Transforming our homes into schools of Nazareth

September means the end of summer and the return of our children and grandchildren to school. It is an important time to recall that our families are the primary and most important schools for our children and that parents and grandparents are essential educators.
 
The Catholic Church teaches that families are transmitters of the past to the present and are an irreplaceable part of our children’s education. Pope Francis, in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, explained:
 
I think first of families, called to a primary and vital mission of education. Families are the first place where the values of love and fraternity, togetherness and sharing, concern and care for others are lived out and handed on. They are also the privileged milieu for transmitting the faith, beginning with those first simple gestures of devotion which mothers teach their children. (n. 114)
 
School should be in session all year long in our homes. As parents and grandparents, we have the responsibility and joy of teaching our children about the Catholic faith, the importance of Scripture, and how to live out Catholic teaching. In a secular world hostile to the true teachings of Jesus Christ, our homes must be where we teach our children what it means to live moral lives in the way the Catholic Church has taught us for 2,000 years. That transmission of values must be done in the most important school, the family.
 
We also need to teach our children and grandchildren how to pray. Echoing Pope St. Paul VI, Pope Benedict XVI taught:
 
An authentically Christian education cannot dispense with the experience of prayer. If one does not learn how to pray in the family, it will later be difficult to bridge this gap. And so I would like to address to you the invitation to pray together as a family at the school of the Holy Family of Nazareth and thereby really to become of one heart and soul, a true family. (General Audience, December 28, 2011)
 
Paul VI spoke of the “school of Nazareth.” As he and Benedict XVI tell us, we must strive to make our homes Nazareth, to make our families schools. One of the first courses on our domestic syllabus must be how to pray. Parents need to mirror Mary and Joseph in teaching their children how to talk to God. Grandparents have a role to play in reinforcing those lessons of prayer, which will sustain our children in a world that constantly fights to undermine the gospel.
 
As the school year begins, let us recommit ourselves to transforming our homes into schools of Nazareth. We are the most important educators our children will ever have. With the help of Mary and Joseph, who led the school of Nazareth, we can educate our children and grandchildren and help our families graduate to heaven.

STEPHEN M. HENLEY 
is president of Legatus.