2023-11-11 16:28:29
Becoming a parent is one of the greatest joys in life, but there are many hurdles these days. Francis recalled this on Saturday morning at the audience for participants in the general assembly and conference of the European Parents’ Association.
Mario Galgano – Vatikanstadt
The task of education might be said to be successful when children discover the fundamental beauty of their existence and when, strengthened by this conviction, they approach the adventure of life with confidence and courage, convinced that they too have a task to fulfill have a task in which they will find fulfillment and happiness. The Pope highlighted this to guests in the Vatican. Then he remembered:
“Today, the parental mission of raising children is certainly not favored by the cultural context, at least not in Europe. It is indeed characterized by ethical subjectivism and practical materialism. The dignity of the human person is always affirmed, but sometimes not truly respected.”
To listen to – what the Pope said at the audience
Cultural atmosphere
Parents are aware that their children will be immersed in this cultural atmosphere. What they “breathe,” what they absorb from the media, is often in contradiction to what was considered “normal” just a few decades ago, Francis explained, and today the previous “normality” is often no longer valid or bad . Parents must therefore show their children every day the goodness and reasonableness of decisions and values that are no longer self-evident, such as: Francis listed, for example, the value of marriage and family or the decision to accept children as a gift from God.
The audience in the Vatican
Faced with these difficulties, which might be discouraging, parents and all believers in general must support each other in order to ignite in parents a “passion” for education. Education means “humanizing people, making them fully human,” explained the Pope. Then he added, deviating from the speech manuscript:
“Life opens in all its richness when you give. This is the great educational task of parents: to form free and generous people who have come to know the love of God and who freely give what they have received as a gift. It is a little – let’s say – the passing on of gratuitousness, which is not easy to convey.”
All of these are values that make a young person a trustworthy and loyal person who is able to contribute to work, civil coexistence and solidarity. Otherwise, children would grow up as “islands,” detached from others, incapable of a common vision, accustomed to considering their own desires as absolute values, the Pope concluded.
(vatican news)
The audience in the Vatican
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