The younger generations are drifting from the Church. What can we do to reach them?
The first half of Mass is distracting for me. I hear every foot shuffle on the slate floor and every squeak of the hinges on the heavy wooden doors behind me. I sit waiting for my children to arrive, yet once again this week they do not come.
My children are now in their late 20s. They are married with families of their own. For almost a decade, I have prayed that they will soon receive the grace of conversion, and I beg God to forgive me for any part I played in their falling away. While I know I am not the only Catholic to suffer the pain of watching a loved one leave the Church, I often feel very alone in my struggle.
Our faith is true and offers the grace of the sacraments and Jesus in the Eucharist. Nevertheless, according to a Pew Research poll, for every convert to Catholicism, six Catholics leave the Church. Many just leave religion altogether instead of switching to another Church. Even if our loved ones take up with other denominations, we should long for them to return to the fullness of faith. It is not always easy to carry the torch, however.
Why Do They Leave?
The reasons why young adults leave the Church are legion. One may associate with friends who reject organized religion, another can’t seem to reconcile the faith with the corruption in the Church, and others simply fall out of practice as they grow into new responsibilities. It may seem as if we put our best efforts into raising our children in the faith, but for what end?
My husband and I homeschooled our children and socialized with the many other homeschooling families in our parish. We went to daily Mass when we could, read together the lives of the saints, and celebrated the liturgical life of the Church. I don’t know what the turning point was, but along the way to young adulthood, all but one of our children heard the voice of someone else who convinced them there was something more attractive than the Eucharist, Mass, prayer, and seeking the will of God for their lives. I have to hope, though, that those early years laid the foundation for their eventual return.
I have given up nagging them. For years, I sent group texts to my children in the weeks leading up to Lent, Easter, Advent, New Year’s, and other liturgical and non-liturgical seasons. In these messages, I gently reminded them how much God loves them and wants them to come back, to go to confession, and to renew their devotion. For most of those messages, I never received a single word in response. It was a long time before I realized I had to get out of God’s way and let him do the work.
Our Participation in the Miracle
The story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes may illustrate how the Lord uses our prayers for our loved ones. The disciples express concern to Jesus that the crowd of 5,000 has nothing to eat and they are too far from town. When the Lord tells his disciples to feed the crowd themselves, they begin to count the cost.
“Are we to buy two hundred days’ wages worth of food and give it to them to eat?” (Mk 6:37). In John’s Gospel, Philip protests, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little [bit]” (6:7). Do we do this too? Are we counting the cost of the sacrifices we make for our loved ones, or do we feel as if our prayers don’t really make much difference?
Jesus easily could have fed the crowd with little more than a word or a nod. Instead, he asked for the five loaves and two fish, saying, “Bring them here to me.” It was a pitiful offering in the face of more than 5,000 hungry people, but it was no doubt a great sacrifice to the soul who baked the bread and caught the fish. Jesus used that sacrifice to fill and satisfy the crowd.
It’s Not About the Food
It is interesting to note where the loaves and fish come from in the different Gospel accounts. In all but John’s retelling, the disciples have brought the food themselves. They seem almost reluctant to part with it, even discussing with Jesus the alternative of going off and buying other food for the people who had gathered.
But in John’s Gospel, the disciples tell Jesus that a young boy has brought the food. Can you picture the disciples approaching the child and asking for his bread? Do you imagine the boy’s eyes lighting up with joy that Jesus has requested his help, perhaps insisting he be the one to present the bread and fish to the teacher? He does not protest that it won’t be enough, perhaps because his childlike faith allows him to see, as we should, that it is not really about the food. The many leftovers attest to this.
“Bring them here to me,” Jesus says to his disciples and to us. As we pray, we can imagine ourselves handing our prayers—tiny fish and skimpy loaves—to Jesus and allowing him to work a miracle that will satisfy us beyond our wildest imaginings. Our prayers are signs of our faithfulness. He does not need them to bring about the conversion of our children, but he knows how strong faith can grow when we surrender our prayers and other offerings to his holy will. In the face of disappointment and seeming futility, our efforts to continue with these offerings may be a heavy burden. However, Jesus urges us not to give up.
Who knows how many souls in that crowd of thousands woke the next morning—their stomachs still satisfied and the sweet aftertaste of honeyed bread in their mouths—and renewed their dedication to God? In the same way, our prayers and offerings may be mysteriously moving the hearts of our children, grandchildren, and others through the grace of God, though we may never see the results in this world.
Keep it Real
However, if we are open to the Holy Spirit, we will recognize where God wants us to put our efforts, just as he did with the disciples on that hillside of hungry people. “He gave [the loaves and fishes] to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds” (Mt 14:19). Above all, we must be genuine in our faith. Our practice must be more than a show to convince our loved ones of what they should be doing.
Our loved ones must notice something unaffected and sincere in our lives and recognize that our Catholic faith is something we cherish and can’t do without. Catholics have much to compete with these days, but not even the roar of scandals and the lure of temptations can overcome the attraction of a life lived well and a faith expressed through love.
One example of this is the conversion of Norma McCorvey. McCorvey was “Jane Roe” in the infamous Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion in the United States. She went to Catholic Mass as a child and periodically in her adult life. Nevertheless, her true conversion came around the age of 50, after she witnessed the sincere reverence and experienced the profound kindness of Catholics in the pro-life movement.
Father John Hardon wrote, “The first and most fundamental way in which parents can keep their children Catholic is for the parents themselves to be authentic—and I mean authentic—Catholics themselves.” This can apply not only to parents, but also to everyone whose goal it is to be a light in the world for others.
Our Own Gethsemane
The story of Moses holding his arms to heaven while the Israelites fought the Amalekites (Ex 17:8–16) is a perfect example of how important it is for us to remain faithful in prayer for our fallen-away loved ones. As long as Moses kept his arms raised to God, the Israelites held the upper hand in battle. When he became weary and let his arms fall, the enemy overcame the children of God.
For many parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and others who have watched our Catholic faith become less important in the lives of our loved ones, it is a very personal battle, one we cannot let the enemy win.
Praying for the conversion or reversion of a family member is often a long-term commitment with no reward in this lifetime. As such, it can be difficult—for some, impossible—to stay faithful to the essential task of remaining on our knees.
We may be hoping for a miraculous event, a bolt of lightning, or a voice from the sky, like those of St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Norma McCorvey. God, however, may require our patience for a more personal reason. It is not only the conversion of my children that God seeks. He can do that without me. It is my faith God is working on.
The Prize I May Never See
As ironic as it may seem, the goal of my prayers and offerings is not the return of my children to the Church. The goal is my faithfulness in the battle. I often wonder if God delays the miraculous conversions of my children that I beg for because he knows how quickly I am apt to credit myself for their return. I might also decide I no longer need to pray, since I have obtained my heart’s desire. In the long days and nights of waiting for God’s answer, it is comforting to believe that his slow timetable is drawing me closer to him, to the Blessed Mother, and to my brothers and sisters, the saints.
My devoutly Catholic grandmother died while only a few of her 14 adult children remained in the faith. One by one, however, they eventually came back, received holy Communion, and died as faithful Catholics. Like her, I may not live to see the conversion of my children.
Catholicism is rich and full of treasures that Our Lord provides to help us strengthen our faith and assist souls along the way. In addition to having a regular prayer time each day and attending Mass on Sundays, perhaps we can commit to other devotions—other loaves and fishes we can offer—such as praying novenas to the patron saints of those for whom we pray or praying the rosary.
We may reach out to others whose children have fallen away—not to gossip or commiserate, but to join in prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving for our children. The goal is for me to remain on my knees for them, perhaps for the rest of my life, in confident hope that Our Lord desires their return even more desperately than I do. Like the meager loaves and fish, the success of my prayers for the conversion of my children has nothing to do with me or my efforts. Nevertheless, somehow my perseverance is crucial to this mysterious process.
Perhaps God knows I can pray better for my children in the next life. Their return to the Lord may even happen silently in their hearts at the end of their lives when no one can witness it, and that is a joyful realization. The words of the prophet Baruch can bring us comfort during the long wait: “Led away on foot by their enemies they left you: but God will bring them back to you, borne aloft in glory as on royal thrones” (5:6).
