Ten Suggestions for Parents

This last weekend I preached my first of 8 weekends on the state of vocations in our Diocese in various parishes/Area Faith Communities. Instead of presenting a message of desperation on our need for priests, I tried to present the present state as one of opportunity for us to reflect on the need for priests to preside at the Eucharist and other sacraments, and that God is calling. In addition, I tried to give practical hints of what parents can do to raise their children in a culture of vocations - an environment in which the notion of a call from God is not only capable of being heard but readily responded to. My suggestions to parents are:

1. Develop your relationship with Christ and impart a desire for discipleship in the lives of your children.


2. Live your vocation to marriage out as fully as you can.


3. Speak of the influential priests and religious in your life.


4. Provide opportunities for your children to speak with priests and religious.


5. Pray for your children’s vocations that they may understand their call, and place them in the care of the Blessed Mother (especially in praying the Rosary).


6. Help your children develop a wide range of activities and discern what gives them joy and at what they are good.


7. Speak of your children responding, showing your support of them without pushing them.


8. Instill in your children a desire to serve and a proper understanding of stewardship.


9. Inspire a heroic life of virtue in your child by reading the lives of the saints and encouraging moral choices.


10. Develop a sense of the sacred and transcendent in your child – the Good, the True, and the Beautiful – which will reveal the Truth.