CV NEWS FEED // The Napa Institute is spotlighting advice from Catholic author and chastity speaker Jason Evert on steps that parents can take to encourage their children to be devout Catholics in the modern world.
“Our first and foremost task is the interior life of prayer,” Evert said in the talk, which was posted on YouTube March 6. “I’m not going to be a better father to my sons than I am a son to the Father, if I don’t know how to receive the love of the Father.”
According to a March 13 press release CatholicVote received via email, Evert gave the talk at the 2024 Napa Institute Summer Conference. In the 54-minute talk, Evert emphasized the power of intercessory prayer, especially when it is accompanied with fasting and the offering of one’s suffering.
“There is power in the suffering, our kids and grandkids will sometimes build up walls so high you have to go up to heaven to get over them,” Evert said, according to the release, “and we try these human approaches of argument, but with some of these things, you’ve got to go over the wall with intercessory prayer.”
Evert also encouraged parents to actively model the Catholic virtues they wish for their children to embrace.
“Our kids will not always obey us, but they’ll never fail to imitate us,” Evert said.
Evert noted the necessity of media literacy, advising parents to utilize resources that combat their children’s exposure to immoral content on the internet. Evert described the exposure of adolescents to pornographic material as a “pandemic” and emphasized that parents should practice internet safety to protect their children.
Evert also urged parents to be diligent in choosing schools that avoid promoting ideological agendas and to ensure that Catholic values are primarily nurtured in the home, whether children attend private or public schools, the release stated.
Evert also said parents are not only charged with the sanctification of their children, but they also have the opportunity to be sanctified through their continual intercession for the redemption of their children’s souls.
“God, in a sense, in His providential love, is using the stubbornness of that child’s heart to form you into this true Apostle of prayer,” he said.
Evert’s talk is available here.
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