The family is the first faith community where, for all its limitations and incompleteness, the young person experiences God’s love and begins to discern a vocation. The last two Synods and the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia which came out of them, repeatedly emphasized that the task of the family, as a domestic Church, is to live the joy of the Gospel in daily life and to bring all its members to do so, according to their circumstances, remaining open to the dimension of vocation and mission. Yet families do not always teach their children to consider the future through the lens of vocation. Sometimes the desire for social prestige and personal success, the ambition of parents or a tendency to determine the choices of their children leave little room for discernment and condition the decisions that are made. The Synod recognizes the need to help families arrive at a clearer understanding of life as a vocation. The Gospel account of the adolescent Jesus (cf. Lk 2:41-52), subject to his parents but able to detach himself from them so as to concern himself with his Father’s affairs, can shed valuable light on how to interpret family relationships from a Gospel perspective. Called to freedom
TheoFonsAt the sources of the faith