Where one's own treasure is, there is love, dedication and the best sacrifices. For this reason we must value highly the particular call that each one of us has received, and the people with whom we live, who are the immediate beneficiaries of this treasure of ours, because it is difficult to love what we consider of little value. And the Lord would not want a charity that did not care first of all for those whom He has placed - by blood ties or by a supernatural bond - in our care, because it would not be orderly and true.
The family is the most important part of society, where God has his firmest support. And, perhaps, the most attacked from all fronts: tax systems that ignore the value of the family, certain educational policies, materialism and hedonism that try to promote an anti-natalist family conception, a false sense of freedom and independence, social programs that do not favor mothers being able to dedicate the necessary time to their children.... In many places, such elementary principles as the right of parents to educate their children have been forgotten by many citizens who, faced with the power of the State, end up becoming accustomed to its excessive interventionism, renouncing the duty to exercise a right that cannot be waived. At times, and due in part to these inhibitions, types of teaching oriented by a materialistic vision of man are imposed: pedagogical and didactic lines, texts, schemes, programs and school material that intentionally ignore the spiritual nature of the human soul.
Parents must be aware that no earthly power can exempt them from this responsibility, which has been given to them by God in relation to their children. And we have all received from the Lord, in different ways, the care of others: the priest, the souls entrusted to his care; the teacher, his pupils; and so many others upon whom a task of spiritual formation has fallen. No one will answer for us before God when he asks us the question: Where are those I gave you? May each one of us be able to answer: I have not lost any of those you gave me, because we knew how, Lord, with your grace, to provide ordinary and extraordinary means so that none of them would go astray.
We should all be able to say with regard to those entrusted to our care: Cor meum vigilat: My heart is vigilant. This is the inscription in front of one of the many images of Our Lady in the city of Rome. The Lord wants us to be vigilant before everyone, but first of all before our own, before those He has entrusted to us.
God asks for an attentive love, a love capable of perceiving that perhaps one is neglecting his duties towards God, and then one helps him with affection; or that he is sad and isolated from others, and one pays more attention to him; or one makes it easier for another to approach the confessional, with affection, kindly, insisting when it is opportune? A vigilant heart to perceive if in the family environment we are introducing ways of proceeding that are not in keeping with a Christian home, if on television we watch unselected programs or too often, if there is little talk about common themes, if there is a lack of industriousness or concern for others.... And without anger, giving example, with prayer, with more details of affection, asking St. Joseph to live the strength and constancy, full of charity and human affection. And if one falls ill, everyone goes out of their way, because we have learned that the sick are God's favorites, and at that moment the person who suffers is the treasure of the house, and we help him to offer his illness, to say a prayer, and we try to make him suffer as little as possible, because affection takes away the pain or alleviates it; at least, it is a different kind of pain.