got to know God in this environment whilst “He” will do the rest to reach into her heart - now, how sneaky was that, Holy Spirit!

So clearly, it was to be our duty, as parents, to provide her with a Catholic experience – it meant that we had to work at it for sure, as we could not deprive her of the richness in the traditions of a Catholic experience, if she was to experience any better or worse from it. We knew not all the answers, but without a doubt, we have since enriched our lives and are continuing to enrich our lives growing in faith together as a family. After all, just as, in the New Testament, Jesus reminded us all that unless we become as little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven.

In no way would I claim that my reply to my daughter was the right or best way, but it was one way that got me “hooked” on faith, and so perhaps at the very least, it must have been the Holy Spirit way!