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Teaching the Faith in the Family: Some guidelines from Saint Josemaria Escriva
Michele Dolz
Parents have the primary responsibility for the education of their own children. This is a recurrent teaching in the Church’s magisterium. The following are some excerpts from a study by Michele Dolz published in n. 32 of the journal Romana, about bringing up children in the Faith. The complete article can be read by clicking here .
Parents have the primary responsibility for the education of their own children. This is a recurrent teaching in the Church’s magisterium from Divini Illius Magistri of Pope Pius XI in 1929 to the documents of Pope John Paul II.
I would like to consider here some of Saint Josemaria Escriva’s insights into this truth, which he placed in the context of the baptismal call to holiness and apostolate.
“There is perhaps no better model for a Christian couple than that of the Christian families of apostolic times: the centurion Cornelius, who obeyed the will of God and in whose home the Church was made accessible to the gentiles; Aquila and Priscilla, who spread Christianity in Corinth and Ephesus, and who cooperated in the apostolate of Saint Paul; Tabitha, who out of charity attended to the needs of the Christians in Joppa. And so many other homes and families of Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and Romans in which the preaching of our Lord’s first disciples began to bear fruit.
“Families who lived in union with Christ and who made him known to others. Small Christian communities which were centers for the spreading of the Gospel and its message. Families no different from other families of those times, but living with a new spirit, which spread to all those who were in contact with them. This is what the first Christians were, and this is what we have to be” (Christ is Passing By, 30).
Saint Josemaria’s admiration for the first Christians and his tireless reference to their example does not, of course, detract in any way from recognizing all the fruits of sanctity that the Church has produced throughout the two thousand years of her history, a sanctity often “cultivated” within Christian families. But the first Christian generations give very clear witness to three important truths:
a) the goal to which they aspired was holiness, understood as a full identification with Christ;
b) the mission of Christianizing society and culture (which means bringing people one by one to Christ) was the task of each Christian in his or her own environment, beginning with the family;
c) all of this has its origin in baptism, that is to say, in the very fact of being a Christian, and not in particular mandates from the hierarchy or added acts of consecration.
Saint Josemaria always taught, not without some initial incomprehension, that marriage is a divine vocation and that its greatness, its obligations, and its efficacy are rooted in the sacrament itself.
“The purpose of marriage is to help married people sanctify themselves and others. For this they receive a special grace in the sacrament which Jesus Christ instituted. Those called to the married state will, with the grace of God, find within their state everything they need to be holy, to identify themselves each day more with Jesus Christ, and to lead those with whom they live to God.
“We must strive so that these cells of Christianity may be born and may develop with a desire for holiness, conscious of the fact that the Sacrament of Initiation—Baptism—confers on all Christians a divine mission that each must fulfil in his own walk of life. Christian couples should be aware that they are called to sanctify themselves and to sanctify others, that they are called to be apostles and that their first apostolate is in the home. They should understand that founding a family, educating their children, and exercising a Christian influence in society are supernatural tasks. The effectiveness and the success of their life—their happiness—depends to a great extent on their awareness of their specific mission” (Conversations with Msgr. Escrivá, 91).
The child readily “captures” what is transmitted to him through the irreplaceable affective bonds with his parents. While institutions outside the family, even when moved by the best of intentions, are much less effective. Many beneficent institutions, inspired by Christian charity, have educated parentless children in the faith as well as in secular subjects. God has even brought forth great saints from such environments. But in general it is precisely such institutions that show how indispensable Christian parents are. Even more, the history of Christian education over many centuries shows how difficult it is for the seed of supernatural life to germinate without the parents’ help. In contrast, the family-school synergy (or that of the family and Christian educators in general) is highly effective. Here we see another of Saint Josemaria’s pastoral intuitions that has now become widespread. All over the world educational centers have been started that work closely with the parents’ own efforts to educate their children and in which the parents continue to exercise the role of principal educators.
Saint Josemaria always gave parents some advice that at first might seem a pedagogical technique: become friends of your children, win their trust and confidence. The educator Victor Garcia Hoz, who first met Blessed Josemaria Escriva back in the thirties, has focused attention on the importance of this advice. He stressed that, in the long run, all true education is based on a relationship of friendship between the educator and the person being educated. I said “might seem a pedagogical technique,” because friendship and Christian love are charity, which can never be reduced to a “technique” but rather constitutes the very core of our new life in Christ.
Parents who aspire to holiness and desire holiness for their children understand very well those other words of Saint Josemaria, this time at a gathering of families in Valencia, Spain, on 19 November 1972: “There is a special communion of the saints among members of the same family. If you are very holy, your children will find it easier to be so.” This very particular spiritual communion also stems from the sacrament of marriage, since Christ has taken up the natural family relationships, sanctified them, and made them into a vocation.
It is impossible to “teach” sanctity, in the sense of merely passing on some facts or theories. Parents can and should transmit the truths of the Catholic faith and guide their children towards the means of sanctification provided by the Church. Nevertheless, we should never forget that “parents teach their children mainly through their own conduct. What a son or daughter looks for in a father or mother is not only a certain amount of knowledge or some more or less effective advice, but primarily something more important: a proof of the value and meaning of life, shown through the life of a specific person, and confirmed in the different situations and circumstances that occur over a period of time” (Christ is Passing By, 28).
Romana, n. 32 (January-June 2001) p. 110
Read complete article.
I would like to consider here some of Saint Josemaria Escriva’s insights into this truth, which he placed in the context of the baptismal call to holiness and apostolate.
“There is perhaps no better model for a Christian couple than that of the Christian families of apostolic times: the centurion Cornelius, who obeyed the will of God and in whose home the Church was made accessible to the gentiles; Aquila and Priscilla, who spread Christianity in Corinth and Ephesus, and who cooperated in the apostolate of Saint Paul; Tabitha, who out of charity attended to the needs of the Christians in Joppa. And so many other homes and families of Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and Romans in which the preaching of our Lord’s first disciples began to bear fruit.
“Families who lived in union with Christ and who made him known to others. Small Christian communities which were centers for the spreading of the Gospel and its message. Families no different from other families of those times, but living with a new spirit, which spread to all those who were in contact with them. This is what the first Christians were, and this is what we have to be” (Christ is Passing By, 30).
Saint Josemaria’s admiration for the first Christians and his tireless reference to their example does not, of course, detract in any way from recognizing all the fruits of sanctity that the Church has produced throughout the two thousand years of her history, a sanctity often “cultivated” within Christian families. But the first Christian generations give very clear witness to three important truths:
a) the goal to which they aspired was holiness, understood as a full identification with Christ;
b) the mission of Christianizing society and culture (which means bringing people one by one to Christ) was the task of each Christian in his or her own environment, beginning with the family;
c) all of this has its origin in baptism, that is to say, in the very fact of being a Christian, and not in particular mandates from the hierarchy or added acts of consecration.
Saint Josemaria always taught, not without some initial incomprehension, that marriage is a divine vocation and that its greatness, its obligations, and its efficacy are rooted in the sacrament itself.
“The purpose of marriage is to help married people sanctify themselves and others. For this they receive a special grace in the sacrament which Jesus Christ instituted. Those called to the married state will, with the grace of God, find within their state everything they need to be holy, to identify themselves each day more with Jesus Christ, and to lead those with whom they live to God.
“We must strive so that these cells of Christianity may be born and may develop with a desire for holiness, conscious of the fact that the Sacrament of Initiation—Baptism—confers on all Christians a divine mission that each must fulfil in his own walk of life. Christian couples should be aware that they are called to sanctify themselves and to sanctify others, that they are called to be apostles and that their first apostolate is in the home. They should understand that founding a family, educating their children, and exercising a Christian influence in society are supernatural tasks. The effectiveness and the success of their life—their happiness—depends to a great extent on their awareness of their specific mission” (Conversations with Msgr. Escrivá, 91).
The child readily “captures” what is transmitted to him through the irreplaceable affective bonds with his parents. While institutions outside the family, even when moved by the best of intentions, are much less effective. Many beneficent institutions, inspired by Christian charity, have educated parentless children in the faith as well as in secular subjects. God has even brought forth great saints from such environments. But in general it is precisely such institutions that show how indispensable Christian parents are. Even more, the history of Christian education over many centuries shows how difficult it is for the seed of supernatural life to germinate without the parents’ help. In contrast, the family-school synergy (or that of the family and Christian educators in general) is highly effective. Here we see another of Saint Josemaria’s pastoral intuitions that has now become widespread. All over the world educational centers have been started that work closely with the parents’ own efforts to educate their children and in which the parents continue to exercise the role of principal educators.
Saint Josemaria always gave parents some advice that at first might seem a pedagogical technique: become friends of your children, win their trust and confidence. The educator Victor Garcia Hoz, who first met Blessed Josemaria Escriva back in the thirties, has focused attention on the importance of this advice. He stressed that, in the long run, all true education is based on a relationship of friendship between the educator and the person being educated. I said “might seem a pedagogical technique,” because friendship and Christian love are charity, which can never be reduced to a “technique” but rather constitutes the very core of our new life in Christ.
Parents who aspire to holiness and desire holiness for their children understand very well those other words of Saint Josemaria, this time at a gathering of families in Valencia, Spain, on 19 November 1972: “There is a special communion of the saints among members of the same family. If you are very holy, your children will find it easier to be so.” This very particular spiritual communion also stems from the sacrament of marriage, since Christ has taken up the natural family relationships, sanctified them, and made them into a vocation.
It is impossible to “teach” sanctity, in the sense of merely passing on some facts or theories. Parents can and should transmit the truths of the Catholic faith and guide their children towards the means of sanctification provided by the Church. Nevertheless, we should never forget that “parents teach their children mainly through their own conduct. What a son or daughter looks for in a father or mother is not only a certain amount of knowledge or some more or less effective advice, but primarily something more important: a proof of the value and meaning of life, shown through the life of a specific person, and confirmed in the different situations and circumstances that occur over a period of time” (Christ is Passing By, 28).
Romana, n. 32 (January-June 2001) p. 110
Read complete article.
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