Education for the Family

In the Kyeongyang magazine, an article by a layman who has worked for 16 years with the diocesan family pastoral committee tells the readers what he has learned.

He mentions a documentary he saw about a priest who was sent to a poor country in Africa. He wondered what would Jesus do in his situation.  Would he build a school or a church? It's not what I need but what the others' need that is an act of love.

The writer has the same question about family life. What would Jesus do to help families? We all know the difficulties families are facing in our society. The relationship of husband and wife, the axis on which the family rests is shaking. Children consequently are affected negatively. Alienation comes with age, economic difficulties continue to exist, courting, marriage and having children are renounced; all are part of the reason that Korea has one of the lowest marriage and birth rates in the world. 

What would Jesus do? He believes it would be programs for the families. How do families need to communicate? How to solve the problems they meet? How are scars inflicted and healed? How does one  convey to another what he feels inside? How to listen to another person? He feels these questions are important and need answers.

We know what Jesus is asking of us but just repeating this we know is useless. Important as it is to know what Jesus wants us to do, we need something concrete to experience. Persons have to be prepared to listen to the words they hear.

Programs for families, the engaged, for fathers are some of the possibilities. He has seen the good that programs of this type have done. He desires to see the family as a church and the church as a family. They need to be seen as one. Jesus came to us in a family and we need to work to make the family into a church.

"The most Beautiful thing that God made, the Bible says, was the family. He created man and woman, and He gave them everything. He gave them the world! Grow, multiply, cultivate the earth, make it produce, make it grow. He presented to a family all of the love that God has in Himself, all of the beauty that God has in Himself, all of the truth that God has in Himself, He gives to the family. And a family is truly a family when it is able to open its arms and receive all of this love" (Pope Francis).