Advice for Successful Families
Some extracts from a new book that can help parents raise their children in a Catholic environment.
A common question amongst parents is how to successfully (i.e., supernaturally) raise a family, especially in our own day and age. In answer, Fr. Alain Delagneau has written Advice for Successful Families, which was recently published by Angelus Press.
To get a sense of what valuable advice this book has to offer to mothers and fathers, some extracts have been published at AP blog, of which we offer a few here.
Extracts from Advice for Succesful Families
In founding His Church, Christ took into account the distinguishing social aspect of man. That is why He instituted two sacraments of a social character: matrimony and the priesthood. We do not receive these sacraments firstly for ourselves, but for the good of society.
The sacrament of marriage is ordained to the propagation of the Mystical Body of Christ, to the increasing of the number of the adorers of the Blessed Trinity. The family is the basic unit of Christian society, which has for its mission co-operation in the formation of the Catholic city of heaven.
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For more than forty years, all the forces of evil have combined to corrupt and destroy Christian society from beginning to end. In order to do so, they have attacked the priesthood and the Christian family...
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What can be done? What can be proposed to rectify this situation? We must form saintly priests and saintly families!
This booklet has no other ambition than to explain some fundamental principles to help you to succeed in the context that is ours. It is a strict duty which each home must make its own: to form a family that is united and virtuous, bringing forth good fruit before God and man. A successful Christian family is one from which the good God can draw forth holy vocations. It is essential often to have this thought in mind, and this from the most tender years until the maturity of the souls entrusted to you.
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Among Christians, one marries to become a saint. To do so, it is necessary to enter into the plan of God. What a sublime ideal, but how demanding for the husband! He must unceasingly pursue the natural and supernatural good of his spouse, and that to the point of sacrificing himself, that is to say, his selfishness, his own spirit, and his own will. He has received graces in order to mold himself after Christ in His love for the Church. Christ gives the example, teaching, organizing, consulting, sustaining, and saving His Church.
As for the wife, she also has a marvelous vocation. She is the partner of her husband. God has instilled in her an influence of soul so powerful over the heart of a man in order to help him to realize his calling to be conformed to Christ, as well as the submission to realize together the common work of the sanctification of the children and familial harmony.
