Family prayer: a vital way to share in the life and mission of the Church
When a family prays together, a spiritual intimacy is created that strengthens the bonds of all family members. A deep sense of security develops that becomes foundational for each person. Prayer is the principal way that the family becomes what it is meant to be. The world and the Church, beginning with priests, need the first fruits of family prayer. It is an urgent call.
Through the example of her saintly parents, St. Thérèse of Lisieux opened herself up to God at a very young age and became the beautiful saint she was called to be. How many young people await the same destiny if only they too had the example of true prayerfulness and godliness within their homes. Every family has problems but with prayer, the problems become opportunities for grace and growth in holiness.
The Dicastery for the Clergy, in its 2012 booklet Eucharistic Adoration for the Sanctification of Priests and Spiritual Maternity, highlights the role of holy families in fostering vocations:
We may pray the mysteries of the Rosary for various intentions: for the Holy Father, for cardinals, for bishops and missionaries, for priests and religious who are discouraged or at the point of giving up their priestly ministry or for all those who have placed their hand to the plough but then turned back, as well as for all deceased priests. Prayer is also necessary for the sanctification of families because it is there that vocations are born.
Families are referred to as the domestic church and this is a beautiful truth. The seeds of faith are passed on and nurtured amidst the family. As such, families are not only the recipients or consumers of God’s grace and the Church’s support, but are also called to be givers of life and grace. It is from the family that all vocations are essentially rooted because every single person passes through the family.
In his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II addresses the role of the Christian family in the modern world and helps us understand the vital role and challenges for the family:
"The family finds in the plan of God the Creator and Redeemer not only its identity, what it is, but also its mission, what it can and should do. The role that God calls the family to perform in history derives from what the family is; its role represents the dynamic and existential development of what it is. Each family finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its dignity and its responsibility: family, become what you are.
Accordingly, the family must go back to the "beginning" of God's creative act, if it is to attain self-knowledge and self-realization in accordance with the inner truth not only of what it is but also of what it does in history. And since in God's plan it has been established as an "intimate community of life and love," the family has the mission to become more and more what it is, that is to say, a community of life and love, in an effort that will find fulfillment, as will everything created and redeemed, in the Kingdom of God. Looking at it in such a way as to reach its very roots, we must say that the essence and role of the family are in the final analysis specified by love. Hence the family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love, and this is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God's love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church His bride.
Every particular task of the family is an expressive and concrete actuation of that fundamental mission. We must therefore go deeper into the unique riches of the family's mission and probe its contents, which are both manifold and unified (n. 17)."
