Our family has a great affinity for Nativity scenes. We collect them, display them and enjoy looking at Nativity scenes from countries around the world. The variety of styles are fascinating and intriguing yet their message is the same, “a savior has been born…who is Messiah and Lord” (Lk 2:11). It has been our custom that the manger remains empty until the dark hours of Christmas Eve. Our family gathers around the crèche as Jesus is placed lovingly in the manger with reverence and awe. Traditionally, Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus is then read (Lk 2:1-20) or the birth of Emmanuel (Is 7:10-14), followed by a prayer of blessing such as this:

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It was late in the summer of 2000. Dennis sat there in heavy traffic hoping that he would not be late. He was on the way to the hospital to meet with a group of doctors who were caring for his wife. What was supposed to be a four-day hospital stay had turned into four months. Dennis suspected that this special meeting with the doctors could only mean that his wife’s condition was becoming grave.

During that sad four months, God had reassured him with scripture after scripture that He was going to heal his wife of her illness. They prayed for a miracle, they prayed for healing. Dennis found comfort in God Word’s and he believed that God would grant his wife the miracle of healing.

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The future of the world and of the Church passes through the family.^[i]

In last 50 years, the family has undergone profound and dramatic changes in what is now, a post-Christian culture. Family and marriage are being destroyed and deformed.^[ii] If the family and the Church – indeed the world – are to survive, we must return to God’s original plan for marriage and family.

In the plan of God the Creator and Redeemer, the family finds not only its identity, what it is, but also its mission, what it can and should do. 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.^[iii]

God’s plan is for the family to be an “intimate community of life and love.”^[iv]

This post will review the state of family life, the need for instruction on living the vocation of marriage and family well, and propose the basis for a family spirituality to assist families in living out their call to be a “little church,”^[v] or in the words of Pope St. John Paul II: Ecclesia Domestica, the Domestic Church.^[vi]

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The future of humanity passes by way of the family. It is therefore indispensable and urgent that every person of good will should endeavor to save and foster the values and requirements of the family.

St. Joseph was “a just man,” a tireless worker, the upright guardian of those entrusted to his care. May he always guard, protect and enlighten families.

May the Virgin Mary, who is the mother of the church, also be the mother of “the church of the home.” Thanks to her motherly aid, may each Christian family really become a “little church” in which the mystery of the church of Christ is mirrored and given new life. May she, the handmaid of the Lord, be an example of humble and generous acceptance of the will of God. May she, the sorrowful mother at the foot of the cross, comfort the sufferings and dry the tears of those in distress because of the difficulties of their families.

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And he said to all, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23

In a rural mountain town off the southwest coast of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a community of 13,000 ethnic Croats who have found the secret to a successful, lifelong marriage. Throughout the centuries of war and famine, of cultural and political strife, not one single divorce has been recorded amongst the inhabitants of Siroki Brijeg.

The residents of this town believe that the crucifix is the greatest symbol of the love God has for His children. While preparing for the Sacrament of Marriage, the couple chooses a cross together, one that will soon occupy an honored place in their new home. During the premarital meetings with the priest, the couple is told they have found their cross – not their partner – and this cross is to be loved, to be carried, not to be thrown away, but to be cherished.

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Pope Francis canonized Blessed Louis and Zélie Martin, the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux, on Mission Sunday, October 18, 2015. They are being canonized during the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which is focusing on “the vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in the contemporary world.”

The couple is the first to be canonized together as husband and wife, giving testimony to their “extraordinary witness of conjugal and familial spirituality,” said Cardinal Angelo Amato, the Prefect for the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. He said that their lives “positively impacted their historical context through witness to the Gospel for the renewal of the face of the earth.”

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