Besides just sending their children to religious education or to Catholic schools, how can we encourage more families to come to Mass?  That seems to be the most popular question I get these days. It’s a great question, but I don’t have an easy answer. 

From catechetical leaders and from clergy I hear lamentations about families not attending Mass. I was very surprised when I asked that question to my sixth grade religious education class in St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral, Trenton, a couple of weeks ago who had gone to Mass the previous Sunday and they all said they did, so there is hope.

In the majority of parishes I hear a different story. Some have become so discouraged that they have penalties. They increase religious education fees because the parents are not putting money into the parish collection on Sundays. In some Catholic schools, the situation is that if families are not giving regular financial contributions to the parish, their tuition goes up. These may be practical ways to address financial concerns, but not the best for evangelization.

So now we look at the Synod of Bishops meeting that is taking place in Rome and they are addressing the challenges of the Church today. The reality is that each one of us needs to take an active role in the New Evangelization. One of the hopes of religious education is that through the children, we can re-evangelize the parents. Encouraging children to engage their parents in what they are learning can be a way of drawing them back to the Church.  Involving the children in Sunday Mass is another way to draw parents back.

But ultimately, what will keep them coming is by their having a real encounter with God. We can help to foster that, but in the end it is God who is working within the people that will lead to the reawakening of their gift of faith and opening themselves up to his presence in their lives.  The power of witnessing what faith has done for us is extremely important.  I don’t know of anyone who came back to regular practice of their faith because someone lectured them about the Sunday obligation.  I know many that came back because someone told them about how faith had sustained them, or how faith made the sorrows of life easier to bear and the joys more joyous.

For us to be effective in sharing our faith we need to be excited about it.  At the Eucharistic Congress one of the things that inspired me most was the devotion of people as they prayed before the Blessed Sacrament. Seeing eyes welling with tears as Jesus went by in procession, seeing adoring stares from people who, in a huge arena, were enjoying a moment with God as intimate as if no one else was there, was truly inspiring.

Our faith does make a difference, a huge difference. If each of us could make one person long for what we have as Christians, our churches would be full, and more importantly, think how many lives would be changed. That is the pressing need of our day.

Drawing a parallel to his experience at the Second Vatican Council and addressing this need to be excited about our faith, the Holy Father said, “We can understand what I myself felt at the time: during the Council there was an emotional tension as we faced the common task of making the truth and beauty of the faith shine out in our time, without sacrificing it to the demands of the present or leaving it tied to the past: the eternal presence of God resounds in the faith, transcending time, yet it can only be welcomed by us in our own unrepeatable today. Therefore I believe that the most important thing, especially on such a significant occasion as this, is to revive in the whole Church that positive tension, that yearning to announce Christ again to contemporary man.”

Father Freer is diocesan vicar for Catholic education.