Sandakan parish holds briefing for confirmands’ parents

SANDAKAN – Saint Mary’s Cathedral Parish held a briefing for the parents of English confirmation class at the Fr Mulders Catechetical Centre here on 22 Apr 2018.

Nineteen students will be confirmed this year while 30 will receive the sacrament next year.

Father David Garaman facilitated the briefing.

He touched on two main clauses from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) dealing with parental responsibility in educating their children in the faith and in Christian virtues (CCC#2223, 2226).

He stressed that parents have a responsibility to give good example to their children and they are the first persons to influence the moral and faith formation of their children.  Parents have the mission of teaching their children to pray as a family and to discover their vocation as children of God.   By taking the time to pray, parents show their children the importance of being a holy family which is the vision and mission that the Diocese of Sandakan is striving to realise, ‘to be a Christ centred community, serving one another with love.’

While the priest encouraged the attendees to support their children’s Sunday School activities he also invited them to be facilitators themselves.

Finally, Fr David brought home to the parents the importance of their children’s participation in the pre-Confirmation retreat as a way of helping the teenagers to focus on spiritual matters.  – Evelyn Jock-Lagan, Sandakan diocesan blog