27 August.  Remote preparation, the family and role models. Preparation for anything important in life is necessary. The Church describes preparation for marriage in 3 phases. The first phase, remote preparation, happens in the home and family, mainly through modelling by parents and other married couples. “I want to be like aunty Rosanne and uncle Jim,” Doris told her friends at school. “I like the way he treats her like a lady. I wish my mom had someone to be like that for her.”  Paul kept quiet. Everyone in his house was always being told to shut up.  Mabel laughed as she shared, “My mom and dad celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary and we had a super party, but I wonder why mom cried.”  As in human families the young in animal families are taught and learn their way of life from the older generations.  Nature is ordered in this way.

Reflect, share, scripture: A Christian lifestyle, witnessed to by Christian families, is in itself a form of evangelization and the very foundation of remote preparation. It is in the family, the domestic church, that Christian parents are the first witnesses and educators of the children both in the growth of “faith, hope and charity”, and in each child discovering his or her own vocation. PCF Prep 28.