Family Faith Formation
Equipping Parents to Pass on our Tradition
Parents as the "first heralds of the Gospel"
This year at St. Mary's Huntingburg, our family catechesis programs will be for our first grade families, as well as for any families who wish to have their child receive the sacraments of First Reconciliation and First Communion. This Family Faith Formation will take place after our 10AM Mass and before our Spanish 12:30PM Mass on Sundays. Our goal is to equip parents with the tools necessary to be their child's primary catechist of the Faith. The Catechism states that “parents receive the responsibility of evangelizing their children” and calls them the “first heralds” of the faith (2225). The family is called “domestic church”—the church of the home (CCC 2224).
Words of John Paul II Encouraging Faith in the Home:
“The Church wishes to carry out her educational mission above all through families who are made capable of undertaking this task by the Sacrament of Matrimony, through the ‘grace of state’ which follows from it and the specific ‘charism’ proper to the entire family community.”
--Grattissimam Sane, John Paul II
“...the Christian family, in fact, is the first community called to announce the Gospel to the human person during growth and to bring him or her, through a progressive education and catechesis, to full human and Christian maturity.”
--Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II
"Certainly one area in which the family has an irreplaceable role is that of religious education, which enables the family to grow as a “domestic church.” Religious education and the catechesis of children make the family a true subject of evangelization and the apostolate within the Church… Even when they entrust these responsibilities to ecclesiastical institutions or to schools administered by religious personnel, their educational presence ought to continue to be constant and active."
--Grattissimam Sane, John Paul II
