We Christian couples are committed to living our life of faith seriously, in order to bear witness to Christ's love in the midst of this world, by living coherently the faith we profess, with openness to life and by having Jesus Christ at the center of our homes.

 

God’s word must be at the center of our Christian homes, where it is received by all the family members and serves as spiritual nourishment. We parents should, then, read and discuss the Scriptures with our children, thus making our homes into a true Domestic Church.

 

Family prayer is one of the essential factors for the Christian life of our families, because prayer is the umbilical cord that keeps the family in contact with God, who feeds it. As parents, together with our children, we must experience the daily need for prayer, in order to face the battles of life and fully live the family’s evangelizing mission in the world. We are convinced that family prayer creates in the home an atmosphere of faith, which is greatly needed for the peace and happiness of all its members.

 

We parents must educate our children in prayer, by praying with them every day and showing our love for God. It is good for parents to often pray the Holy Rosary with their children, because it is also a great help to the family.

 

 

 

We parents have the primary responsibility for the education of our children, for teaching them the human and Christian values and virtues. Our testimony is fundamental for this, because we have the great responsibility of setting a good example for our children. As we all know, “words are convincing, but examples make people move.” That is precisely why it is difficult to maintain a good relationship with the children if the relationship between the parents is not good.

 

The Christian home is the best place for teaching values and virtues, which require learning self-denial, sound judgment and self-control, which are the essential conditions for true freedom. We parents must teach our children to subordinate the “material and instinctive realities to the interior and spiritual ones;” therefore, parents show a great lack of responsibility when they do not give a good example to children. Consequently, we need to learn to recognize our own shortcomings, so that we may better guide and correct them.

 

In the family, as school of moral values and virtues, we encourage not only the greatest of the values: love, but also the generous and selfless dedication to others, strength, understanding, self-esteem, reconciliation, temperance, solidarity, the spirit of service, respect, good habits and behavior that lead to order and peace in society. To this should be added humility, responsibility and, above all, heartfelt gratitude to God for the gift of life and for all the graces we receive from Him. On the basis of our own experience of faith, we parents must lead our children to the encounter with the Risen Jesus, which will completely transform their lives.

 

For an adequate education to freedom, we parents must consider our children as God’s children and respect them as human persons. In this regard, parents are not the masters of their children’s lives, but true partners with God and His ministers in their education.

 

I also want to note that correction is essential in educating our children. “He who loves his son and chastises him often will benefit from him” (Sir 30:1–2).

“We must not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4).

Do not forget that, “whoever spoils his son will bind up his wounds” (Sir 30).

When correction is given, it is important that children feel loved by us parents; we know that it is easier to get angry than to endure and easier to threaten than to persuade.

 

It is also very important in the Christian family for the children to be able to recognize their parents’ authority and so be taught to obey. Jesus himself learned obedience by suffering.

 

Given the current secular society that governments want to impose in Europe, it is important to care for the education of our children, by sending them to schools that ensure, from the standpoint of faith, that, thanks to this, they will become good partners with us in their Catholic education.

 

In our concrete experience as a Christian family, we transmit the faith to our fourteen children, by “celebrating Morning Prayer in our home” every Sunday morning, in an atmosphere of deep recollection and sincere dialogue with the children, where the whole family, including the grandchildren, is present. This experience is unique. In this way, we parents accomplish the duty – our greatest responsibility – of transmitting the faith to our children, and we protect them against the dangers that the world represents especially with regard to sexuality, by showing them that are temples of Holy Spirit.

 

 

 

 

 

José Luis Mendoza Pérez

President of the Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia

Consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Family