To have Christian hope means to know about evil and yet to go to meet the future with confidence. The core of faith rests upon accepting being loved by God, and therefore to believe is to say Yes, not only to him, but to creation, to creatures, above all, to men, to try to see the image of God in each person and thereby to become a lover. That’s not easy, but the basic Yes, the conviction that God has created men, that the stands behind them, that they aren’t simply negative, gives love a reference point that enables it to ground hope on the basis of faith. – Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth
64. Inspired and sustained by the new commandment of love, the Christian family welcomes, respects and serves every human being, considering each one in his or her dignity as a person and as a child of God.
It should be especially between husband and wife and within the family, through a daily effort to promote a truly personal community, initiated and fostered by an inner communion of love. This way of life should then be extended to the wider circle of the ecclesial community of which the Christian family is a part. Thanks to love within the family, the Church can and ought to take on a more homelike or family dimension, developing a more human and fraternal style of relationships.
Love, too, goes beyond our brothers and sisters of the same faith since “everybody is my brother or sister.” In each individual, especially in the poor, the weak, and those who suffer or are unjustly treated, love knows how to discover the face of Christ, and discover a fellow human being to be loved and served.
In order that the family may serve man in a truly evangelical way, the instructions of the Second Vatican Council must be carefully put into practice: “That the exercise of such charity may rise above any deficiencies in fact and even in appearance, certain fundamentals must be observed. Thus, attention is to be paid to the image of God in which our neighbor has been created, and also to Christ the Lord to whom is really offered whatever is given to a needy person.”
While building up the Church in love, the Christian family places itself at the service of the human person and the world, really bringing about the “human advancement” whose substance was given in summary form in the Synod’s Message to families: “Another task for the family is to form persons in love and also to practice love in all its relationships, so that it does not live closed in on itself, but remains open to the community, moved by a sense of justice and concern for others, as well as by a consciousness of its responsibility towards the whole of society.” – Pope John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio
People are gifts, not problems. They need to be treated as assets and not liabilities. One story from raising my own children helps illustrate this concept for me. I took my very young children with me to the post office where I had a lot of packages to deliver. At first I found this a little overwhelming. How could I keep track of all of them and get the packages into the post office. All of a sudden the answer became clear. They could each carry a (not very heavy) package and the task itself kept them engaged and together. It worked beautifully!
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:
“A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The ‘supreme gift of marriage’ is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged ‘right to a child’ would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right ‘to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,’ and ‘the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.’” – #2378
Recommended Reading:
Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathi by Claire A. Nivola
Small Catholic 