The Month of the
Holy Family

The Son of God chose to be born into a human family, in an obscure town on the periphery of the Roman Empire.  Although the Gospels tell us little about the first thirty years of his life, we can imagine that Jesus led a very "normal” family life.   Pope Francis

The Pope continues

He was raised in an atmosphere of religious devotion, he learned from the words and example of Mary and Joseph, and he grew in wisdom, age and grace (cf. Lk 2:52).  In imitation of the Holy Family, every Christian family must make a place for Jesus in its home.  For it is through the love of such "normal” families that God’s Son quietly comes to dwell among us, bringing salvation to our world.    Pope Francis

"God willed to be born and to grow up in a human family. In this way, he has consecrated the family as the first and ordinary way of his encounter with humanity. The Holy Family is truly the "prototype" of every Christian family that, united in the sacrament of marriage and nourished by the Word and the Eucharist, is called to carry out the marvellous vocation and mission of being a living cell not only of society but of the Church, sign and instrument of unity for the whole human race".  Benedict XVI

Let us join with them in prayer . . .

". . Let us now invoke together the protection of Mary Most Holy and of St. Joseph for every family, especially for those in difficulty.

May . . .(families in difficulty) be supported so that they will be able to resist the disintegrating impulses of a certain contemporary culture that undermines the very basis of the family institution.

May. . . (Mary and Joseph) help Christian families throughout the world to be the living image of the love of God. . . "

Forces of Disintegration

In Ireland in 1994 , the International Year of the Family, the then Minister of Social Welfare,
Dr. Michael Woods T.D., announced that his department had embraced the U.N. definition of the family as:

"Any combination of two or more persons who are bound together by ties of mutual consent, birth, adoption or placement, and who together assume responsibility for, inter alia, the care and maintenance of group members, the addition of new members through procreation or adoption, the socialisation of children and the social control of its members".

The Vatican has warned of the serious threat posed to the family by what it described as
 "the facile recognition of other forms of union with an equality of rights". This has been identified as an attack on the rights of marriage.

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Useful Link

[ For a clear understanding of the rationale of international policy on the family that is so destructive, see link below to a talk given by Canadian attorney, Gwen Landolt, at the World Congress of Families in Mexico City in March 2004. -Editor]

Click on the following link :

http://www.realwomenofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Brief-104-WCF-Mexico-City-2004.pdf