Vibrant ‘domestic churches’ can revive Ireland and the Church, says Pope

The Church and Irish society can be renewed if parents dedicate themselves to living Christian lives and providing examples of Christian living to their children, Pope Francis has said in an address to married and engaged couples in Dublin’s pro cathedral.

Highlighting how he is in Ireland to preside over the closing stages of the World Meeting of Families, this afternoon in St Mary’s Pro Cathedral the Pope praised marriage as being “about a love that gives rise to new life”. Recalling how Christian marriage is a sacrament sustained by Christ’s love, the Pontiff urged the gathered couples to remember daily Christ’s constant presence and his promise not to fail or abandon them.

Praising long-married couples as examples to newlyweds and to people considering marriage, who he encouraged to take the risk of getting married, the Pontiff described how a newly-married couple had asked him how parents can pass the Faith on to their children. While carefully-prepared catechetical programmes are “essential”, he said, “the first and most important place for passing on the Faith is the home, through the quiet daily example of parents who love our Lord and trust in his word”.

Children learn the meaning of fidelity, integrity and sacrifice in the “domestic church” through watching their parents, he said, explaining that they can in that way “breathe in the fresh air of the Gospel and learn to understand, judge and act in a manner worthy of the legacy of Faith they have received”.

Explaining that it is difficult for children to grow up in the Faith unless they are taught it in their “real mother tongue”, the Pope described from his own experience how it is beautiful for children to learn the language of love and Faith from seeing their parents.

He encouraged parents to pray with their children as family, celebrate Christian feasts, speak of holy things and make space for Mary in family life, living in deep solidarity with those who suffer and are at the edges of society.

Your children will learn how to share the goods of the earth with everyone, if they see how their parents take care of others poorer or less fortunate than themselves,” he said.

Urging parents to be their children’s “first teachers in the Faith” and to encourage their children to learn to converse and learn from their grandparents, he recalled that the Christian virtues are not necessarily fashionable, and lamented out the world has “little use for the weak, the vulnerable and all those it deems ‘unproductive’”.

“By your example,” the Pontiff said, “may your children be guided to become a kinder, more loving, more Faith-filled generation, for the renewal of the Church and Irish society”.