God’s plan for your family is holiness. Each of us, married or single, is part of a family. We all have a part to play to redeem the world. The writings of Pope St. John Paul II provide a beautiful description of what it looks like to be a family after God’s own heart.
God’s plan for family life consists of setting your priorities with God at the center, cultivating a healthy family prayer life, engaging in family recreation, loving unconditionally, building community with other families, and evangelization.
Community of Families
Healthy relationships between spouses, between parents and their children, and between siblings are prerequisites to the creation and building of holy families. Out of this healthy family life, centered on the Lord, comes the building of strong, supportive, and holy relationships between families. These family to family relationships are essential for the success of a family’s quest for holiness. If a family encounters another family at their parish that possesses a family life which they desire, evangelization and knowledge transfer can take place organically through these human interactions. The greatest tool of evangelization is not what we teach with words, but seeing the authentic happiness that pours forth from the life of the community of persons: the family.
“It is important that families attempt to build bonds of solidarity among themselves. This allows them to assist each other in the educational enterprise: parents are educated by other parents, and children by other children. Thus a particular tradition of education is created, which draws strength from the character of the “domestic church” proper to the family.”
Familiaris Consortio #27
The fact that so many people have had to suffer the damage from abuse alone, for so long, is a tragedy that indicates our loss of community. We must restore the parish to the community of families that it is supposed to be. This should be the place where we meet each other and become friends, but all too often only the women or men know each other, or the children know each other from taking religious education classes together. We have to restore relationships to their proper order. The best way to truly know someone is to get to know the family that they were raised in or the family that they are raising. To remove the family from an individual is to actually miss out on learning about someone.
Talks
by Allen and Denae Hebert
Resources
- Daily Scripture and Quotes on Community (You may wish to include these short readings in your daily prayers)