Digital Continent Digital Continent Easter 2017 | Page 52

The sacrament of Matrimony, where one man and one woman come together with
Christ at their center for the purpose of creating and educating God’s precious children.
Christian spouses, in virtue of the sacrament of Matrimony, whereby they signify
and partake of the mystery of that unity and fruitful love which exists between
Christ and his Church (cf. Eph 5:32), help each other to attain to holiness in their
married life and in the rearing and education of their children. By reason of their
state and rank in life they have their own special gift among the people of God (cf.
1 Cor 7:7). From the wedlock of Christians there comes the family, in which new
citizens of human society are born, who by the grace of the Holy Spirit received in
baptism are made children of God, thus perpetuating the People of God through
the centuries (LG, n.11).
Dominic de Guzman understood how important the raising of children in the true faith was,
reports from the time period show that “it was the home teaching of mothers and grandmothers
which was really responsible for the continuance of the heresy. Converts of years’ standing
testified to that fact, and stated that they owed their knowledge of the teaching of the Albigensian
faith to the care of their parents.” 129 The Church today teaches that families are “the domestic
church” where the parents have the primary responsibility to raise their children in the faith
through word and deed (LG, n.11). Through the missionary efforts of Dominic and the Order of
129
Bede Jarrett, OP, Life of St. Dominic, (NY: Image Books, 1964), 40.