Our Children are Made For God

In my last post, I spoke about marriage and children. Ah yes, the children. The vocation to participate in God's creative love for them extends to the "raising" of these children.

It’s hard enough to provide them with food and the needs of daily life. But our task as parents is greater than this. Each child is a person—a developing and expanding spiritual universe of understanding and love, of creativity, of searching and questioning and hunger. Their hunger is not just for bread, or for education, or for human affection. It is all these things, but—within and beyond all of this—it is a hunger for God.

How can my wife and I give them God?

The awareness that we are called to be instruments through which our children discover and experience the love of God as Father is truly overwhelming. Nevertheless, we see in the gospel that Jesus is always asking His disciples to do the impossible. After He finishes preaching to five thousand people, He tells His disciples to give them the food they need to eat for their journey home. "Feed these five thousand people!"

What do they have to give? They have seven loaves and a few fish. They have something, but it is clearly not enough.

We too have something: our own poor, selfish, struggling humanity. But there is something else we have, and—like the disciples—we keep forgetting it! We have Jesus!

My wife and I have Him in a particular way, precisely in the way that our children need to come to know Him, through the grace of the sacrament of marriage. Our marriage is the foundation for a communion of persons, and Jesus is at the center of that communion, so that we and the children can grow in the ways of self-giving love.

We need to ask for faith to recognize that He is with us as husband and wife, as father and mother, as two fragile, limited people, so that He can take us, and (yes, like the loaves) break us, and give Himself through us to our children and to everyone He entrusts to us.

Lord Jesus, give us faith to recognize Your presence in our lives every day, and increase our confidence that with You, nothing is impossible. In Your hands, may our poor humanity be transformed into the gift of Your love for each other and for our children.

The Most Important "Work" of Marriage

Lately there has been a lot of talk about marriage in the blog world (especially among Catholic Christians). Young couples enter into Christian marriage, perhaps, with starry eyes and optimism and even a bit of forgivable "overconfidence." We've been there, and felt that way. We know that time will teach them the hard work of married life, of unity and fidelity, of the experience of discord (even the Pope recently mentioned how "throwing plates around" is a normal experience of spousal argument).

But, above all, time (and their openness in faith and love) will allow them to experience the inexhaustible power of the grace of the Holy Spirit and the presence of Jesus in the sacrament of marriage. The hope, of course, is that Christian newlyweds are prepared in such a way that they truly believe in this grace from the beginning. Nevertheless, the whole of married life is an ever deeper verification of the reality of the grace of marriage and it's superabundant adequacy to endure and to grow through a vast array of unimaginable circumstances.

All of this is very true. Older married couples can list circumstances of good times and bad, sickness and health, a million awkward things about sharing life right down to who hogs the blankets every night. We can talk about the importance of nurturing our unity through these circumstances and through communication and trust and forgiveness.

All of this is very true.

But there is something lacking in this conversation. Maybe we take it for granted because it's so obvious. Or perhaps because it's so unique, and so seemingly "beyond us" when we think about ourselves as married couples that it gets left out when we theorize about marriage.

Eileen and I would say after almost 18 years -- and through many trials involving work, money, my disability, illness, and such -- that the experience of our marriage is marked overwhelmingly by five very precise, very unique circumstances that unite us deeply and personally, in wonder and prayer, in fear and trembling.  

Their names are John Paul, Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, and Josefina.

In the old days this was called the primary end of marriage, articulated in what may seem to be less than soul stirring language as "the procreation and education of offspring" (I've never been keen on the word offspring. It makes me feel like we're bugs or something. How about another word, like children.)

Of course, husband and wife must love each other. But this unity is inseparable from the fruitfulness it engenders; it exists within that fruitfulness. The sacrament of marriage is the fountain of that most basic community of persons, the family. Even if spouses cannot procreate physically for some reason, their unity has an intrinsic fruitfulness of radical constructive hospitality that God will reveal to them (whether it be adoption, foster care, or some other special charism of giving to the larger community).

So marriage is about building up the relationship, the "two-becoming-one-flesh," the friendship, the mutual help, the fidelity. It's a relationship between two people, a husband and a wife. And yet, precisely insofar as it succeeds in really being a genuine spousal unity, it will transcend these two persons, it will "take flesh" in life -- and not only in the agreements about things like leaving the toilet seat up or down -- but above all in other living human beings, which means that if nature is unhindered these will be new human beings, new persons created by God within the radical openness to Him that spousal love entails.

Let me put it simply: marriage is about children. That doesn't mean reducing an interpersonal relationship to a mechanism for "reproduction," for cranking out offspring. It means that married love is radically at the disposal of God's creative action. Married love is procreative; it is God's instrument for engendering and fostering human community. It is interpersonal love, and that is why it includes the possibility of human reason discerning the will of God regarding all the NFP stuff, because married love must always be radically at the disposal of God's creative action, even when a given expression of love is not seeking to result in a child. After all, men and women don't produce babies. Rather, their love creates a space of psychosomatic unity within which God creates new human persons.

Thus marriage is the stuff of families, of children and then of grandchildren, of communities and eventually of peoples who encounter one another. And the sacrament of marriage in Christ builds up God's people, who go out into all the world bringing the gift of his love.

When we speak about married life, let's not forget about family, about our children, or (as the nuptial blessing puts it) our childrens' children. The family is not in competition with the unity between the husband and wife; rather it is the place where that unity is most profoundly expressed and lived.

And children are never abstract. They are the history of the husband and wife loving each other in God. Eileen and I don't just have some anonymous "offspring." We have been given John Paul, Agnese, Lucia, Teresa, and Josefina. Each is loved uniquely by God, is uniquely His image and likeness, and is destined to live and love and share in His glory.

As Eileen and I journey together toward the Lord, our children remain the great, astonishing, incalculable surprises, the mysteries, the primary expressions and concrete engagement of our unity, and our most profound "common interest." In front of each of them, we remain in awe of God, and of each other.

On Parenting and Encounter

It's particularly hard to be a parent in the secularist culture of the Western world today. But Eileen and I have been blessed to be surrounded by a group of friends who support one another in the task of giving their kids a complete education.

We see all the dangers and frustrations and dead ends in our society; some of us have been down these paths in the past. But we also see many possibilities for goodness and beauty and solidarity in our society -- many perennial human possibilities but also many new possibilities opened up by all that is genuine in this emerging new epoch.

The forces of corruption are pervasive, as is the tremendous damage that is being done to persons, relationships, communities, and the civil order. It's only human for us to want to be "protective" of our children.

So we protect them, certainly, by setting certain prudent "boundaries," but also by living so as to build an environment, together with our friends and their children, that allows them to grow and develop through the normal stages of childhood and youth. We thus engage life not with a reactionary ideology, but from inside the positive dynamic of human nature and redeeming grace: the life Jesus generates among us because he is present with us.

We live with Jesus, within the context of the family, supportive institutions, and the sacramental life of the Church. From this context we introduce our kids, in a pedagogical way, to the great potential, the challenges, and the struggles of adult life in this society.

Do I mean something more here than simply that "we want to raise good kids"?

Well, certainly we want to raise good kids.

With the right pedagogy, we hope to help our children cultivate a generous personality, an authentic understanding and empathy, and a sense of responsibility based on the truth -- a solid moral character.

These are all realistic and admirable goals.

But there is a problem that might arise. I might be inclined to take as a "given" the very purpose of everything else in life, to assume it in such a way that I forget about it or it loses focus. I want an intellectual and moral formation for my kids. But as the Pope said, "Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new form of morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ." (And this is not Pope Francis speaking. This is Benedict XVI, and he says this over and over.)

I want to help my children to be open to the love of Jesus. I want them to encounter Jesus, to be drawn by his love, and to follow him in the paths of their vocations.

It's especially easy among us Christians to focus on raising good, morally strong kids who have the right ideas. It's easy for us to talk about Jesus and the Church and faith, but forget that he is present with us, that he is drawing the hearts of each and every one of our children and shaping their destiny according to the mystery of his wisdom and love.

Our children belong to God. It's easy to forget that as parents our vocation is to have stewardship over them, and the environment in which they awaken to life and hear his voice.

Of course we want our kids to be moral, but why? It is because we want them to respond in love to the God who gives himself to us in Jesus. This is what life is all about. Our primary task as parents is to prepare our children to encounter Jesus and follow him.

And I have failed so often (in 17+ years of parenting) to be the instrument of God's love to my children, but I pray and I beg Jesus to shine through even my weakness, to touch the hearts of my children and draw them to him, to enable them to know that he loves them personally and calls them to share in his eternal life with the Father in the Spirit.

Our children have been created for this and given to us for this. How do we truly succeed in our task as parents?

I can only humble myself before the Lord and ask for his grace for my own life, for my wife and our marriage, and for our family. The infinite mercy of the heart of Jesus is my hope. May all our children encounter him in his mercy, and place their trust in him.

"The Janaro Family" Turns Sixteen Years Old

John Paul at maybe three or four months old.

So do you have a little baby in the house? On June 1, 1997 we had our first little baby at three o'clock in the morning. I guess I'm supposed to say something like, "Gee, it feels like it just happened yesterday!"

Actually, no. It doesn't feel that way at all. It was, in fact, sixteen years ago. Since then, I've lived half my adult life (note, I said "adult" life, which was preceded by 18 years of "pre-adult" life... you don't need to do the math). Four daughters have come after him, and many things have happened since then.

Sometimes I'll come across a book and realize that its been 16 years since the last time I read it. That feels unusual. Light in August by William Faulkner... I just read that recently, didn't I? No, actually, I was reading it while we were waiting for John Paul to be born. That seems like "yesterday."

John Paul at the age of sixteen.

But with my son there is a relationship. There has been a certain intersubjectivity* (n.b. *large philosophical word) between father and son, and with the other members of the family. It is the history of a relationship and a larger context of relationships that has grown and changed from year to year. My own childhood years seem very long in my memory. In a way, his years seem long too, at least when I think of the time in terms of our relationship and the subsequent development of our family up until the present.

John Paul was born like a little boxer, shaking his fists and wailing but also looking me straight in the eye with what appeared to be a sense of awareness and intelligence. Smart little feller.

He was the beginning of our family. He was the one who made me look at myself for the first time and say, "I'm a father." It put fear and trembling into me.

We're all growing together. At every point, I feel a more profound sense of helplessness: "How am I going to be a father to this (these) child (children)?" Somehow, Eileen and I have found the resources for every stage thus far. We are flawed parents raising flawed children, but we are also blessed and lifted up by grace and carried all along the way.

What does a father do? I don't have a clear "formula;" its a gift that keeps unveiling itself. A father loves his wife, and is grateful for her. He spends a lot of time on his knees begging God for help. He tries to teach and love and discipline with a trust in the grace of vocation and the providence that makes a family, as well as a healthy awareness of the "organic" reality that nurtures, in time, both interrelationships and the individual uniqueness of each person in a family. He never gives up on paternal tenderness, even when he fails every day. He prays together with the family. He prays alone, for the family. He prays and works with his wife, and trusts above all in the grace of Jesus present through the sacrament they share in marriage.

He is aware of the failures of his children, he is patient, he instructs, he corrects, but always he forgives. He does his best to be a man, but doesn't try to prove his manhood in some artificial way, and doesn't get insecure about his own weaknesses, because everyone is weak... (and fathers will be confronted with their human weaknesses in so many ways). He doesn't withdraw or hide. He just keeps getting up again, and keeps working on it.

For the Children who Died....

In prayer and remembrance.

Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut.

December 14, 2012.

For the children who died, Jesus have mercy.

For the teachers and staff who died, Jesus have mercy.

For the parents in their grief, Jesus have mercy.

For the families who have endured loss, Jesus have mercy.

For the children who witnessed this horror, Jesus have mercy.

Jesus have mercy, and protect the sanctuaries of the child from all this monstrous violence.

Protect the classroom, and every learning environment.

Protect the home, and the families who build the home.

Protect that inner, sacred space of the child's emerging awareness.

Protect children in every place where they are vulnerable and defenseless. Grant that they might find love, and be nurtured, and supported in every step of their growth.

Protect every child, from the dawn, in that intimate space beneath the heart of his or her mother.

Protect the mother and the child, and the sanctity and inviolability of their relationship, which is always a gift from God.

Give us the strength to love and support the lives of every mother and child, from the beginning, in whatever crises they may face.

Protect the children, from the beginning, from their first moment through all the moments of their epiphany, their opening up to reality, their expression of themselves as persons, created uniquely in the image of God.

Jesus have mercy on us.

Give us hearts that cherish Your beauty reflected in every child.

Give us reverence and humility in our care for the children entrusted to us.

Help us to remember that every child belongs to You.

From whence comes this unearthly, unspeakable violence that invades the human soul, and drives it to killing? So much killing.

So much blood.

Jesus, have mercy on us all. Have mercy on the whole world.

From Philosophy to Stickers!

I'm listening to the water running in the kitchen.

The pounding feet of these two young people making their lunch.

For a long time, I had an image of the tiny footprint of baby John Paul hanging on the wall in my office. Just a few inches of little foot.

Who is this man living in my house? Where did he come from?

Pound, pound, pound, pound. Going about his business. He wears my shoes all the time. On his large, grubby human feet.

And there is the determined stride of a young lady. That's my "little bundle of sweetness," Agnese Janaro. If I say she's pretty, she'll kill me. She clomps through the house too, like her father.

I shouldn't be writing any of this, of course. I'm embarrassing them.

Meanwhile, Lucia sits quietly, reading a book. Teresa and Josefina are somewhere else. We do still have some "kids" around here.

The other day, John Paul and I were at the dining room table discussing something like...gosh, what was it...human nature and the role of sensation in epistemology (this kid is smart, but we've always known that). Josefina comes pitter-pattering up (with her little feet) and starts shouting, "Look Daddy, look Daddy, look Daddy!"

"What's that?"

"Stickers!"

Haha, the spectrum in this house runs from philosophy to...stickers. What an interesting place to grow up in. Its a crazy place! I think its also a happy place.

I hope...I pray that its a happy place.

The first time we drove with John Paul was when we brought him home from the hospital two days after he was born. I wanted to go five miles an hour: "Sheesh, we have a b-b-b-baby in the car!" Fatherhood seemed utterly overwhelming.

Nearly 16 years later I'm still overwhelmed. I'm more overwhelmed than ever. In less than a month, that "baby" will be driving the car.

Meanwhile, we still have one set of little feet in the house. Thank you God for these children!

Josefina Turns Six! Happy Birthday!

Once a child is born, it is difficult to imagine how the universe could have existed without them. A person, who once was not, appears in all of his or her radiant uniqueness. We have before us something ineradicable.

There is something about the human person that proclaims, loudly: FOREVER!

Josefina is six years old today. Each of our children has changed our lives simply by being themselves. What words can I use to describe it?

Gratitude. Amazement. Craziness!

They are the daily reminder in our lives that God exists, and that we have been invested with an awesome responsibility. We are called to love each of these persons in a way that somehow helps them to discover and experience the particular love that God has for them.

We a preparing our children to discover and respond to their vocations--to the plan that God has for each of them--and then to continue to support them with an abiding love.

I hope and pray that I will live long enough to be everything God wants me to be for these kids.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOJO! We love you!!!

Let This Light Shine: The World Meeting Of Families

The World Meeting of Families in Milan this past weekend was a beautiful event. It was one of those things that are really worth reading about. It was a witness to God's truth and love expressed in the family. And it remains as an encouragement to all who struggle to live this truth and love in their own families, a reminder of the precious vocation of marriage and the family, and a reawakening of the desire of families to let this light shine in our suffering world.

Here is the link to the Vatican website. A few things have been translated into English. Especially important is the "Evening of Witness"--the dialogue between the Pope and families on Saturday night:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/travels/2012/index_milano_en.htm

Pope Benedict spoke very personally about his own family, and I pray to the Lord that my children might have some taste of this beautiful grace that has so deeply shaped his life:

"We grew up convinced that it was good to be human, because we saw God’s goodness reflected in our parents and our brothers and sisters. And indeed when I try to imagine what Heaven will be like, I think it must be like the time when I was a small boy. In this environment of trust, joy and love, we were happy, and I think that Heaven must be rather like those early years. So in a way, I am hoping to return 'home' when I leave for 'the other part of the world'."

Family Is An Ongoing Adventure

We had a happy celebration of John Paul's 15th birthday. He also celebrated the last day of school at Chelsea Academy, where he had an excellent freshman year of high school. We are very proud of him.

Fifteen years. It just doesn't seem possible. In my memory, I feel like I can just walk right into those days when he was born. I can close my eyes and practically inhabit that time, remembering the sights and sounds and smells: He was very late in coming. Eileen and I kept watching videos, and sitting on our old futon couch in the first house, waiting days and days for something to happen. We read our books (I was reading a Faulkner's Light in August, which I finished before he was born). We went out to Washington D.C. to the art museum, hoping that perhaps Beauty might encourage the kid to get moving (by then he was over a week late). We went to an Ethiopian restaurant in Georgetown, mainly because we loved the food, but also joking about our hope that the ancient wisdom and tangy spices of the descendents of King Solomon might be medicinal (Gosh! It's been fifteen years since we've been to an Ethiopian restaurant?? Now that just won't do at all!).

And then, finally, seeing him for the first time, crying and clenching his fists like a little boxer. It's all there in my memory, in a way that is more vital and supple than anything could be on any media device of human invention. It's internal to me, as are all the years that followed--years of being a father (a status that once seemed so strange and new, but that has become fundamental to my character as a human being).

These past fifteen years have been rich with experience and joy and suffering. John Paul has four sisters, Eileen and I have learned much about each other, and marriage, and that Jesus is worthy of our trust even in (especially in) the dark places. We have also learned that being a family is an ongoing adventure. As our kids move into adolescence, we feel like we're becoming parents again for the first time.

In a sense, John Paul is being "born" into adulthood in these years. His physical growth is obvious, but a more profound development is taking place in the soul, the mind, the heart--in his "self-awareness." We have done what we can so that John Paul could grow up knowing that he is loved. We have been far from perfect in this, and we can only trust in the mercy of God to bring good even out of our weakness.

And now we are doing our best to guide him, and to foster an environment in which he can begin to take the first steps of mature freedom.

Fr. Carron recently put it this way: "youth is the time of the You." It is the time for the person to discover that he or she belongs to Another, and to begin to hear the call of that Other. The great energy of freedom awakens to its dramatic possibilities.

For me as a father, it means learning new ways of being present for my child. It means a greater commitment to struggle against the sloth that continually creeps in and inclines me to treat my children as appendages of myself. It means growing in my own awareness of my dependence on the One who has given me this vocation. Day by day, I place my trust in His grace.

Trust in God, Don't Be Afraid, Be Ready to Say Yes

Easter Week is Divine Mercy Week.

We have prayed the Divine Mercy Novena from St. Faustina's diary every Easter Week of our married life (and me also the year before, in a way that was very significant).

In the Spring of 1995, I was nearing the end of my first year of teaching at Christendom College. I had been through a lot of discernment, spent a year in Rome, and was following the path that Msgr. Guissani and others who were guiding me in my life had indicated. Now, I had a teaching position. It seemed like the time to give my life in a deeper way.

I had once been comfortable as a footloose graduate student, dreaming about great intellectual projects, collecting experiences of life, and generally evading responsibility as much as possible.

That changed when I went to continue my studies in Rome. There I spent a year living at the house of the Fraternity of San Carlo Borromeo, the missionary society of priests (and now religious sisters too) associated with the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation. I lived with men who were preparing to be missionaries, and I watched them closely. They amazed me.

They were ordinary, down to earth men, and several of them became my good friends. I saw their readiness to commit themselves radically to the mission of the Church. I saw them preparing their hearts to go anywhere in the world they were sent. Africa. South America. Siberia. The Holy Land. And the desolate places of the developed world, to begin anew the mission of evangelization.

I could not watch them live without becoming convinced that I too was called to give my life, in some form. I was not called to be a missionary, although I allowed myself to be shocked and terrified by the possibility of this ideal. But the head of the Society, a priest of great personal sensitivity and deep prayer, assured me that this was not my vocation. I was called to live as a layman and a professor in the world.

But I learned that my vocation was also a Christian vocation, and that in order to carry it out I must give myself, commit myself, take responsibility for something greater than myself. I needed in my own life the kind of "readiness" that these men were cultivating.

I also began to realize that I might really be able to do this, with God's grace. And in my life and circumstances, that grace might very well take the form of "another person." I began to discover that marriage is really a vocation.

And so I kept my eyes and my heart open, during that first year of teaching. I prayed for God's will to be done. I began to become convinced that my vocation was joined to that of another person. But who?

I prayed the Novena of the Divine Mercy that Easter Week, asking God to send me the woman he wanted me to marry, and to send her "soon"! Rather demanding and impatient of me, eh?

About a week later, I got a phone call from my old friend Eileen Balajadia. I hadn't talked to her in some years, although we had kept up a regular correspondence. But as far as I knew, she had put down her roots in Texas, and I was in the process of planting myself in Front Royal.

We talked for a long time. She revealed that she wasn't happy with her teaching position in Texas, and was thinking of moving back to the Northern Virginia area, where we had met five years ago.

Of course, I was sure Eileen just wanted to be my friend....

But something inside me said, in a very simple way, "Trust in God. Be ready. Be open. Pay attention. Don't be afraid. Follow the signs. Be ready to say yes."

We didn't know, when we were talking on the phone in April 1995, that 14 months later we would be married. (I've told that story elsewhere on this blog.) But God knew. God brought us together in His Mercy.

Today we have five children, two of them adolescents. When I fell ill, my wife's work as a teacher blossomed in new ways. Now I am being healed and God is opening up new directions for me. Still, I worry about the future in hundreds of ways. Why? God has promised us that He will take care of us in His Mercy. He has never failed us. He hasn't promised that it will be easy, of course. I think that trust in God is the great and difficult and necessary thing that all of life is trying to teach us.

Eileen and I have to help each other to sustain and deepen that same attitude of heart:

Trust in God.
Be ready.
Be open.
Pay attention.
Don't be afraid.
Follow the signs.
Be ready to say yes.

Far From Home, Near to My Heart

Well, the weekend is over and Eileen is back in Baltimore. We had a nice (inexpensive) dinner and a walk down Main Street in the twilight to celebrate our Anniversary. And we had thoughtful, uninterrupted conversation, which is never something to be taken for granted in a house of five kids who are always expressing themselves.

I love my time with my wife. We were good friends for five years before--how can I put this?--the "opportunity" was given for us to discover that we loved each other. For a short period of that time (when we first met), we both lived in the Washington D.C. area, but then she went to Texas to pursue graduate studies at the University of Dallas (where she eventually earned her first Masters Degree in English Literature). I lived for a year in Italy. We continued to be friends even as we pursued (what appeared to be) diverse paths thousands of miles away. During the whole time we corresponded, by that ancient form of technology known as "the letter."

The New Media are great, and I know many long term relationships that have been sustained by email, and now even Skype, but this was 1990-1995, at the very end of the Age of the Handwritten Letter. And I must say that I am very glad. Eileen and I have a stack of handwritten letters from each other, which we can still read and laugh over, and the very ink and paper and handwriting bring back the times of our youth, and the words are written with a personal care that reveals a closeness that we shared but did not as yet understand.

I was a young man studying theology, with no money and no idea even of what continent I was going to live on. She was dedicated to literature and then teaching, at a school in Texas to which she seemed very committed. Then in 1995, after my first year as a professor at Christendom, Eileen's situation in Texas changed, and she decided to move to Virginia. I had a job and she was here and it took only a week for us to realize that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.

Eileen and I have been specially blessed, in that we love many things in common besides each other. We love to share things together, to look at things together, and to discuss the significance of things. We love art and literature and good food and the task of education, to which we are both devoted, and which we feel responsible to carry out in some way together. Obviously, this entails first the education of our own children, but also the profession we share leads us to look outward toward the work of forming other young minds and hearts.

Marriage is a beautiful thing, because it is more than just the grand romance of loving each other, but also the vocation of loving and building up the world together. The family is the immediate experience of this; the amazing realization that God has brought you together not just for each other, but also for the sake of these other persons who he has willed and loved for all eternity. The life of children! What a miracle!

To share an educational mission that encompasses our children and also reaches out into the community and society is a special grace and a particular path; thus, as Eileen pursues tasks in Baltimore necessary to our journey on that path, I feel--in spite of the physical distance--especially close to her.

Family Life, Ecclesial Life

My own experience of family life is illuminated by the preaching of Benedict XVI, in these words taken from his recent pastoral visit to Croatia. Everywhere, the human realities are the same. Self-giving love. Commitment of persons to one another. Openness to life. Prayer. Relationship with Christ through the Church. Witness to the world. Courage to live the truth.

Living it day to day, it doesn't feel so grand. It consists overwhelmingly in grimy little things. Getting John Paul to clear the table. Making sure Josefina does her thing on the potty. The big things, like "what's going to happen to the economy?" are out of our hands. We can only take the next step, and trust in Jesus for everything.

What Benedict XVI says here is founded upon that trust.

The Christian family is a special sign of the presence and love of Christ and that it is called to give a specific and irreplaceable contribution to evangelization. Blessed John Paul II...said that “the Christian family is called upon to take part actively and responsibly in the mission of the Church in a way that is original and specific, by placing itself, in what it is and what it does as an ‘intimate community of life and love’, at the service of the Church and of society” (Familiaris consortio, 50). The Christian family has always been the first way of transmitting the faith and still today retains great possibilities for evangelization in many areas.

Dear parents, commit yourselves always to teach your children to pray, and pray with them; draw them close to the Sacraments, especially to the Eucharist...and introduce them to the life of the Church; in the intimacy of the home do not be afraid to read the sacred Scriptures, illuminating family life with the light of faith and praising God as Father. Be like a little Upper Room, like that of Mary and the disciples, in which to live unity, communion and prayer! By the grace of God, many Christian families today are acquiring an ever deeper awareness of their missionary vocation, and are devoting themselves seriously to bearing witness to Christ the Lord. Blessed John Paul II once said: “An authentic family, founded on marriage, is in itself ‘good news’ for the world.” And he added: “In our time the families that collaborate actively in evangelization are ever more numerous [...] the hour of the family has arrived in the Church, which is also the hour of the missionary family” (Angelus, 21 October 2001).

In today’s society the presence of exemplary Christian families is more necessary and urgent than ever. Unfortunately, we are forced to acknowledge the spread of a secularization which leads to the exclusion of God from life and the increasing disintegration of the family, especially in Europe. Freedom without commitment to the truth is made into an absolute, and individual well-being through the consumption of material goods and transient experiences is cultivated as an ideal, obscuring the quality of interpersonal relations and deeper human values; love is reduced to sentimental emotion and to the gratification of instinctive impulses, without a commitment to build lasting bonds of reciprocal belonging and without openness to life. We are called to oppose such a mentality! Alongside what the Church says, the testimony and commitment of the Christian family – your concrete testimony – is very important, especially when you affirm the inviolability of human life from conception until natural death, the singular and irreplaceable value of the family founded upon matrimony and the need for legislation which supports families in the task of giving birth to children and educating them.

Dear families, be courageous! Do not give in to that secularized mentality which proposes living together as a preparation, or even a substitute for marriage! Show by the witness of your lives that it is possible, like Christ, to love without reserve, and do not be afraid to make a commitment to another person! Dear families, rejoice in fatherhood and motherhood! Openness to life is a sign of openness to the future, confidence in the future, just as respect for the natural moral law frees people, rather than demeaning them! The good of the family is also the good of the Church. I would like to repeat something I have said in the past: “the edification of each individual Christian family fits into the context of the larger family of the Church which supports it and carries it with her ... And the Church is reciprocally built up by the family, a ‘small domestic church’” (Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Participants in the Ecclesial Diocesan Convention of Rome, 6 June 2005). Let us pray to the Lord, that families may come more and more to be small churches and that ecclesial communities may take on more and more the quality of a family!