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INTENTION : |
That parents and teachers may help the new generation to grow in upright conscience and life.
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The primary vocation and mission of parents and educators is to be living witnesses of faith, wisdom and responsible solidarity - a mission which is always joyful and difficult, that of forming and accompanying our children and students in their religious and spiritual, cognitive and intellectual, affective and social development.
Parents and educators are the first formators and living witness to Christian piety and the human and humanising warmth which every child and young person has a right to receive and then ought to pass on. For that, everything we say and do influences a child or young person who is beginning to define his way of living in the world with other people, in the culture and in the Church. Reflection and the ability to think are not only hidden in books and in texts to be studied; they are defined, first and above all, in the way in which we help others to think, to criticise constructively, to imagine and to dream. Finally the affection, love and respect with which we relate to one another at home and at school help to build ways of relating on a human scale, in their turn affection, love and respect towards other men and women.
As parents and educators we form a collaborative community to make of the younger generation a new humanity, restored and renewed. We wish to form a new humanity with faith and Christian piety, social sense, political commitment and responsibility, professional and academic excellence. Parents and educators ought to collaborate in the mission of forming with a sense of responsibility, excellence and piety.
With the Pope, let us pray this month that the Spirit of God may fill the hearts of parents and educators, our minds and our souls, to be and to do what God the Father taught Jesus and teaches all his sons and daughters: to love and to be living witnesses of the way of life of Jesus, who loves, serves and seeks new ways of proclaiming the Kingdom of his Father.
Fr. Jose Ignacio Baeza, SJ
Director of Pastoral Ministry and Formation,
College of St. Louis (Antofagasta, Chile)
PhD in Education, Univ. Complutense, Madrid.
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