English
EspañolSeeing our parents, as a couple, loving each other well and authentically moves us inside; it teaches us so much without the need for speeches. It urges us to strive for that same love. That is the love we want for our lives.
Text
“It is essential that children actually see that, for their parents, prayer is something truly important.” (The Joy of Love, n.288)
Commentary
One of the most moving experiences for children is to see their parents praying together as spouses. To realize, without words, that it is one of the expressions of love and union that they both possess, not each one by themselves, but together as a loving couple. For the children, this experience of praying together, out of love, is a lesson acquired through sharing in their parents’ love and union, which will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
These parents have probably not realized it. Without intending to, but by living it, they are teaching their children a tremendous and fascinating lesson: that prayer is a form of love. It is the way of living together, as spouses, with Jesus Christ. This is a concrete, simple and profound experience of the sacrament of marriage.
Pope Francis has told us that the Church does not grow by proselytism but by attraction. The same occurs with the transmission of the faith within the family.
Parents cannot claim to demand a pious life from their children if they have not shown them piety. It is difficult for us children to believe that something is good for our lives if we see that our parents do not live it. Beyond what they can teach us with words, sermons, or speeches, their actions and loving, authentic, daily, natural and spontaneous habits mark us deeply.
Knowing that our parents find in God their rock of strength and that they thank him for all the good things in their lives is a light that illuminates our path. It makes one’s trust in God grow, for one learns to trust Him from trusting one’s parents and from feeling oneself be their child.
