Vatican City, Feb 13, 2012 / 12:32 pm
Christian families should be a happy and loving environment in which young people can discern calls to the priesthood or religious life, Pope Benedict XVI says in his message for the World Day of Prayers for Vocations.
“Families are not only the privileged place for human and Christian formation; they can also be ‘the primary and most excellent seed-bed of vocations to a life of consecration to the Kingdom of God,’ by helping their members to see, precisely within the family, the beauty and the importance of the priesthood and the consecrated life,” the Pope said on Feb. 13.
The 49th World Day of Prayer for Vocations will be celebrated on April 29 with the theme, “Vocations, the Gift of the Love of God.” The Pope’s message, which was released Feb. 13, comes at a time when vocations to the priesthood in most Western countries are on the rise.
In order for that to continue, says the Pope, the Church must “create the conditions that will permit many young people to say ‘yes’ in generous response to God’s loving call.”
This quest, he suggests, finds an “eloquent and particular realization in Christian families” whose love “is an expression of the love of Christ.” In families which are “a community of life and love,” the Pope says, young people are best able to experience the kind of “self-giving love” that Christ showed everyone.
Therefore, priests and parishes should work hard to foster such “homes and schools of communion,” modeled “on the Holy Family of Nazareth, the harmonious reflection on earth of the life of the Most Holy Trinity.”