PASTORAL LETTER
Most Rev. Dr Philip Boyce O.C.D., Bishop of Raphoe
October, 2002
PRAYER
AND THE FAMILY
My
dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Many of you will remember the Pope’s visit to Ireland in 1979.
Do you remember, however, anything he said on that occasion?
At Limerick, before leaving our country, he spoke these words:
“Your homes should always remain
homes of prayer”. And he expressed the wish “that
every home in Ireland may remain, or may begin again to be, a home of daily
family prayer. That you would
promise me to do this, would be the greatest gift you could give me.”
Twenty three
years on from that day, we can ask ourselves:
How many families have granted Pope John Paul II his wish?
How many homes have given him the gift he asked for?
Family life
today is under severe pressure. The
very concept of family as a stable community founded on marriage between a man
and a woman is being attacked. Even
good families fear what awaits their children when they leave home and enter the
modern world.
Yet, when
family life breaks down and loses its traditional identity, many serious
problems arise in society. For, as our Catechism tells us:
“The family is the community in
which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honour God and make
good use of freedom. Family life is
an initiation into society” (CCC, No. 2207).
Therefore, if
this original cell of social life is unsound, there follow many problems for the
community at large, such as, loneliness, immorality, crime and the abuse of
drugs. If a remedy is to be found
for the problems that assail the Church and society, then the family unit has to
be protected and faith values have to be respected once again.
The present
Pope tells us: “Family Prayer has
its own characteristic qualities. It
is prayer offered in common, husband and wife together, parents and children
together”. (Familiaris Consortio, No. 59).
Many moments of
family life call for a prayer said together.
They are ones both of joy and celebration as well as of sorrow and
anxiety. In fact, hard times draw
us more forcefully to prayer. When
examination time or the days of their results approach there are more votive
candles alight before the statues of the Sacred Heart or the Little Flower than
at any other week. Serious illness
in the family also forces us onto our knees.
And when death strikes, we turn spontaneously in prayer to the only
Person who is always there and never lets us down.
But prayer becomes important also at times of rejoicing and celebration,
when we look to the future with hope and to the past with gratitude. Such are family days like baptisms, weddings, birthdays and
anniversaries. Prayer accompanies
family life always. If it is
missing, a vital and integral aspect is wanting.
Indeed, “the dignity and responsibility of the Christian family as the domestic
Church can be achieved only with God’s unceasing aid, which will surely be
granted if it is humbly and trustingly petitioned in prayer”. (Ibid.) We have our Lord’s own promise about the power of prayer
that is said in common, as is family prayer:
“If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done
for them by my Father in heaven. For
where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I among them” (Mt.
18:19-20).
Learning
to pray
Parents are the
first educators of their children. Through
the Sacrament of Marriage they receive the grace to teach their children how to
pray. It was at our mother’s
knees that nearly all of us learned to say our prayers.
Young children follow the good example of their parents without question.
They have no difficulty in accepting the truths, even the mysteries of
faith. They learn by heart and
remember for life the first prayers of their childhood years.
As the years go by they begin to understand better what they learned from
their mother at prayer. And no
matter what age they live to, they will still make their own their first prayers
that come so easily to their lips: “Hail
Mary, full of grace...”, or...”Infant
Jesus, meek and mild, look on me a little child. Pity mine and pity me, suffer
me to come to Thee. Heart of Jesus, I adore thee, Heart of Mary, I implore Thee,
Heart of Joseph, pure and just, in these three hearts I put my trust.”
Or in moments
of danger, or when setting out on a journey by car or plane, they will turn
spontaneously to an invisible and protecting friend:
“Angel of God my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here.
Ever this day be at my side, to light, to guard, to rule and guide”.
Pope Paul VI
once asked his audience: “Mothers,
do you teach your children the Christian prayers? Do you prepare them, in conjunction with the priests [and
school teachers] for the sacraments that they receive when they are young ?
Confession, Communion and Confirmation?
Do you say the family Rosary together?
And you, fathers, do you pray with your children...your example of
honesty in thought and action, joined to some common prayer is a lesson for
life, an act of worship of singular value.
In this way you bring peace to your homes” (11/8/1976).
The
Angelus, the Rosary and other prayers
From what a child experiences at home, it learns to have its own daily
prayers. These private prayers keep
it in contact with God, in its own personal manner.
They are an expression of faith and of a personal relation with the
unseen God.
Other prayers
are said as a family. It is
important to form the habit, when children are still small, of saying some
prayers together at stated times. To
say grace before meals does not let the food get cold, but it does help to keep
our heart from getting cold or indifferent.
Grace after meals (with the volume of the radio turned down or the TV
switched to mute) reminds us that everything we eat is a gift from God for which
we say a word of thanks. The
Angelus bell from the local church or on our national media calls us to a moment
of prayer, as we meditate on the key moments of salvation - God becoming man,
his passion and death, the glory of his resurrection.
The Rosary
itself was traditionally the family prayer that united our Irish homes, keeping
them in touch with their God and with His Blessed Mother.
It also kept the members of a family united among themselves, according
to the well-known slogan of Fr. Peyton: “The family that prays together, stays together.”
“The
Rosary (as Cardinal Newman once said)
gives us the great truths of Christ’s life and death to meditate upon, and
brings them nearer to our hearts...Its special virtue lies in the way in which
it looks at these mysteries, for with all our thoughts of Him are mingled
thoughts of His Mother, and in the relations between Mother and Son we have
set before us the Holy Family, the home in which God lived” (Sayings p.45).
‘No place
like home’ is a true saying. We
could add: No place like a happy, prayerful home, where the Lord Jesus
is no stranger; where the image of the Sacred Heart is enthroned with a votive
light burning before it; where prayer and the family rosary form a normal part
of the daily round.
The Holy Family
of Nazareth is a model for all Christian families.
Or as Pope John Paul II said in his Letter to Families in 1994:
“The Holy Family is the
beginning of countless other holy families” (No. 23).
Nevertheless,
no matter how good and prayerful the family home is, young adolescents are free
and there is no absolute guarantee that they will remain on the right track.
Parents nowadays worry about their teenage children who begin to leave
the home and enter into a society that is awash with alcohol, where drugs are
regarded as recreational and pushed on unsuspecting youth, and where sexual
misconduct is no longer regarded as sinful and a grave offence against God.
However, the
best preparation for facing this world is the example and training they get in
the home during the earlier years before they enter their teens; the happy,
united family atmosphere where prayer is taken for granted, where the little
ones are taught to love and fear the Lord, and where they are told in time of
what is good but also of what is sinful and dangerous in a world that to
inexperienced eyes seems full of brightness, opportunity and promise.
Then
they will have a defence mechanism
within their hearts. They will have
a voice speaking in their conscience: ‘Do
this, avoid that’, a voice that will ever be nearer to them than the loud and
enticing voices of this world. This
and the power of prayer may well save them.
As the Book of Proverbs says: “Train
a child in the right way, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (22,6).
At their
unforgettable experience with the Holy Father (for World Youth Day) in Toronto,
Pope John Paul II told the young people of the world (among them 1000 or more
from Ireland - including a few dozens from Raphoe) that Jesus would teach them
to pray as He taught the Apostles and that prayer would be the salt that gives a
Christian flavour to their lives and the courage of heart to be loyal to Him and
bear witness to the Gospel. Our
young people will not forget what they experienced in their youth.
“Come, and tell the world of the
happiness you have found in meeting Jesus Christ, of your desire to know Him
better, of how you are committed to proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to the
ends of the earth!” (Message of the Holy Father to the Youth of the World on the occasion of
the 17th WYD, July 25,2001).
Say
the Rosary every day
I conclude with
an experience I had five weeks ago. I
led our Diocesan Pilgrimage to Fatima and we visited Coimbra and the Discalced
Carmelite Convent of nuns where Sr. Lucy, the last of the visionaries of Fatima
still lives. After Mass in their chapel, I had the privilege of speaking
with the entire community in the parlour - and Sr. Lucy herself was with them.
Before I left I said to her: ‘When I return to the pilgrims and tell
them I saw Sr. Lucy, they will surely ask: ‘What did she say? Did she give us
a message?’ Sr. Lucy simply
answered: “Tell them what Our Lady
said, namely, that they should say the Rosary every day”.
I pray that our
families may once more discover the value of
payer in the home and that the family Rosary become part of life, bringing down
grace upon all in our Irish homes. Now
is an appropriate time to start praying with greater fidelity.
It is the month of the Rosary. By
praying, we can make a difference.
Prayer
is our greatest power to change. May
prayer in the family protect our youth, keep us loyal to our Christian faith and
win the grace of a vocation for many families.
Let us not forget the Pope’s wish “that
every home in Ireland may remain, or may begin again to be, a home of daily
family prayer.”
X Philip Boyce, O.C.D.
Bishop of Raphoe