Handing on faith and hope to our children

As part of the three days dedicated to the Jubilee for Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly – with over 70,000 people from 130 countries present in Rome – among the various activities and events in which families were able to participate, on Friday 30 May, the Emmanuel Community organised an afternoon of games, visits and moments of prayer in Trinità dei Monti, attended by around 6,000 people.

During the evening vigil, Gabriella Gambino, Undersecretary of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, gave a short talk on the family as a source of joy and hope for today's world: 'The task of transmitting hope belongs by nature to the Christian family [...] parents realise that it is not enough to teach their children to make the sign of the cross, to say their evening prayers, to go to Mass on Sundays, but that they must also talk to them about God, reveal and tell them about the existence of a Father who loves us, who thought of us, desired us, wanted us for His immense love in Eternal Life".

Faced with the responsibility of raising children, Prof. Gambino identified two tasks to which we must commit ourselves: 'First, we must commit ourselves to the defence of human life from the first moment of conception until natural death [...] Defending and proclaiming the value of life means opening up a path, a future for someone, hope. Second, defend, witness and proclaim with joy the family founded on marriage! Only the stability and certainty of relationships, Pope Leo XIV reminds us, give us the time necessary to build trust within the family. [...] We can respond to God's faithfulness to the family with faithfulness to his love, welcoming the grace he gives us to remain together, united in his love despite everything."

Gambino concluded by inviting us to reawaken in our children a desire for the infinite that can move them to seek God and their vocation. We must never lose heart: ‘As Cardinal Sgreccia whispered to me a couple of months before his death in 2019, he who had always been a generous witness to hope and the triumph of life: “The best is always before us and is always possible”.’

Throughout the afternoon, the Emmanuel Community welcomed families to the cloister of Trinità dei Monti, where they were able to receive both a blessing and confession, leaving a prayer intention before the reliquary of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and that of her parents, Saints Louis and Zelia Martin, displayed for the occasion in the church of Santissima Trinità dei Monti.