"The family is a divinely instituted community of persons made of husband, wife, children and relatives open to life in love. In the words of Pope St John Paul II, “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it” (Redemptor hominis, 10). Consequently, the first task of the family is to be the first school where fidelity to one another, love, sanctity of life, solidarity, mutual respect and values that promote human dignity are learnt.
The family is at the service of love and life when parents educate their children on the essential values of human life—to love the truth, to love the good, to love and to be loved, to love God. This is itself the ministry of the Church in which the family is able to participate when husband and wife live in fidelity, love and mutual respect. In this way, parents teach their children to love in the wider society, and good families build good nations.
A nation is itself a family of families, a community of persons who share common core values, and the family is the nucleus of the community of persons that a nation is. Every nation needs effective institutions and leaders of intellectual, moral and technical competence to administer these institutions. The family, as vital cell of the society, is where such leaders are born and nurtured. Hence, both the effectiveness of such institutions and the emergence of good leaders in the nation largely depend on the family. The family, as a community of persons, gives birth to and nourishes the nation and every other institution critical to the life of that nation. Nations are built on and secured by values, and the family is the first place of acquisition of values. That is why the state of a nation is a reflection of the state of its families.
The primary responsibility of parents is not just to pass genes unto their children, but also, to bring them up in every aspect of life in the society. Christian parents in particular have the responsibility of inculcating civic and religious values to form them into good citizens and good Christians. The religious education they provide for their children is the foundation on which their civic education rests. This is best achieved by the witness value of the parents, by the spiritual and moral fruits which they hand unto their children by their own personal example. For, as the saying goes, examples are better than precepts."
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