MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the Department of Family Life of the Eparchy of Saint Josaphat is to aid the faithful to encounter the Living Christ through the enrichment of family life: prayer, religious education in the family and the family as the domestic Church.
In conjunction with the Bishop of Saint Josaphat, the department will foster the evangelization, faith formation and public witness of the laity leading to a deeper commitment to Christ and His Church in spreading the Gospel of Life.
The Holy Mystery of Marriage
God created human beings male and female: “By you, O God, a woman is joined to man as a helpmate and for the continuance of the human race… you blessed them, saying: ‘increase and multiply and rule the earth. ‘Through wedlock you made the two of them one body.” In the Church, the marriage union is a Holy Mystery in which the man and woman manifest the new life in Christ. A Christian marriage is not only a natural relationship, a shared life and experience; it is an occasion of sanctification. Marriage is a Holy Mystery (Sacrament) in which by the grace of the Holy Spirit a man and a woman are united into one body and create a domestic church. The family union created by marriage is a community of the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity.
~From the Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
FAMILY PRAYER
The Place of Family Prayer – the Domestic Church (from the Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church)
A Christian family’s home is the place where members of the family share with God and among themselves the intimacy of love. The family is a community of love, which St. Paul often calls the domestic church (see Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:19; Col 4:15). In this community, the husband and wife, the parents and children, liturgize: they render worship to God by serving one another. It is in the home that a person obtains his or her principal spiritual inheritance: knowledge of God, and respect for parents, the family hearth, the Church, and the earthly homeland.
