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Javier Escrivá Ivars
University of Valencia

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The family is an intimate community of persons. In the family, people communicate in the greatest intimacy possible for human nature. Husband and wife give themselves to each other, entrust their male and female body and soul to each other to form an intimate union of love and life. Parents and children are part of each other, as they share the same blood, some passing life on while others receive it. The family is made up of the people closest to me. There is no association that could be deeper or more natural.

In matrimony and in the family a complex of interpersonal relationships is set up - married life, fatherhood and motherhood, filiation and fraternity - through which each human person is introduced into the "human family" and into the "family of God," which is the Church.
Christian marriage and the Christian family build up the Church: for in the family the human person is not only brought into being and progressively introduced by means of education into the human community, but by means of the rebirth of baptism and education in the faith the child is also introduced into God's family, which is the Church.

John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 22 November 1981, no. 15.

Commentary

The family is the school and testimony of humanity. It is the school of faith, of evangelization and of prayer.

The family is the school of human education, the guarantee that the younger generation will grow up with human qualities and virtues.

The family is the irreplaceable, natural school in which children prepare for marriage and for forming their own future family. It is the place where people learn personal and social virtues, a place of encounter and dialogue between generations.

The family is our first experience of life in a community. The family is the basis for that feeling of solidarity between all the members of a society. The family is a school of solidarity.