Sixth Sunday of Easter: "This is the day the Lord has made...

Only 15 days remain if we’re to reclaim our faith and, when the Risen Lord breathes his Spirit into us anew on Pentecost Sunday, to be living a more authentic Catholic faith. Today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles reminded us that living a more authentic faith means to

…love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.

That frames the question for our reflections on this six Sunday of Easter...which also happens to be Mother’s Day: “What does it mean for adult Catholics to ‘love one another’?”

Thursday’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page offered a response: Mike Kerrigan’s praise for his Mom’s role as a catechist of his Catholic faith.

Yes, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, God entrusts His children to their parents’ ministry of being “the first and best teachers of their children in the faith.” In today’s first reading, St. John points the way for parents: “God shows no partiality….whoever fears Him and acts uprightly is acceptable to God.” To be the first and best catechists of the faith of their children doesn’t require any special training, knowledge, or particular gift. All it requires is to fear God and act uprightly.

Yet, with mothers and fathers being complementary genders as Nature teaches in the procreation of children as God intended in and from the beginning, their roles as catechists are also complementary, meaning Mom's and Dad's provide different yet complementary forms of catechesis for their children as Moms and Dads both fear God and act uprightly.

For their part, fathers—like St. Joseph—play a vital role as catechists by their silent witness: Being an authentic person of faith and modeling it to their children. In fact, research indicates:

• The children of fathers who attend Sunday Mass weekly with their children end up practicing their faith as adults at a statistically more significant rate than children of fathers who don’t attend Sunday Mass weekly with their children. That silent witness teaches something important to children.
• A father who genuflects before the Blessed Sacrament before entering the pew symbolically communicates a powerful moral and spiritual message to his children: Even though he’s the Alpha male in the family and not to be messed with, there is a Higher Power toward Whom even this Alpha male must bend the knee. That’s another important form of silent witness.

In a complementary way, Moms—like the Blessed Mother—play another, equally vital if not première role as catechists of their children. In contrast to a father’s silent witness, a mother’s witness is vocal: To teach the faith by their words. As an old adage reports, “Children learn faith on the school of their mother’s knee.”

Kerrigan reports that his catechesis in the Catholic faith didn’t end as a child seated on his mother’s knee. No, it continued throughout his adolescent years. How? As his mother kept repeating—more times than Kerrigan can count—what became the three most important words he knows for living an authentic faith.

No, those words weren’t “I love you,” although Kerrigan reports his Mom frequently did utter those three words even when he wasn’t all that much very lovable.

Those words also weren’t “How could you?”, as that’s not teaching the faith but making someone feel guilty and, in Kerrigan’s ethnic heritage, that’d be what’s oftentimes referred to as “Irish guilt.” 

The three words Kerrigan’s Mom was sure to utter anytime anything went wrong in her firstborn son’s life? “Offer it up!”

• “Scrape your knee or hurt your finger? Offer it up!”
• “Didn’t make the starting lineup on varsity, despite training hard all summer? Offer it up!”
• “SAT scores came back lower than you’d expected? Offer it up!”
• “Broken heart because she turned down your invitation to go with you to the senior prom? Offer it up!”
• “Didn’t get the job you wanted?” That’s right: “Offer it up!”

Sound familiar? Be grateful for your Mom’s catechism lessons!

Kerrigan says his Mom’s invocation of “Offer it up!” whenever the deck of cards offered him a joker was an “expression of love in a catechetical and not saccharine sense.” Retrospectively, Kerrigan realizes his Mom was inviting her eldest son to participate in redemptive suffering. How? By learning to unite his life’s daily setbacks to Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross so he would fulfill his God-given purpose in the world.

Although Kerrigan doesn’t mention this in his op-ed, fulfilling his God-given purpose in this would require him—just as it required his Mom—to demonstrate fear of God and living uprightly by catechizing his siblings about living an authentic faith. Whenever the deck of cards offered one of them a joker, he could demonstrate his love of others, just as Kerrigan’s Mom did with him, by saying to them, yep, “Offer it up!”

Today, Kerrigan realizes his Mom’s form of “tough love” was what he calls “practical mysticism,” a form of connecting with God that’s designed to ensure not one drop of suffering—which is never in short supply in this broken world, as every one of us knows from personal experience—would ever go to waste.

At the time, Kerrigan didn’t much appreciate his Mom’s approach to catechesis, admitting “I cannot say I immediately understood the spiritual habit she encouraged and, as any mom knows, more importantly, practiced.” But, in retrospect, he now appreciates its realism: Try to avoid troubles all we want, those jokers will surely be dealt to us, so we might as well use them wisely to develop a more authentic faith rather than let bad luck devour the one life God has given us by dwelling upon what never was…and is likely never to be.

More than one century ago, a British journalist asked the famous Catholic English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, as well as literary and art critic, G.K. Chesterton, what was wrong with the world. Known for his incisive quips, Chesterton replied: “I am.”

What Chesterton was observing is that none of us can change anything in this world without first changing ourselves. When Fate and Fortune serve up a “joker” when we had hoped for an “ace,” “Offer it up!” identifies one, critical change that can express a more authentic faith: Redirecting our thoughts to God’s only begotten Son and the Crucifix as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Knowing that we should offer our up troubles and difficulties and to do so when those troubles and difficulties arise are two very different things, of course, especially when a “joker” threatens to derail our plans. The failure to “offer it up,” Kerrigan observes “is a shame,” adding “If I ‘offered it up’ a little more, I’m convinced the world would be remade anew.”

That represents our challenge from Scripture for this sixth week of Easter: To contemplate that living a more authentic faith requires us “to love one another” which means “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” In particular, that means reminding others who are experiencing trials and tribulations—because Fate and Fortune have dealt them “jokers” instead of the “aces” for which they hoped—to “Offer it up!” as any loving mother who lives an authentic faith would.

Lost though we oftentimes are in the darkness of our days in this world, Mother’s Day reminds each of us who come to Sunday Mass of the light that has been made flesh in our lives through their authentic faith. Let’s “Offer it up!”—this Mass—for our Mom’s—both living and deceased—and, by imitating their authentic faith, to be catechists whose mantra of “Offer it up!” points others to life’s true North: Calvary.