In Cana, Mary told the servants to do everything that Jesus told them (cf. Jn 2:5), thus presenting Jesus as the Word of God made man (cf. Jn 1:14) that needs to be listened to and then put into practice. Saint Paul affirms “Faith comes from what is preached, and what is preached comes from the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). And the great commandment that Moses gives to believing parents is this,
“let these words I urge on you today bewritten on your heart. You shall repeat them to your children and say them over to them whether at rest inyour house or walking abroad, at your lying down or at your rising; you shall fasten them on your hand as asign and on your forehead as a circlet, you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut 6:6-9).
At the start of a family’s journey in faith is the Word of God, Jesus the Lord himself reaching us through the Bible and the teachings of the Church. Educating children in the faith means proclaiming the Word of God to them, meditating on the readings of daily mass, telling the youngest ones the stories of the Bible, recounting the lives of the saints, teaching the catechism and meditating on the papal teachings, with special emphasis on the Pope who in the midst of each age steers the Church. In this way the children grow to become disciples, just like the young Samuel, “Speak, Yahweh, your servant is listening” (1 Sm 3:9).
Because the Word of God is Jesus Christ himself, this daily time of proclaiming and listening to the Word “concentrate[s] on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary” (Evangelii gaudium, 35), that is “the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead” (Evangelii gaudium, 35).
Hymns