Children need parents, other adults to be spiritual guides on their journeys of faith

If anyone still has Christmas decorations lingering around the house, today is the last day one can make a really great excuse for having left them up. In previous eras, Feb. 2, the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, was the end of the Christmas season instead of Jan. 5. In those days, there were 40 days of Christmas instead of 12, and the Feb. 2 feast was the very end of Christmas.

It honors the child Jesus being brought by his parents into the temple 40 days after his birth. Mary and Joseph make the journey to the temple to present the child Jesus to God and to offer sacrifice for him. Scripture gives us few images of the spirituality of Mary and Joseph, in whose loving care Jesus will grow. Jesus had a deeply spiritual, religious upbringing; Mary was visited by an angel, and Joseph had his own dreams of angels that guided him! No one could go through all of that and been spiritually lukewarm. Jesus grew up in a household of nurturing care and deep spirituality.

Children grow up looking to their parents for spiritual guidance. Children ask the deep questions of meaning. Who am I? What is the meaning of life? What is goodness? What is love? What does it mean to be a good person? Who is God? Even if they haven’t yet learned how to phrase their soul’s deepest questions, children are wondering these things.

For parents to be able to help their children ask and answer those questions, they need to be doing the spiritual work of asking those questions of themselves. Parents should give themselves time to reflect on these big questions so they are prepared with better answers than easy aphorisms half-remembered from Sunday school. Children might be distracted with a simple answer for a while, but they can sniff out whether their parent really believes it. Children want to see faith in action, faith that’s living. They want to share in the wisdom that their parents (and the other adults in their lives) have discovered through years of faithful pondering, praying, studying. Children want to know that their big questions will be heard by the adults around them.

When Jesus was 12, his family went back to Jerusalem for the Passover. Mary and Joseph started heading home and realized he was missing a few days in. They rushed back, and they found Jesus in the temple, conversing with the wise teachers there, asking questions and offering his own responses, which amaze the teachers. What a joy for all the adults present! There is joy for Mary and Joseph to hear Jesus cherishing conversation about the big questions. They sure raised him right. And also joy for the teachers: What teacher is not delighted when anyone, especially a youth or child, honors them by asking deep spiritual questions? What teacher wouldn’t be overjoyed to know that this child had adults in his life who nurtured him so lovingly?

We are social creatures. The more we ask ourselves the big questions, and the more we learn, the more we have to share with others. We need our own deep spirituality to share with others. We are not spiritual people by ourselves. We need the wisdom of parents (or parental figures), the wisdom of teachers, family and friends to help us become wise. We need community to nourish us. We need love to strengthen us. We need good questions to help us learn.

Whom do you turn to for spiritual wisdom? Whom do you ask the “big questions” in life? And who turns to you for spiritual wisdom?

This story was originally published February 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.