June 10-11: The Most Holy TRINITY.
On March 25, 2017, Pope Francis met with recently confirmed young people in the Meazza-San Siro Stadium of Milan. In the course of the meeting, the Pontiff answered some questions posed by a recently confirmed young man, a married couple and a catechist.
Married Couple: How can we transmit the beauty of the faith to our children? Sometimes it seems truly difficult to be able to talk about this subject without being boring or banal in sharing the faith with them.
I think this is one of the key questions that touches our life as parents, as Pastors, as educators. And I would like to address it to you. I invite you to recall who were the persons that left an imprint on your faith and which of them remained most imprinted. I invite you parents to become children again for a minute and to recall the persons that helped you to believe. Father, mother, grandparents, a catechist, an aunt, the parish priest, a neighbor, perhaps . . We all have in our memory, but especially in our heart, someone who helped us to believe.
You will ask me for the reason for this little exercise. Our children look at us constantly, even if we don’t real-ize it, they observe us all the time and meanwhile they learn. “Children look at us,” I believe is the title of a film. They know our joys, our sadness and worries. They under-stand everything and, given that they are very intuitive, they draw their conclusions and their teachings. They know when we set traps for them and when we don’t. Therefore, one of the first things I’ll say to you is: take care of them, take care of their heart, of their joy and of their hope. Your children’s “little eyes” memorize and read gradually with the heart how the faith is one of the best legacies that you have received from your parents, from your ancestors. Show them how the faith helps you to go on, to face the many dramas we have, not with a pessimistic but a confident attitude, this is the best witness we can give them. There is a saying: “The wind took the words,” but what is sown in the memory, in the heart, stays for ever.