| International News

The eight-page leaflet describes introducing children to the love of love as a “marvelous adventure,” and offers practical suggestions on how to introduce children a relationship with Jesus Christ and to prayerful communication with him.

Catholic Organization for Life and Family is co-sponsored by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus.

For example, it suggests some ways prayer can be easily introduced to children, such as praying for “those we pass by on the street, for the injured person who is being taken by ambulance,” and incorporating simple, spontaneous prayer into mundane trips to the supermarket or on family hikes. It suggests children can be given a personal journal while on holidays in which they can write or draw, “telling Jesus about the adventures of the day.”

“We dare to invite them to become saints, cooperators with Christ in building a better world,” the leaflet says.

“At the heart of Christian life, there is a ‘yes.’ There is an intimate and personal relationship with Christ a relationship of trust that begins with baptism and blossoms throughout our lives,” it says. “The baptized child becomes a member of the body of Christ; Christ as head is the young one’s brother and walks by his or her side.”

Quoting various sources, from Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical God is Love to the theological document for the 2008 Eucharistic Congress “The Eucharist: God’s Gift for the Life of the World,” COLF lays out a hope-filled message for realizing the mission of raising saints in the “hum-drum of every day life.”

“In entrusting his children to parents who are the bearers of gospel values, God hopes that sooner or later he will reap an abundant harvest of vocations to holiness; in marriage or single life in lay apostolate, and in priestly or religious life,” it says.

The leaflet urges parents to show Christ’s love by example, and families to fulfill their role as a “domestic church that lives in God’s presence.” In addition to baptism, it stresses the other sacraments, such as marriage and the Eucharist.

“Nothing in the world can compare to the gift that Christ makes of himself; he gives himself as food so that we become one in him,” the document says.

“By participating in the Sunday Mass, the family draws from the source of love and healing, and so protects its own stability,” it says.

The leaflet does not ignore the difficulties families face in a society that “lives as if God did not exist.” It exhorts them to celebrate and defend family values publicly.

COLF also acknowledges that many families are under strain: “When the cross appears in the form of infidelity, division and divorce, the parents, the children and the extended family are called to participate more intimately in Christ’s own experience of death and resurrection.”

It also encourages parents whose children have rejected the faith, citing the example of St. Monica, who prayed 20 years for the conversion of her son, St. Augustine.