Editorial
Parents: Embrace the gift of your children and the vocation to bring them into God’s family
“The world has no future without strong families open to the gift of children and attentive to their education and growth.”
—Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle reading a homily written by Pope Leo XIV for the Oct. 14 closing Mass at the Vatican meeting of bishops on marriage and family
As Catholics, we’ve heard countless maxims about the family.
Venerable Patrick Peyton, known as “the rosary priest” because of his devotion to our Blessed Mother, reminded the world that “the family that prays together stays together.”
St. Teresa of Calcutta shared that, “The family that prays together stays together, and if they stay together they will love one another as God has loved each one of them. And works of love are always works of peace.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs us that “the Christian home is the place where children receive the first proclamation of faith. For this reason, the family home is rightly called ‘the domestic church,’ a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity” (#1666).
Throughout our history, popes, Church leaders and other teachers of the faith have also shared their insight when it comes to our families.
And we believe we are at a crossroads where it is of utmost importance to remind ourselves and the broader society how our Creator shaped humanity. We are amid a battle where many are seeking to secularize society at every turn—including with families.
“The most beautiful thing that God made, the Bible says, was the family. All of the love that God has in himself, all of the beauty that God has in himself, all of the truth that God has in himself, he gives to the family,” said Pope Francis on Sept. 26, 2015, at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. “And a family is truly a family when it is able to open its arms and receive all of this love.”
As Pope Benedict XVI shared at the Fifth World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Spain, on July 8, 2006, “The family is also a school which enables men and women to grow to the full measure of their humanity. The experience of being loved by their parents helps children to become aware of their dignity as children. Children need to be brought up in the faith, to be loved and protected. Along with their basic right to be born and to be raised in the faith, children also have the right to a home which takes as its model the home of Nazareth, and to be shielded from all dangers and threats.”
In his 1981 apostolic exhortation “Familiaris Consortio” (“The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World”) St. John Paul II wrote, “Thus the little domestic Church, like the greater Church, needs to be constantly and intensely evangelized: hence its duty regarding permanent education in the faith … the family, like the Church, ought to be a place where the Gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates … the future of evangelization depends in great part on the Church of the home” (#51-52).
Although he was unable to preside at the Oct. 14 closing Mass at the Vatican meeting of bishops on marriage and family marking the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ document on the family “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Leo XIV highlighted his predecessor’s 2016 post-synodal exhortation that followed the 2014 Synod of the Family.
Saying that “marriage preparation begins at birth,” Pope Leo, in his written homily shared by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, noted, “In this way, love lived within the family—with its moments of struggle, mistakes and failures, yet also with the marvel of its unpredictable, everyday life—becomes the first school of human affection, the first precious and irreplaceable apprenticeship in the ‘joy of love.’ ”
Pope Leo wrote that “the values of openness to life and respect for life, from conception to natural death, are also rooted in this charity, which is fundamental to our existence and to our life together as human beings.
“The family is the foremost guardian of these values, a beacon for the good of humanity,” he added.
While our universal shepherds have always spoken about the importance of family, each of us needs to pray for God’s sanctifying grace to live out the vocation he has given us.
As parents, let us never forget the primary responsibility we are given to raise our children in the faith and guide them to their heavenly home.
Please Lord, despite those who try to deter us on our journey of faith, may it be so.
—Mike Krokos