Our home: A flexible tabernacle

By Melanie Jean Juneau

A Happy Family by Eugenio Eduardo Zampighi

My husband and I discovered how to build relationships with our children and encourage their relationship to God  through a combination of the grace of God, parental intuition and perhaps a dash of sheer luck.

In order to nurture authentic Catholic family life, we learned that we had to first nurture our own intimacy with God. When parents are in communion with the Trinity (who are the first community), our children are also drawn into a spiritual relationship with their parents and in turn with God as well. A blessed home, dedicated to God, could actually be called a tabernacle because it is filled with a tangible Presence of God. 

When we give God permission to be Lord of our lives, our children and our family life, then the Holy Spirit is in the very air we breathe.

The image God gave me of Christian family was a triangle of light with strong bars of light flowing from the heart of the mother and father at the base  and up to God at the top of the pinnacle, with the children protected in the middle of the triangle. The light of God’s love filled the triangle protecting and nurturing the children. This is a vision of family as a community, submersed in the community of the Trinity.

Continue reading at Melanie's blog joy of nine9.