St Paul tells parents, "Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4). That is a very clear responsibility. I have never been a parent myself, and I am very conscious of that whenever I speak about parenting. I once joked that I had not necessarily had personal experience of some of the other subjects I preached about either, but someone still had to speak. What concerns me is that we are living in a world that is becoming more and more confused about how children should be formed, while the Word of God speaks with great clarity.
When does that formation begin? Many people would say in the womb. Others would say after birth. I would say it starts even before that, because it starts with the parents themselves. When God brings a man and a woman together in the Sacrament of Marriage, the formation of the child begins there, in the kind of love, faith and relationship from which that child will one day receive life. Parenting is not something we suddenly begin when a child starts school or becomes difficult. It begins in us before it reaches the child.
Formation Begins Before the Child Is Born
The physical union between husband and wife is not merely a biological act. Christian marriage cannot reduce that union to biology or passion. Within marriage it belongs to love, covenant and the creative action of God. An act through which new life may come into existence is not something trivial. It is an act in which husband and wife should recognise the presence of God and the responsibility of cooperating with Him in bringing forth life.
For that reason, there is a sharp distinction between a child being born out of love and a child being conceived through passion detached from the covenant of marriage. Wisdom 4:6 speaks of children born of unlawful unions as witnesses against the evil of their parents. Listen carefully to what that verse does not say: it does not say that the children are evil. The child is never the evil. The wrong belongs to the adults and their choices, not to the child, who must never be made to carry the shame or guilt of what adults have done.
From conception onward, begin speaking to the child, praying for the child and placing the Word of God around that child. Do not treat the unborn child as though nothing significant is there until some later stage. The claim that the child in the womb can simply be dismissed as without feeling or significance is false, and it becomes especially serious when such thinking is used to justify abortion. Do not wait until birth to begin loving, praying for and spiritually forming the child God has entrusted to you.
I remember meeting a couple whose daughter was not even five years old, yet she could stand and quote Bible verse after Bible verse. I had seen it myself. Her father told me that while the child was still in the womb, the mother would read the Bible aloud, not merely to herself but to the child. When I saw that little girl speaking Scripture with such ease, I thought, this is formation. This is parenting. The parents had begun long before the child could answer them.
We prepare so many other things for a baby. We think about whether the room should be pink or blue, what toys should be waiting, what clothes should be bought and what comforts should be ready. I joked about our obsession with pink and blue because the child coming into the world has no interest in our colour schemes. The child can survive without all those things. The preparation that matters most is prayer and the Word of God.
My aunt, who is a gynaecologist, once told me about the music mothers sometimes choose during childbirth. Among the many kinds of music she had heard requested, she remembered one woman who specifically asked for religious music because she wanted her child to be born listening to something of God. These are small things, but when children are small, little things make a difference. Material things come and go, but prayer and worship can be imbibed in a child for a lifetime.
Through You, Your Child Receives the Love of God
After birth comes infancy, and during those years a child needs the love of the parents. Parents are caretakers because the child belongs first to God. The love you give your child is meant to be the love of God flowing through you. Bringing a child into the world and then simply handing the child over to someone else as though the parental task were finished is not enough.
A maid cannot give your child the love that you as a parent are meant to give. A crèche cannot become the father or mother. I know parents say they have work, limited leave and many responsibilities, but as a priest I have also sat with adults who carried deep wounds because they never experienced the love, warmth or presence they longed for from their parents. Time and again in counselling, lack of parental love appeared as a serious wound. Do not think of yourselves as machines for producing children. Your work is not finished when the child is born.
Every touch matters. The warmth of a mother or father matters. The time you spend with an infant matters because, in my understanding, through those ordinary acts of affection the love of God is being passed into the child. So parents have to examine themselves honestly: did my child receive that love through me, or was I always somewhere else, busy with everything except the person God had placed in my hands?
Then we move from infancy into childhood. Many parents think the difficult period for parenting is adolescence. That is where we are already too late. Childhood is the great period of formation because the child is like an empty sponge, absorbing what is placed before him or her. If we wait until the teenage years to begin giving faith, discipline and values, the world will already be adding its own formation.
I once read a humorous description of the way children see their parents. At four or five, Dad and Mum are Superman and Superwoman. A few years later, Dad can still do many things, but not everything. In the teenage years, Dad apparently knows nothing. After marriage and a few problems, the same child begins to think, "Maybe Dad knows something. I should ask him." By forty or forty-five, Dad may already be gone, and suddenly the child says, "I wish Dad were here. He knew everything." It moves in a circle, and that is why the years when children still listen are not years to waste.
I also remember listening to Fr Varghese speak about taming a mongoose. When he first said a mongoose could be tamed, I listened very carefully. Then he said you could not tame the big one, only the small one, and I was disappointed. But the illustration stayed with me because the principle is clear: if you want to form your children, form them while they are small.
That formation cannot consist only in ordering a child to kneel down because it is prayer time. You have to live your spirituality so that your children see it. St Paul tells Timothy that his sincere faith first lived in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5). Faith came down through the family. Belief in God came through people whose lives made that belief visible.
Give Them Jesus While They Are Small
Moses gave Israel the same responsibility. When the children asked what the Passover meant, the parents were to tell them what God had done for His people (Exodus 12:25-27). That is how faith is passed on. When your child asks why you pray, why you go to Mass, what the Eucharist is or why Jesus matters, do not say, "You will understand when you are older." Tell them now, in small words if necessary. A child may not grasp the whole mystery, but that is no reason to give the child nothing.
I know this from my own life. To tell you the truth, I was a terror when I was small, worse than I am now. My brother was the little saint at home, my sister was the only girl and had her own privileges, and then there was me. My mother, whom I personally consider a saint whether or not the Church ever says so, would tell me that when I entered the church I had to remain silent. During Mass, when the Host was lifted up, if I was troubling her she would say, "Look and see. Jesus is there. Look and pray for anything you want."
More than thirty years later, I had not forgotten it. Even when I became a priest and held the Eucharist in my own hands, the first thought that came back was what my mother had told me as a small child: Jesus is there. She did not wait until I was old enough for a theological explanation. She told me what mattered when I was still capable of receiving it simply. Our children will not forget everything we tell them at the right time.
This is also why parents should think carefully before routinely taking children outside during Mass simply because the child may disturb others. If a child has never been taught who is present in the Eucharist or why those moments matter, we should not be surprised when the child treats the church as unimportant. We often take the easier route because we are embarrassed about what other people will think of us as parents. But formation is happening even then. If our behaviour tells the child that Mass can be walked away from whenever it becomes inconvenient, the child learns from what we do.
We will answer a hundred questions about cartoons, games or whatever else holds a child's attention, yet sometimes we do not want to take the trouble to explain why Jesus died for us or why we sit in His presence. That is backwards. Give Jesus to your children. That is the greatest gift you can give them.
Deuteronomy says, "Make them known to your children and your children's children" (Deuteronomy 4:9). Grandparents often seem to have time to tell these stories while parents say they are too busy. But the claim that we have no time to teach our children about God is something we may one day pay for dearly. We can become very busy while the children are small and later, when they are broken or have gone far from God, suddenly find all the time in the world to kneel and pray. Teach your children about God while the time is right, before those formative years have passed.
The story of Susanna in Daniel 13 shows why. Susanna was a beautiful woman who feared the Lord, and Scripture tells us that her parents were righteous and trained her according to the law of Moses. Later, when two elders tried to force themselves upon her and threatened to destroy her reputation if she resisted, she faced a terrible choice. She could give in to their sin or hold on to what she had been taught and risk condemnation.
Susanna chose to suffer rather than sin before God. She said she would rather fall into their hands than sin in the sight of the Lord. Why could she make that choice at such a moment? Because righteousness and godliness had already been planted in her. When the decisive moment came, she had something within her to hold on to, and God raised Daniel to expose the lie against her.
Our children will also face moments when we are not beside them. They will have to choose between right and wrong without a parent standing there to make the decision. The question is whether we have given them enough godliness to hold on to when that moment comes. That is why Scripture repeatedly says: teach your children about God while they are small.
Do not leave this to catechism classes. Catechism classes may provide formal instruction, questions, answers and theological information, but the formation of a child toward God is not something a class can perform in place of the parents. If a child receives Jesus deeply, that encounter must first be supported by the faith lived at home. Parents must be willing to put other things aside and spend time giving God to their children.
Do not make the world more important to your child than God. If you give the world first place, you should not be surprised when the child grows into a worldly person rather than a godly one. Tell your children who you were, what your life was like, how God raised you, how He helped you when you were broken and how He blessed you. Let them inherit the story of God's faithfulness, not merely the benefits that came afterward.
Do Not Give Them the World and Call It Love
Parents who had very little when they were young sometimes make a promise: "My children will never lack what I lacked." Then, because they now have money, they give the child every comfort. Children do not need all the comforts we imagine they need. They will find comforts for themselves when they grow. Give them God. That is the thing you are expected to give them.
I once met a mother in Bangalore who pleaded with me, "Wherever you go, Father, please speak about this." She was from a wealthy family in Kerala and had one son, about thirty-eight years old. She told me through tears that he would not work because he did not need to, that he treated her with contempt, drank constantly, pursued women and seemed interested only in the property that would come to him when she died. She had given him everything he wanted from childhood, and now she could not understand why he would not listen to her or come to prayer.
Her nephews, who were involved in ministry, said something very hard but very revealing: what priority had he ever been given other than wealth? If God had been made nothing in his upbringing, why were they surprised that he did not suddenly value God as an adult? The mother longed for him to attend a prayer meeting, but how could she expect prayer to matter to him when Jesus had never been made important in his formation?
We do our children no favour by making sure they never know pain, difficulty, disappointment or the word "no." One day pain will come, whether we like it or not. If a child has lived in a high castle where everything was provided and every desire immediately satisfied, ordinary life can become unbearable. Let them know that there is poverty in the world, that people suffer, that life demands sacrifice and that not every desire should be fulfilled. Bring them down into faith and reality.
That is why correction is part of parenting. Sirach 30 speaks in very severe language about disciplining a child, language that many people in Australia would immediately find unacceptable. There are also parents who cross the line from correction into abuse and even try to conceal what they have done. That is wrong. Correction must never become violence, whipping or the breaking of a child.
But the abuse of discipline must not become an excuse for the absence of discipline. Correction of children is a necessity. The Word calls parents to teach, correct and form their children. Do not stay away from that responsibility simply because correction is uncomfortable. Do not let children do whatever they want. Love is not the same as surrendering every boundary.
I remember an Australian newspaper editorial responding to concerns about young people falling into drugs and addictions. Its question was essentially this: if we refuse to correct our children, how can we expect them automatically to grow into holiness and goodness? Parenting is not merely bringing a child into the world. Parents have the responsibility to correct, to teach and to form.
The same responsibility extends to the way children understand their bodies, appearance and dignity. Sirach 42 warns against allowing a daughter to "parade her beauty." Some parents make immodest styles normal for little girls and then become angry when, years later, the young woman does not suddenly accept a completely different standard. Formation works by repetition. What we normalise when children are small becomes what they regard as normal later.
I was particularly disturbed by an internet forward showing a beauty pageant for very young children, including clothing and presentation that imitated adult sexuality. In such cases we are spoiling the next generation to satisfy adult ego. Parents have to take responsibility for the values being placed before children. Do not teach a child that worth comes from displaying the body, attracting attention or winning approval through appearance. Form them in the way of God while they are young.
Put the Seeds of Jesus Into Them
Even when parents have tried to give their children God, young people may still fall away. Something planted deeply can remain there even when it is not visible. What you give them today may sprout later. See to it that you put the seeds of Jesus into your children.
If your children have already reached their teenage years, the stage of direct formation has largely passed and much is now out of your hands. That sounds severe, but parents must not live under the illusion that they can neglect early formation and simply impose it later when the child no longer wants to listen. Once your control is gone, you cannot force faith into someone.
What can you do then? Kneel in prayer. Believe that God can still work in your children. Pray that there will be angels around them, and I do not mean only angels in the invisible sense. Sometimes an "angel" is a human being who walks into someone's life at the right time and pushes that person toward God. Many people can look back and recognise someone like that.
I know this from my own life. I came to Jesus much later. I had my own difficulties in youth. I did not drink or smoke, but I had struggles. Yet I believe that if I have faith today, it is because my parents sowed the seeds of faith deep within me. If I stand as a priest, it is not because of some great thing I did. My parents put the seed somewhere and waited. It took years, but it sprouted.
So if your children are already older, put the seeds of prayer into them. Even if they will not join family prayer, kneel and pray for them. Send that prayer into their lives and trust that the Lord hears. What is hidden today may sprout years from now.
Parents also have to face their own failures honestly before God. We have to ask what we did with the child God gave us. Perhaps the child was conceived in circumstances we now regret. Perhaps during infancy we were too busy with our own lives and social world to give the child our presence. Perhaps during childhood we cared intensely about education, health and material comfort but failed to give an experience of the Creator. Perhaps our own lack of faith, or the painful conflict between husband and wife, became the atmosphere the children absorbed.
When we recognise those failures, we should ask the Lord's pardon and pray. We cannot go backward and relive the years we lost, but we can send a seed of prayer into the heart of the child now. We can ask God not to hold the child responsible for the failures of the parents. We can ask Him to place people around that son or daughter who will lead them toward the Church, toward truth and toward Jesus.
Give your children many good things, but above all give them God. Give them prayer. Give them the Word. Give them boundaries. Give them the memory of what God has done in your own life. Give them Jesus while they are still small enough to receive what you place before them, and if those years have already passed, do not surrender them to despair. Kneel and pray until the seed you cannot see finds its place and, by the grace of God, begins to sprout.