271 EVERY MARRIAGE IS PERFECTED IN OPENNESS TO OTHERS

YOUCAT Lesson 271

YOUCAT the catechism for Catholic youth

271  What does it mean to say that the family is a “Church in miniature”?

What the Church is on a large scale, the family is on a small scale: an image of God’s love in human fellowship.  Indeed, every marriage is perfected in openness to others, to the children that God sends, in mutual acceptance, in hospitality and being for others.  [1655-1657]

Photo: …..Four nieces and a nephew great their visiting great aunt Margaret with songs. …..271

Nothing in the early Church fascinated people more about the “New Way” of the Christians than their “domestic churches”.  Often someone “believed in the Lord, together with all his household; and many…believed and were baptized” (Acts of the Apostles 18:8).  In an unbelieving world, islands of living faith were formed; places of prayer, mutual sharing, and cordial hospitality.  Rome, Corinth, Antioch, the great cities of antiquity, were soon permeated with domestic churches that were like points of light.  Even today families in which Christ is at home are the leaven that renews our society.  368

“If you want someone to become Christian, let him live for a year in your house.”  St. John Chrysostom (349/350-407 a.d. )

VI. THE DOMESTIC CHURCH

…....1655   Christ chose to be born and grow up in the bosom of the holy family of Joseph and Mary. The Church is nothing other than "the family of God." From the beginning, the core of the Church was often constituted by those who had become believers "together with all [their] household."(Compare Acts 18:8.)¹⁶⁶ When they were converted, they desired that "their whole household" should also be saved.(Compare Acts 16:31; Acts 11:14)¹⁶⁷ These families who became believers were islands of Christian life in an unbelieving world. –Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

…….1656   In our own time, in a world often alien and even hostile to faith, believing families are of primary importance as centers of living, radiant faith. For this reason the Second Vatican Council, using an ancient expression, calls the family the Ecclesia domestica.(Lumen Gentium 11; compare Familiaris Consortio 21.)¹⁶⁸ It is in the bosom of the family that parents are "by word and example . . . the first heralds of the faith with regard to their children. They should encourage them in the vocation which is proper to each child, fostering with special care any religious vocation."(Lumen Gentiumn 11.)¹⁶⁹ –CCC

…….1657   It is here that the father of the family, the mother, children, and all members of the family exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way "by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, and self-denial and active charity."(Lumen Gentium 10.)¹⁷⁰ Thus the home is the first school of Christian life and "a school for human enrichment."(Gaudium et Spes 52 § 1.)¹⁷¹ Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous - even repeated - forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one's life. --CCC