You promised.

At your child's Baptism, you stood before God and His Church and accepted the responsibility of raising your child in the Catholic faith.

Most of us meant every word.

I know I did.

Yet somewhere along the way, faith became routine. I attended Mass, called myself Catholic, and assumed my children would absorb the faith simply by being around it. What I did not realize was that I was trying to pass on something I did not fully understand myself.

Recently at Mass, I found myself watching the young people around me. Some were distracted. Some were reading the bulletin. Most were not following along. Then I noticed something else: many of the adults weren't either.

The truth is, I should never have noticed any of it.

I should have been so absorbed in the Mass, so focused on Christ's presence and what was taking place on the altar, that I was completely unaware of what was happening around me. But on that particular day, I wasn't.

And what I saw led to a realization that stung.

Because for years, I had been one of them.

I wasn't rejecting the faith. I wasn't hostile to the Church. I simply had no idea how much beauty, wisdom, and truth I was missing. The more I learned, the more I wondered: What if I had known this sooner? What if I had understood this while my children were still young?

A Promise Is a Promise is the book I wish someone had placed in my hands years ago.

Inside, you'll discover: