A recent Harvard study shows that “regular worship and prayer result in a wide array of psychological well-being, mental health, health behavior, physical health, and character strength outcomes in young adulthood.”

The study reported, “Weekly service attendance was subsequently associated with greater life satisfaction and positive affect, greater volunteering, greater sense of mission, more forgiveness, and lower probabilities of drug use and other risky behaviors”[1]

As Catholics living the sacramental life of the Church, we should not be surprised by the results of this scientific study.  Grace—received through the Sacraments—elevates the human virtues we acquire by “education, by deliberate acts and by a perseverance ever-renewed in repeated efforts…”

The child and adolescent who is given the opportunity to worship weekly, supported by family prayer, receives strength from the Holy Spirit. Parents, thank you for giving your child/adolescent the advantage of supernatural grace.

Grace helps us to perform good acts and strive to give the best of ourselves.  

Pope Benedict XVI explains Baptism to parents:

“Dear parents, in asking for Baptism for your children you express and witness to your faith, to the joy of being Christian and of belonging to the Church. It is the joy that comes from knowing you have received a great gift from God, faith itself, a gift which not one of us has been able to deserve but which was freely given to us and to which we responded with our “yes”. It is the joy of recognizing that we are children of God, of discovering that we have been entrusted to his hands, of feeling welcomed in a loving embrace in the same way that a mother holds and embraces her child. This joy, which guides every Christian’s journey, is based on a personal relationship with Jesus, a relationship that directs the whole of human existence.

Indeed it is he who is the meaning of our life, the One on whom it is worth keeping our eyes fixed so as to be illuminated by his Truth and to be able to live to the full. The journey of faith that begins for these infants today is therefore based on a certainty, on the experience that there is nothing greater than knowing Christ and communicating friendship with him to others; only in this friendship is the enormous potential of the human condition truly revealed and we can experience what is beautiful and sets us free (cf. Homily at Holy Mass for the Inauguration of the Pontificate, 24 April 2005). Whoever has had this experience is not prepared to give up his faith for anything in the world....

The water which will sign these children in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit will immerse them in that “fount” of life which is God himself and will make them his own true (children). And the seed of the theological virtues, faith, hope and charity, sown by God, seeds that are planted in their hearts today through the power of the Holy Spirit, must always be nourished by the word of God and by the sacraments so that these Christian virtues may grow and attain full maturity, until they make each one of them a true witness of the Lord.”