Read the Catechism in a Year
Day 264 - Faith in the Family
The Fourth Commandment: Honor your father and your mother.
How should a family live its faith together?
A Christian family should be a miniature church. All Christian family members are invited to strengthen one another in faith and to outdo one another in their zeal for God. They should pray for and with each other and collaborate in works of charity.
Parents stand in for their children with their own faith, have them baptized, and serve as their models of faith. That means that parents should make it possible for their children to experience how valuable and beneficial it is to live in the familiar presence of the loving God. At some time, however, the parents, too, will learn from their children’s faith and hear how God speaks through them, because the faith of young people is often accompanied by greater devotion and generosity and “because the Lord often reveals to a younger person what is better” (St. Benedict of Nursia, Rule, chap. 3, 3).
Why is God more important than the family?
Without relationship a person cannot live. Man’s most important relationship is the one he has with God. This has priority over all human relationships, even family relationships.
Children do not belong to the parents, nor do parents belong to their children. Every person belongs directly to God. Only to God is man bound absolutely and always. This is how we understand what Jesus said to those who are called: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:37). Therefore parents should place their children confidently into God’s hands if the Lord calls them to the consecrated life in a religious order or to be a priest. (YOUCAT questions 373-374)
Dig Deeper: Corresponding CCC section (2226-2233) and other references here.
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