FAITH OF THE PARENTS   Parents hold a privileged role and responsibility in family life (CCC 2221-2230). Before the Christian community, parents present and name their child and ask the Church for Baptism – the gift of faith and life of grace.  In doing so, they accept the responsibility of “training them in the practice of the faith, to bring them up to keep God’s commandments [and to] love God and our neighbor”. Only after acknowledging this responsibility do parents sign their infant child with the cross of salvation, claiming the child for Christ.  Through this sacrament, parents ritually express their personal commitment to God, to the community of faith and to their child.  They can do so only because they first have faith.  It is the promise of this living tradition, of God present in the community of faith – as parish and as domestic church – that is the foundation of hope and our ability to transmit faith from generation to generation. For our children to have faith, our parents must first have faith (General Directory for Catechesis 226). The adage, “faith is caught, not taught,” is true especially for the domestic church.  Simply put, parents teach most effectively by example.  They profoundly affect the faith of their children by attending first to their own faith and religiosity.  Each parent is obliged to live the baptismal vocation as priests, prophet and servant-ruler in the home, in the workplace and in the marketplace.    FOLLOW THE WAY OF LOVE   The United States Bishops in their Pastoral Message to families say that: Parents carry the mission of the Church of the Home in ordinary ways when:   You believe in God and that God cares about you.   You Love and never give up believing in the value of another person.   You foster intimacy, beginning with the physical and spiritual union of the spouses and extending in appropriate ways to the whole family.   You evangelize by professing faith in God, acting in accord with gospel values, and setting an example of Christian living for your children and others.   You educate.   You pray together, thanking God for blessings, reaching for strength, asking for guidance in crisis and doubt.   You serve one another, often sacrificing your own wants, for the other’s good.   You forgive and seek reconciliation.   You celebrate life – birthdays and weddings, births and deaths, a first day of school and a graduation, rites of passage into adulthood, new jobs, old friends, family reunions, surprise visits, holy days and holidays.   You welcome a stranger, the lonely one, the grieving person into your home.   You act justly in your community when you treat others with respect, stand against discrimination and racism, and work to overcome hunger, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy.   You affirm life as a precious gift from God.   You raise up vocations to the priesthood and religious life as you encourage your children to listen for God’s call and respond to God’s grace.   “From Follow The Way of Love a Pastoral Message to Families USCCB.”