WELCOME TO FAITH FORMATION 2021-22!

Our Diocesan Office of Evangelization and Faith Formation has asked its parishes to transition into a more effective method of passing on our faith. There has been demonstrated a great need for reform regarding the standard grade-level approach, which the American church has been practicing these past fifty years. 

Current research shows that the necessary missing piece, and the crucial one for the child/teen’s committed relationship with Christ and His sacraments is the parents. They were previously left out of the classroom model. The resulting religious education process proved to be lacking. It alone was not able to pass on a complete understanding of, or commitment to, the faith, leaving many young people vulnerable to the world’s values and still restless, unable to know God, to love Him, and to serve Him with all their hearts. 

Because the Blessed Trinity is a “communion,” just as the family is a “communion,” knowing God is truly a family process. We cannot know and understand the concept of the Body of Christ without including mom and dad. The church has tried to “teach” our young people what cannot be “taught.” It must, instead, permeate the hearts and souls of each person through daily living within the domestic church, the family. The knowledge of God, taught in our “religion” classes is only one facet of intimacy with Him. It is within the exchange of family life: the joys, heartaches, learned lessons, and sacrifices, among other experiences, where God’s presence and abiding love become known and accepted. 

Knowing God intimately is not something that a teacher can present to a class. Rather, it is learned and absorbed through observation and experience within the family. Children watch the committed love of God in the actions of their family members, hear the words of love and mercy from their parents, feel the arms of love wrapping them in safety and assurance, and share in the observations of their parents’ love for God at holy mass and as they close the door of the confessional. 

Without the modeling of moms and dads:

Every Sunday at mass

Regularly at the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession)

Frequently reading the Bible and praying with the family

And as life-long learners of our faith,

what teachers do once a week in class is lessened greatly. 

Formal faith formation is only the supplement to what is modeled in the family. It is not the core of a child’s religious training.

As we enter into this transition year, where parents are invited to take an even more active role in their children’s formal faith formation process, we encourage you to come and join other families at mass, at the celebrations of sacraments, and at our formal religious education classes.

• We plan to provide a session each month where families will gather to share faith together, and our sacrament prep classes will include an additional parent-student or sponsor-student session each month. 

• We also highly encourage you, as a family, to faithfully attend mass together each Sunday, 

   And to participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation every 4-6 weeks as a part of your family faith formation. 

What We Need When You Register:

• Registration form for each child K-Confirmation

• Waiver for each child

• Registration Fees paid

• BAPTISMAL CERTIFICATE on file, if not baptized at St. Patrick’s

• Your registration on FlockNote, our communication center, completed

This is how we will contact you if we have bad weather and no class OR 

IF teachers or Kathy need to relay information. 

·   On your cell phone - go to text:

   Type in the number: 84576

Text the message: HEHASRISEN