One of the biggest attacks in this modern secular culture in which we live is the attack on the traditional family. It seems as if the family through a variety of avenues is always under attack. As the culture becomes more hostile to Christianity as whole, and particularly, Catholicism, I can only see more attacks descending from many sides looking to destroy the beauty and sacredness of the traditional family made up of man and woman.

I don’t have to tell you all – you know it and can see it all around us! Even within the Catholic Church itself you have people who claim to be Catholic, but have bought into the lies that have been sold to us about the traditional family. If Abortion wasn’t a big enough issue, we are now enduring the “every day, I’m alright, you’re alright” of same-sex attraction and gender reassignment. At some point, all of this is going to implode on itself.

For today’s blog post, I give you 7 quotes from Mother Teresa on Family Life. This is the second of five blog posts that will I write over the next few days. As you read these quotes, reflect upon them and try to implement them in your own family life.

1. “To parents: It is very important that children learn from their fathers and mothers how to love one another – not in the school, not from the teacher, but from you. It is very important that you share with your children the joy of that smile. There will be misunderstandings; every family has its cross, its suffering. Always be the first to forgive with a smile. Be cheerful, be happy.”

2. “Bring prayer back into your family life, and you too will see that unity, the bond of joyful love that will bind you together. Maybe there is poverty and suffering in your families. But sharing together, loving together will help you.”

“3. Motherhood is the gift of God to women. How grateful we must be to God for this wonderful gift that brings such joy to the whole world, women and men alike! Yet we can destroy the gift of motherhood, especially by the evil of abortion, but also by thinking that other things like jobs or positions are more important than loving, than giving oneself to others. No job, no plans, no possessions, no idea of ‘freedom’ can take the place of love.”

4. “Why did God make some of us men and others women? Because a women’s love is one image of the love of God, and a man’s love is another image of God’s love. Both are created to love, but each in a different way. Woman and man complete each other, and together show forth God’s love more fully than either can do it alone.”

5. “Everybody today seems to be in a terrible rush, anxious for greater development and greater riches, so that children have little time for their parents. And parents have little time for their children and for each other. So the breakdown of peace in the world begins at home.”

These last two quotes from Mother Teresa I would consider prophetic. I think she saw what was coming during her lifetime, and now it’s coming to fruition today. The bold is mine.

6. “If a mother can kill her own child, how long will it be before we start to kill one another? We should not be surprised when we hear about murders, deaths, wars, and hate in the world today. Don’t ever allow even one child, born or unborn, to be unwanted. Let us go with Our Lady to search out that child and take him or her home.”

7. God told us, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ So first I am to love myself rightly, and then to love my neighbor like that. But how can I love myself unless I accept myself as God has made me? Those who deny the beautiful differences between men and women are not accepting themselves as God has made them, and so cannot love the neighbor. They will only bring division, unhappiness, and destruction of peace to the world.”

To read other blog posts that I have done on the family, in the search box at the top of this blog, type in family, and you should see my eight posts. Many of them focus on the theology and words of Pope St. John Paul II.

Today, continue to pray for the thousands of pilgrims that are beginning to descend upon the Eternal City for the Canonization of Mother Teresa this coming Sunday, September 4.

Pray for the traditional family – that we who believe in its beauty will have the strength to combat those forces who seek to destroy it.

Pray for all families today that might be struggling and enduring great emotional pain.

St. Teresa of Calcutta…Pray for Us.