Peace depends on family - COLF

By DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
Ottawa

World peace is not an illusion or utopian vision, but a mission entrusted to families who live out the Gospel and pass the peace of God on to their children.

That’s the central message in this year’s annual message from the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF).

“The heart of each child and of each parent is the privileged centre where the seed of universal peace can take root and grow in family life, parish life, the country and the world,” says the COLF message, released Sept. 7.

Entitled World Peace: A Family Recipe, the illustrated six-page leaflet stresses the importance of individual hearts bound to God’s will, supernaturally empowered to follow Christ through participation in the sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation.

“These are the sacraments of everyday life, the source of a supernatural strength that gives us the ability to love the way Christ did,” the leaflet says.

“In these sacraments, we are freely offered the strength and the grace that allow us to love more fully, to be in tune with God’s loving plan and to live in greater communion with God and others in order to build peace and achieve lasting happiness.”

The leaflet explains how the mystery of the Eucharist is “about the living presence of Christ in our midst.”

The leaflet points out that even the smallest actions have an impact on future generations.

COLF exhorts families to build habits of forgiveness, reconciliation and tolerance.

While chiefly focusing on the Eucharist, the leaflet also provides other practical suggestions on how families might successfully live out their mission.

COLF does not ignore the problems that families face.

“Some relationships may seem irretrievably broken, and some situations may seem impossible to fix,” COLF says. “In such cases it is best to commend them to God, trusting that his healing grace may work through someone other than us, even in a different time and place.”

COLF’s message for this year and previous years can be downloaded from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (CCCB) website www.cccb.ca.

COLF is a joint outreach of the CCCB and the Knights of Columbus supreme council.

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