The Evangelizing Family

Family Matters: Catholic Living

A family fully alive is a family that shows insight into who God is. A family that does this is an evangelizing family. When someone can look at a family and see love, they can see God.

“The joy of love experienced by families is also the joy of the Church,” as Pope Francis wrote in Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love).

Living the everyday moments of our lives with faith, hope and love is the most effective way to share our faith within the family and then with others.

“It is essential that children actually see that, for their parents, prayer is something truly important. Hence moments of family prayer and acts of devotion can be more powerful for evangelization than any catechism class or sermon,” the Pope wrote in the same document.

This witness is what is needed in order to reach our families, friends and neighbors in an honest and humble way.

As Pope Francis also states in Amoris Laetitia: “The triune God is a communion of love, and the family is its living reflection. St. John Paul II shed light on this when he said, ‘Our God, in his deepest mystery, is not solitude, but a family, for he has within himself fatherhood, sonship and the essence of a family, which is love. That love, in the divine family, is the Holy Spirit.’ The family is thus related to God’s very being.”

What do families do to grow together in their faith?

How are families evangelizing each other and the world?

These are the questions of today. 

The annual “Catholic Families Student Contest,” sponsored by the Diocese of Kalamazoo, Michigan, now in its third year, is open to students from anywhere in the United States. Students in middle and high school are invited to use the arts to answer these questions by using this year’s theme: “The Evangelizing Family.”

Students are asked to write a poem or an essay, or do a painting or a drawing, or even compose a song or create a video on the theme.

For complete contest rules, visit DIOKZOO.org/student-art-contest.

Top winners in each category and division will receive awards made possible by the Knights of Columbus.

Winners will be announced before the end of the school year.

As Pope Francis also said in Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), “Jesus wants evangelizers who proclaim the Good News not only with words, but, above all, by a life transfigured by God’s presence.”

Socorro Truchan is the associate director of the

Secretariat for Parish Life and Lay Leadership (Domestic Church)

for the Diocese of Kalamazoo, Michigan.