A Sacred Trust

8/6/2019 A Sacred Trust

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We will consider:

What we mean by vocation and a vocation to love The situation of childhood today

Conjugal love as the authentic basis for educationin the family

Fruitfulness as a property of authentic love

Parents as primary educators

The education of conscience, chastity and human

sexuality


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God is love (1 Jn 4:8), and in Himself He lives amystery of personal loving communion. Creating thehuman race in His own image and continually keepingit in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and

woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and

responsibility, of love and communion Love istherefore the fundamental and innate vocation ofevery human being.

Blessed John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 11.


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The family has the mission to guard, reveal andcommunicate love, and this is a living reflection of anda real sharing in God's love for humanity and the loveof Christ the Lord for the Church His bride.

Blessed John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 17


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There are ver 11 illi chil re i this c try

% f the t live ith their i l icalther a father

I a school class of 3 st e ts, y ou ca ex ect thata out a oze of the ill ot live ith both oftheir biological are ts


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Modern men and women seem to have declared waron their children.

John Saward The Way of the Lamb


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Childrenneed parents and teachers who areunselfish and from whom they learn the secret ofharmonious living: putting human relationships aboveall else. We want our children to discover that caringfor others and contributing to the common good is

ultimately more satisfying than either wealth, beautyor personal success.

The Good Childhood Report Conclusions


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"The Christian vocation is, therefore, a call to uniteoneself to Christ and to take him as one's model, tofollow and imitate him, thanks to the gift of his own

life.

Ramon Garcia de Haro, Marriage and Family


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Modern rationalism does not tolerate mystery. It does

not accept the mystery of man as male and female, noris it willing to admit that the full truth about man hasbeen revealed in Jesus Christ For rationalism it isunthinkable that God should be the Redeemer, much

less that he should be "the Bridegroom", the primordialand unique source of the human love betweenspouses.

Blessed John Paul II Letter to Families 19.


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Man cannot live without love. He remains a being thatis incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, iflove is not revealed to him, if he does not encounterlove, if he does not experience it and make it his own,

if he does not participate intimately in it.

Blessed John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10


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In the begetting of children marriage reflects itsdivine model, God's love for man. In man and woman,fatherhood and motherhood, like the body and likelove, cannot be limited to the biological: life is entirelygiven only when, by birth, love and meaning are also

given, which make it possible to say yes to this life.

Pope Benedict XVI 2005


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Marriage, the ordinary state of life for so manyChristians, is a path to holiness by the way of lovesbeauty.

Love is the seed of holiness.

Blessed John Henry Newman


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The right and duty of parents to give education is

essentialit is original and primary with regard to theeducational role of othersit is irreplaceable andinalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirelydelegated to others or usurped by othersparents' love

is also the animating principle and therefore the norminspiring and guiding all concrete educational activity.

John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 36.


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By virtue of their ministry of educating, parents are,through the witness of their lives, the first heralds ofthe Gospel for their children.

Blessed John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 39


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In this garden must be planted good affections andprinciples, while the nettles, briars, and otherbarren

weeds of pride and deceptive pleasure are carefully andconsistently rooted out.

Gerard B. Wegemer

Thomas More : A P ortrait of Courage


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Today we too find ourselves in the midst of adramatic conflict between the "culture of death" andthe "culture of life". But the glory of the Cross is notovercome by this darkness; rather, it shines forth ever

more radiantly and brightly, and is revealed as thecentre, meaning and goal of all history and of everyhuman life.

Blessed John Paul IIEv

angelium Vitae, 50


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Through the family passes the primary current of thecivilization of loveThe educator is a person

who "begets" in a spiritual sense. From this point ofview, raising children can be considered a genuineapostolate[which makes parents and children]

sharers in truth and love, that final goal to whicheveryone is called by God the Father, Son and HolySpirit.

Blessed John Paul II, Letter to Families, 15-16.


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I address you, dear parents, to ask you first of all toremain firm for ever in your reciprocal love: this is thefirst great gift your children need if they are to grow upserene, acquire self-confidence and thus learn to becapable in turn of authentic and generous love.Further, your love for your children must endow you

with the style and courage of a true educator helpingthem to distinguish clearly between good and evil.



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Beauty, a kind of mirror of the divine, inspires andvivifies young hearts and minds, while ugliness andcoarseness have a depressing impact on attitudes andbehaviour.



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A child needs loving attention. This means that wemust give children some of our time, the time of ourlife. But precisely this "raw material" of life - time -seems to be ever scarcer. The time we have availablebarely suffices for our own lives; how could we

surrender it, give it to someone else? To have time andto give time - this is for us a very concrete way to learnto give oneself, to lose oneself in order to find oneself.

Pope Benedict XVI 2006.


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"It is an illusion to think that we can build the trueculture of human life if we do not help the young toaccept and experience sexuality and love and the wholeof life according to their true meaning and in their

close interconnection."

Blessed John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 97.


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The successful integration of sexuality within theperson and thus the inner unity of man in his bodilyand spiritual being.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2337.


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Only a true love is able to protect life."



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The family is placed at the centre of the great strugglebetween good and evil, between life and death,between love and all that is opposed to love. To thefamily is entrusted the task of striving, first andforemost, to unleash the forces of good, the source of

which is found in Christ, the Redeemer of man.

Blessed John Paul II, Letter to Families, 23.


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"We need first of all to foster, in ourselves and inothers, a contemplative outlook. Such an outlookarises from faith in the God of life, who has createdevery individual as a wonder (cf. Ps 139:14). It is theoutlook of those who see life in its deeper meaning,

who grasp its utter gratuitousness, its beauty and itsinvitation to freedom and responsibility.


A Sacred Trust

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