By Fr. Bob Hoffman

 

 

Perfect love between persons is found in the Holy Trinity: the love shared between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That love is modeled in family life with the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The Catholic Church has long recognized the importance of the family. And it has long recognized the significance of the Holy Family. Every Sunday after Christmas is the Feast of the Holy Family. 

 

It is also so important to me to be able to support families in any way that I can. When a priest selects his chalice, that choice also indicates what is important to him. My Sunday chalice is based on the Holy Family, with both images and symbols for each member of the Holy Family around the base.

 

The Church teaches that families are the foundation of our society. If families are struggling, then society will struggle. The best way to build up society is to build up the family.

 

The Church also teaches that the family is the “domestic church.” Parents have the primary responsibility for bringing their children up in the faith. Catholic parents are reminded of this when they have their child baptized. They can leverage the parish and the school to help them with this responsibility, but they are the “first heralds of the faith” for their children. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Thus the home is the first school of Christian life and ‘a school for human enrichment.’"

 

For these reasons, it is so important that the faith lessons that your children learn at our school are further built upon in the home.