The Role of the Family in Christian Initiation

“We can no longer take for granted that faith is automatically passed down from parents to children”. With these words, Prof. Gabriella Gambino, Undersecretary of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, invited listeners to reflect during the lecture she gave last week for the Diocese of Oppido-Palmi on “The Role of the Family in Christian Initiation”.

We must commit to regenerating faith within families

“It is not enough to teach children how to make the sign of the cross, say their evening prayers, or go to Mass on Sundays. We must also speak to them about God, reveal and tell them about the existence of a Father who loves us, who thought of us and wanted us to be destined to His immense love in Eternal Life. A Father who is present between the lines of our everyday life and whom we must learn to discover together with our children”, said Gambino. She also emphasized that “while it is true that the family has a primary and irreplaceable role in initiating children into Christian life, in today’s secularized and dechristianized world, we must commit to regenerating faith within families and once again bring them closer to the Church. Spouses, fathers, mothers, children, and even grandparents – we all need to rediscover a living, experiential faith, capable of nourishing our real-life experiences and anchoring them in Christ”.

The challenge of a cross-cutting pastoral care of the family

Reflecting on the idea of a renewed pastoral care of the family – “a pastoral reflection and action capable of bringing together the pastoral care of children, adolescents, youth, marriage preparation, accompaniment of spouses, and situations of crisis, in order to ‘cultivate’ vocation in the younger generations and preserve it” – the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life encourages dioceses to adopt a cross-cutting pastoral care of the family. This would “ensure continuity in the catechumenal journey of faith for children, with remote preparation for vocation, ending in youth pastoral care with the proclamation of vocation – not only to religious life but also to marriage”. We must move beyond the idea that the family is merely a sector (which requires us to focus only on the family as it exists at a given moment). On the contrary, the family must become the unifying dimension of the being and pastoral action of the community. As such, it will require shared working groups in dioceses and parishes to share methodologies, goals, and paths, all grounded in the vocational accompaniment of the faithful throughout every stage of family life.

Helping children love what they can become

Gambino concluded that in order to evangelize, “we must care for people so that they may find true Life and have it abundantly. God’s pedagogy is not about solving the problems people face in life; it is about the encounter with Christ – the overabundance of Life that gives meaning to our struggles and saves us”. Ultimately, echoing the recent words of Pope Leo XIV during the Augustinian General Chapter, there is an urgent need to evangelize by placing Christ at the center of the lives of younger generations: “Our first concern” said Pope Leo, “should be that of helping, especially the young, to glimpse the beauty of the calling and to love what they could become by embracing their vocation”.