Why is my mom bribing me to stay Catholic?

Sister Maxine  
This podcast is brought to you by one of our sponsors, the Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes, csasisters.org. I'm Sister Maxine, and with me today is Sister Shannon Schrein, a Sister of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio. Maria's question is: "My mom always says stuff like, 'In heaven, you can have all the pizza you want, all the shoes, all the cars, all the happiness, everything you could ever want.' I feel like she's bribing me to stay Catholic, especially now that I've just graduated from high school, and I'm going into the world on my own. I think my mom's worried that I won't keep my faith. And she tells me that faith makes a person stronger, so they can handle the hardships of life. But I have friends who don't belong to any religion, and they seem okay. Really, should I be worried about faith?" Maria, thank you for your email. It sounds like your mom is concerned about your faith, and how it may help your life and what may happen if you don't have it when you move forward, especially now that you graduated from high school. And by the way, congratulations on that. It's a big step in life.

Sister Shannon  
It's an interesting question that you bring to us, Maria. But let me just talk about your mom for a minute. Wasn't she just being your mom? She is going to do whatever she can, number one, to protect her child and to ensure that her child is going to be happy. What worked with you when you were a little girl -- maybe it was candy, maybe it was a trip to McDonald's, maybe it was getting to stay up a half hour longer. And so she's still using that style a little bit with you, if she's claiming that you can now have all the pizza you want in heaven. And I think that would be guaranteed that you don't get any calories from those pizzas.

Sister Maxine  
I'm pretty sure.

Sister Shannon  
That would be really important.

Sister Maxine  
Now, there you go. You know, the other thing I hear is a mom whose faith has been a foundation in her life. I can hear in these words a woman who has found strength. And who wants that for her daughter.

Sister Shannon  
That's right. It's become so important to her. One of the things that I think we do as we grow is we take the faith that we have known as a child and reappropriate that faith into our adult experience. We try to go to a deeper understanding of what faith is all about so that we can arrive at an adult faith and have faith that we accept on our own, that we say yes to -- not just the faith of our mom and our dad, or the faith of our teachers or our priest or whomever were our first teachers, but so that we in fact make it our own. It's why the Church celebrates the Sacrament of Confirmation, for example, because that's a step into our adult sense of what faith is all about. It calls for a change in us.

Sister Maxine  
Well, and the idea here that Maria talks about is she recognizes, graduating from high school, that she's on the verge of that life where she needs to do more appropriation. It's the timing issue. And I hear Maria saying, "But my mom is trying to bribe me." Now, I have to say when I thought about that, like I always think of bribes as "I give you this, and you give me that." I'm sure it feels like a bribe. But when I listened to it more deeply, what I hear is somebody who's trying to be persuasive to say, "Don't give this up, you're gonna need this as you move ahead." And as you talked about, you appropriate your faith more when you're moving into adulthood into those situations -- say more about what does that mean?

Sister Shannon  
Paul talks about that, that when we were a child, we believed as a child, we lived as a child, we dreamed as a child. When we become older, our life changes. Our wisdom grows. I think that's what's really important. And wisdom is what causes us to sort of think through and accept the tenets of our faith based on the grace that God has given us. So now I believe not because my mother believes or now I go to church, not because my mother and father dragged me to church, because I began to see its value in my life. And I have to rethink the events that I've been taught, the stories I've been taught, and how they apply to the experience of my every day, how I see God's action, as an adult,

Sister Maxine  
So that we may be inspired by our parents' faith. Like I think of my mother, and also my dad -- but especially my mom had a profound impact on my faith because of her faith-filled ways. She just lives it. And I remember getting to the point, Maria, where you are -- where I had to say, "My mom's faith is my mom's faith. What is it for me? I am inspired by her, but it's not the same thing."

Sister Shannon  
How do I believe and why do I believe. You know, if I could use another little story as a kind of connection with this. When we're children until we're about seven or eight years old, we have a sense of Santa Claus, don't we? And we anticipate his coming and the gifts and everything that's rolled up into that -- until somebody breaks our bubble and we discover that, you know, mom and dad are buying the presents,

Sister Maxine  
Oh, the sad, sad day.

Sister Shannon  
That's a sad day, right? And so we, in our little selves, as eight-year-olds or nine-year-olds, we have to reappropriate our understanding of Santa. And we may get disillusioned with that for a time. "Oh, why did they tell me that story? You know, mom and dad are the ones that are taking care of -- I gotta ask them if I want something for Christmas." But then something happens when we get older. And when we have our own children, and we begin to think about that sense of what it means to give a gift in a different way.

Sister Maxine  
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This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.