This post is a little different for me. There is no picture associated with it. There is no video or other multimedia element. I just got this email and I thought it was something that I deeply believe and I wanted to share it. We get wrapped up in a lot of things that are not really good for us. Not good for us physically, spiritually, emotionally, or in any other form. I am not the first person to take the high road. I do a lot of things that are not good for me, but I am always trying. I love my kids and I want to do everything I can to protect them. One of the ways I think I can protect them is by preparing them. I have 30+ years of experience on them and unlike my parents I want to share all that with them. I know that they have to learn somethings on their own, but we as parents have to guide them.
This list was written by Brian Caulfield, the editor of Fathers for Good. It is a group of Catholic Men trying to help other Catholic men do Good. I just copied and pasted…
10 Things Your Kids Need to Know …
1. You love them
Love is the foundation of any child’s life, and it is a resource he or she will draw upon throughout life. Our children can get for themselves most of the things we may fail to give them. But one thing they can never get anywhere else is parental love. Say today, “I love you,” and then give life to the words.
2. God loves them
In Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), Pope Benedict XVI writes, “I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.” To some children, God’s love may seem as clear as the crucifix on the wall or the picture of Jesus with his arms around the children. For others, such love may seem abstract or distant and they will need convincing. In either case, they will look to you, their father, for affirmation through your actions that the Father in heaven does love them.
3. You love their mother
The marriage relationship is the central reality in the lives of children. The love a father bestows on his wife will be a model for his sons of how to treat women, and a model for his daughters of how they will expect to be treated by men. As fathers, we should help them to expect only the very best.
4. Life has meaning and is worth living
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, the most popular preacher of the 20th century, titled his 1950s TV show “Life is Worth Living.” He knew that after two world wars, a deep sadness and cynicism was threatening the culture. He knew that people needed hope and meaning – to know that, indeed, life is worth living.
The things that make it worth living are God’s love for us, our love for others and the deep mystery at the heart of creation that is reflected in the human heart. Teach your children to respect the mystery, accept the unknowable and discover their own potential for love and achievement under the eyes of God.
5. They must learn to forgive
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” You can say these words of the Our Father a thousand times and still not realize their full meaning. Forgiveness is absolutely essential for one to enter the kingdom of God. If we do not forgive others, God will not forgive us. Forgiveness also has the temporal benefit of reliving us of psychological burdens, freeing us from the clasp of revenge, and making possible love even of our enemies.
6. Morality matters
There are voices inside of every heart saying, I can do as I please – my law myself. And there are more than enough enticements to keep those voices alive. Yet we need only look at a playground to know that there is a law outside the self – that morality matters – when one child takes the toy of another and the offended party cries out for justice. There is a right and a wrong in life, and the sooner your child understands this, and seeks to live accordingly, the better it will go for him or her.
7. The Catholic Church is the one true Church
Yes, we still believe this, and it does matter that we teach it to our children. Although you will hear from many sources that all religions are basically the same, the Catholic Church has never taught this little bit of syncretism as official doctrine. In fact, the Church has condemned the teaching that all religions are equal.
In 2000, a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, called Dominus Jesus, caused some stir for proclaiming that the Catholic Church has always been and will always be the one Church on earth founded by Jesus for the salvation of souls. Anyone who is saved, and goes to heaven, does so only through the agency of the Catholic Church.
Only the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus, only she has the seven sacraments and the valid priesthood of Christ, and only she offers believers the true body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist. Those who are not formal members of the Catholic Church may, by God’s mercy, make it to heaven, but only through the overabundant graces given through the Church, which draws all persons of goodwill to herself. This document was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the present Holy Father.
8. Evil is real and they will suffer
This is the true “inconvenient truth” of our day. Evil has been downgraded to personal failure or genetic tendency, and the devil has been laughed out of polite conversation as though he really has pitchfork and horns.
Suffering has been cast as something simply to be avoided or to be medicated or psychologized away.
Yet evil will confront your kids, the more they strive to be good. St. Augustine tells of that germinal moment when his peers tempted him to steal a pear. He rightly saw in this moral decision the heart of all evil – the free choice to do what is wrong when we know it is wrong. Those who are wise in their own eyes dismiss Augustine’s “scruples” and excuse the “wild oats of youth.” Yet we should teach our children that the devil roams “like a roaring lion” seeking souls to devour. They must stand strong in faith and resist temptation.
9. One day they will die
Despite the best medical efforts, death is inevitable. Your children will see you die or, God forbid, you will see one of them die. Death is the universal sentence. Yet death is not the thing to be most feared or even regretted. The great benefit of death is that it gives form and structure to life. We know we have an end, and only so much time. We want to believe, more than anything, that we will outlast the grave. And – lo and behold – there is one religion that says we do and can actually prove it! The Catholic religion proclaims that Christ rose from the dead and founded the one Church that gives us all the means on earth to gain everlasting life as well. Good news for sore souls.
10. Love is stronger than death
We may have heard this at a Catholic wake our funeral. “For strong as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion, … Were one to offer all his riches to buy love, he would be roundly mocked (Song of Songs 8:6-7).
The love of Christ has rescued us from death, so now we need not live in the fear of the shadow of death, but are free sons and daughters of God, destined for love in eternity.
Check out some other stuff at:
Fathers for Good
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WWW.KOFC.ORG
