 I'm Petroch Willie. I'm Professor of Catechetics here at Franciscan University. The world meeting of families with the Holy Father is just a wonderful occasion for us to be able to engage in real supportive prayer for what's about to take place. It's going to be focused on the identity and the mission of families, really what they're all about. And when Saint John Paul wrote earlier about this, he said that right at the centre of our pastoral strategy to support families should be the place of Catechetics, that way of teaching the faith. Now that sounds unusual. It sounds as though that might be one of the lesser of the pastoral tasks we've got, but in fact he placed it right at the centre. In fact, when he was speaking to bishops he said that if Catechetics is done well everything becomes easier to do. Now that's an interesting statement. And what he meant by that was, first of all the doctrine delineates the shape of family life. It helps families to really know their identity, to know who they are. So if we're sure about that it helps us to live our mission securely and well. And so one of the main ways in which the Church and her pastoral work can support the family is by really explaining to the family who we are as men and women and children together and the mission that we've got. And this is a marvellous opportunity with all these families coming together with the Holy Father in order to have that identity reaffirmed and their mission reignited. So that idea of making everything easier. Catechesis isn't just one task among many. It's not like an extra burden the Church has. It's the way in which every single boat can lift. And this is because she not only sees parents as being the recipients of a Catechesis but she wants to form them. She wants to actually help parents join her in mission. Every single Catholic parent, every single Catholic family, imagine the mission opportunities once the Church manages to engage us as families in that role. And so the Church has said families, parents are irreplaceable for this Catechesis. And of course the trouble is most parents feel woefully inadequate. Most of us feel as though we haven't had the formation we need. We're not quite sure what we need to get. And so this is where the Church steps in to give us courage, to give us hope and practically to give us what we want. She defines the task of parents in two ways in relation to their children. Parents need to be formed as the first heralds of the faith. Now a herald is somebody who announces, who proclaims the good news. And so parents are in the best position to be these heralds precisely because there is a community of love. There is family life into which that proclamation can be made and that can't be said of any other environment. No other environment has a natural space in which that simple annunciation, that simple proclamation of the good news can just be made with such ease, such casualness, with repetition, with confidence and one can see how it's picked up in the daily life of the children. And so parents really are in the best place to be the first heralds of the faith, which is the good news Pope Francis said. Jesus loves us, Jesus is with us, Jesus saves us, he never leaves us. It's very very simple, it's not a difficult proclamation to make, but parents can be confident that their role is above all to give that to their children. And then secondly, the church says that parents are the first teachers of the faith. Now that sounds even more onerous, but teachers of the faith, again the church says they are irreplaceable in this role. And that's because they know their children well, they know when they can teach certain elements. And so she doesn't want to delegate that particular role, especially with regard to the faith and with regard to the virtues and the moral life. She really wants parents to hold on to the sense and have the confidence to know they do know their children best. And because they want the best for their children, they will be the most motivated to give them the best they have, which is the teaching of the church, the saving doctrine of the church. And so the motivation for all of this from the point of view of the church, it may be the parents who are giving, but the motivation comes from the children themselves, from the parents' love for their children. The French poet Pégui pictured this. He said that a little child is a little bit like the virtue of hope who leads her two sisters faith and love. And virtue of hope is in France because it's even in a natural way we hope to give our children what is best for them. We hope for their future. We look forward to all the good they could have and we want them to have that securely. And so hope is like this little child going out and the child leads the parents in that sense. And so when the church addresses the parents, she does so knowing that she can do so in terms of that relationship with the children. So let's pray for this meeting of world families with the Holy Father. Let's really pray for him, for his message to be as clear, sonorous and lasting as we all ourselves hope and can be secure and know that it will be.