Five Ways to Lead Your Children to Heaven, PART TWO

Most of us have encountered people who journey through life in a way that exemplifies Thoreau’s famous line from Walden: “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”

I have observed that a common denominator in the “quiet desperation crowd,” barring other emotional causes, is often a seeming lack of a sense of purpose and meaning.

Dr. Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute in Denver, has made the point that our more recent generations have lost connection to the Great Story. 

These generations are biblically illiterate (so therefore unfamiliar with our biblical heritage and the story of salvation and our participation in it), and are not engaged in their faith community, at least not nearly to the degree of generations past. 

Whether Jew, Protestant, or Catholic, people decades ago seemed to know their faith story and sense they were deeply and inextricably bound to it; it formed their identity and purpose, and gave them a sense of meaning.

People today seem increasingly adrift (the number of self-proclaimed atheists has risen greatly in recent years). Many seem to lack a sense of purpose and meaning, which leads to an existential loneliness, a loneliness that its sufferers try to alleviate through various, unfulfilling addictions. Addictions--- be they drugs, alcohol, sexual excess, or technology--- help us avoid having to confront a meaningless existence.

In Part One of this blog we explored our desire for happiness: real, authentic and soul-satisfying happiness, a desire that may only be perfectly realized in heaven. But the Good News is--- or I should say, includes--- the fact that the road of our journey toward our true homeland is brightened by moments of  joy and happiness, like a shadowed forest floor is dappled with light as the sun breaks through the leaves above. 

As parents, we desire--- quite rightly—that our children be happy--- truly and substantially happy--- and we desire their happiness not just in the life to come, but we hope for them to experience some measure of it now, here on earth, as well. While pain is part and parcel of life on earth, we know that there is an interior joy and deep peace that sustain a Christian even in the darkest moments of our journey through this “vale of tears.” 

But happiness is simply not possible without having some sense of purpose. Without a sense of purpose we roam aimlessly thorough life. And we must have a destination in mind in order to travel there. If happiness is the state of delight in having attained some desired thing, one must have some idea what object one desires in order to seek and find it.

Pascal famously said, “There are only three types of people; those who have found God and serve him; those who have not found God and seek him, and those who live not seeking, or finding him. The first are rational and happy; the second unhappy and rational, and the third foolish and unhappy.”

If we want to guide our children to happiness in this life, and ultimate happiness in the next (Heaven), what shall we do?

In Part One I suggested five essential ways to lead our children along the way of happiness. Here I expand on them:

1. Teach your children about God’s love and His plan for their happiness.

Begin as early as possible to help your children discover the truth that God loves them and created them for a purpose. Teach them that they are not a random accident of the cosmic stew, but were given life by God, that He created them for His own self, and that He has a plan for them to experience the happiness of heaven with Him forever. 

2. Teach your children how to pray, which is the way we grow in our relationship with God.

Begin immediately to pray with your children. The other night my family was praying a litany to the saints, and every time we said, “Pray for us,” little Gianna, barely a year old, responded with something that sounded remarkably like, Pray for us! Okay, it sounded more like bay-bo-bus, but we were certain that this is what she meant, because she said it every time we said Pray for us. But seriously, start early.

3. Teach your children to love God and His Church, and to cherish the sacraments, through which we encounter Christ and receive grace.

A wise woman told me that children usually grow to love what we love, no matter what they may say when they are teens or young adults. If Mom and Dad demonstrate that Mass is the most important reality of their lives, the children are more likely to cherish the Blessed Eucharist. If Mom and Dad go to confession regularly, the children learn that our God is a merciful God, and that when we approach Him in humility, He raises us up. And when their parents obey Christ through a serious commitment to living the beliefs of their faith with integrity, it teaches children that Christ is truly the Lord of the family’s life, and that He may be trusted in all things.

4. Teach your children that there is objective truth and that happiness cannot be attained apart from it.

We live in a society that seems to believe that truth is in the eye of the beholder, that truth is not an objective reality but an opinion subject to revision as per consensus or desire. This is relativism. It is as stable to build one’s life on relativism as it is to construct a house on shifting sand. But if objective truth is found perfectly in God, then the more we are in touch with reality, the closer we are to God, because to embrace truth is to live in reality, and reality is where God is to be found. 

Truth brings freedom: intellectual and moral freedom. If we want to lead happy, healthy, and productive lives, we must live in the reality of truth. To live in reality, to embrace and respond positively to truth, is to live in God’s will. Authentic happiness cannot be attained outside of God’s will.

5. Teach your children that life is not all about them and that the meaning of life lies in being a gift of self for the good of others.

Blessed John Paul II said that “[t]he meaning of life lies in ‘being a gift which fully realized in the giving of self.’” He was reminding us of a truth that often seems lost to the current culture, which promotes the "it's all about me" attitude shamelessly. 

Narcissism is a plague that increasingly sickens our society and threatens to destroy the culture from within. Its counter is the living of self-giftedness. (This is why large families often serve as a counter-sign to the culture’s emphasis on self-gratification: a large family makes tremendous demands on its members, pulling individuals out of their bubbles of self-love.)

Christian Revelation and life experience affirm the truth that authentic love is selfless, and that in dying to ourselves for the good of the other, we experience tremendous joy. In practicing self-giving love, we aspire to that Trinitarian Love that is the highest of all loves. Every Catholic home should have a large crucifix in a prominent place to remind the domestic church members what true love looks like, that it is “given for you.”

These five ways are by no means exhaustive, but they are a beginning, and they are, I believe, essential to living the Christian life.

We all want what is best for our children. We must look to the Source of all good to be reminded what that really means.