A father who is a friend of mine wants his children to go to Mass on Sundays. Charlie (I’ll call him) wrote to me this beautiful sentence that he would like to say to his children to keep them faithful to Jesus and to show it by going to Church:

“I want to go to Mass to adore and thank God who loves me enough to have offered His own son up for my benefit and to strengthen my personal relationships with Him and my brothers, particularly in the Holy Eucharist.”

He doesn’t think that will help because “it sounds a bit stilted.”  And it does, actually.—but why not say it to them?

It may be because it’s the icing on the cake of our hope in Jesus Christ.  Like real icing, it’s digestible and helpful but it isn’t the main chomp. The main chomp has to do with everyday stuff and with struggle and even with suffering.

The main chomp starts with this basic ingredient:  My friend, Charlie, is maturely aware that his life in time will end and that he can calmly contemplate dying if he chooses to.  He does not have to “not think about it.”  He does not have to feel brave when he does think about it, because  he has a gift of hope, which gives him that sureness that God is good and merciful and will be waiting to greet him in eternity. And, I would say to Charlie, you show that by everything you do, crowned with a joyful and deeply rewarding Mass and Communion on Sundays.

And that may be the key to what he needs to share with his children. Charlie doesn’t know any more than I do what will happen to us when we die except that we do indeed know that it will be good, splendid, wonderful. That’s not because of anything we started. It’s because of what God has started and what Jesus of Nazareth completed—a man like ourselves with a special relationship with God the Father and the Spirit (a little above our level)—and a man who could defeat with hope the horrors of the most hideous way of dying, nailed to a tree.

This is where Charlie has to bring his children. They need to face reality: they are going to die.  He needs to help them ask themselves—this is an interior dialogue that Charlie can’t enter—what will happen to them after death, because they know they are not going to evanesce but something else will happen. What will happen?  Only the gift and grace of hope can help you answer that question positively in your own spirit.

So, Charlie, don’t argue with them. Don’t harangue them. Instead, have conversations in front of them in which you betray truths prior to worshipping God and adoring Him:  you’re going to die and I’m going to die, too. What makes you so confident that there is Someone who will be there to help you know how to live forever as yourself—which is exactly the keen hope that Jesus gives you.

There is so much you and I don’t know, Charlie, and yet think about this:

We are more sure that we will live forever in joy than we are that we will be alive tomorrow morning, because we don’t manufacture that joy or that hope—they are given to us with our firm belief in Jesus Christ our Redeemer.  And this is the thought that might help your children decide that they want to go thank God for their faith and hope. Amen.