“Try to put in the hearts of your children a love for home. Make them long to be with their families. So much sin could be avoided if our people really loved their homes.”

I think the world today is upside down. Everybody seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater development and greater riches and so on. There is much suffering because there is so very little love in homes and in family life. We have no time for our children, we have no time for each other; there is no time to enjoy each other. In the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world. – Mother Teresa: (1910 – 1997: Catholic nun who served the poor in Kolkata)

Scripture Text: (SIR 3:2-6, 12-14)

God sets a father in honor over his children;

a mother’s authority he confirms over her sons.

Whoever honors his father atones for sins,

and preserves himself from them.

When he prays, he is heard;

he stores up riches who reveres his mother.

Whoever honors his father is gladdened by children,

and, when he prays, is heard.

Whoever reveres his father will live a long life;

he who obeys his father brings comfort to his mother.

My son, take care of your father when he is old;

grieve him not as long as he lives.

Even if his mind fail, be considerate of him;

revile him not all the days of his life;

kindness to a father will not be forgotten,

firmly planted against the debt of your sins

—a house raised in justice to you.

The home is a treasure if it is based upon our heavenly Father’s home: if prayer is at its center. The home is “the domestic church,” “the school of discipleship,” where to live in peace, a person has to learn how to be humble and how to serve the needs of others. As you offer up your own sacrifices with Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, make it your prayer that you might imitate Him in your daily life: to know the needs of others with the Wisdom of God, and to serve the needs of others with the Love of God.