As 270 bishops engage in dialogue on the pastoral care of the person and the family during the XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Catholics are reflecting on the family’s vocation.

“I think the vocation of the family is to be a small church. There is where the person finds Christ for the first time,” said Christian Rada, diocesan coordinator for marriage, family life and respect life education, which is part of the diocese’s Office of Faith Formation.

Rada, who has read the “Instrumentum Laboris” or working document that was released in preparation for this Synod, said now is a time to pause and think about the issues affecting families such as war, forced migration, the raising costs of starting a family and the culture seeing sexuality as separate from procreation.

“(The bishops) understand that there are so many problems that are attacking the family and that they can unite like a family to protect the institution of the family,” he said.

The bishops, Rada said, are seeing how to support the family as pastors.

“I think a way to strengthen families is with a family catechism. We need to start with education because sometimes we have a different idea of family than what the Church teaches,” Rada said. “We start with catechism, then programs and laws that help a family to be a family.”

This was a similar take to what one of the 17 auditor couples designated to share their experiences with the Synod Fathers, said during the first week of the Synod.

Andres and Clara Galindo, a Mexican couple married 45 years ago, mentioned how their experienced through the Catholic Marriage Encounter helped them to overcome hardships by teaching them how “to communicate, to forgive, but especially to discover God’s plan for us as a married couple and as a family.”

Andres and Clara, who are executive secretaries of the Episcopal Commission for the Family of the Episcopal Conference and Secretaries of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) for the Mexico-Central America Region, have two children and four grandchildren.

During their work serving the Church, the couple corroborated that, “The great problems that families go through are caused by social, cultural, political, educational, economic and religious factors.

“Married couples and families see themselves weakened and fragile,” they said. “Their strength needs to be bolstered through formation and teaching of identity and mission … It requires pastors enamored of God’s plan, to have a family pastoral ministry born.”

The need to strengthen families is at the very core of the Synod, which title is “The Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and Contemporary World.”

Quoting Pope Francis, Rada said, “Jesus didn’t come into a palace; he came into a family open to a mission of love. And that is what He wants the family to be: a mission of love where people could be part of and be called to find God.”

Rada, who along with his wife Helen, had joined the diocesan day-long pilgrimage to the World Meeting of Families on Sept. 23, reflected on one of the main talks of the day.

During his morning keynote address, Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, told attendees that “love to the end is possible.”

“Family is a wellspring of faith. Faith needs place to be gestated, transmitted, where it can grow, be lived experience,” said the cardinal, who is also participating in the Synod. “Family is the wellspring of love…. where we become a centered person and another becomes the center of my life.”

Rada said Cardinal Sarah’s talk about the teaching of the family in relation to the entire community caught his attention.

“We have to understand that we have to give love not only to your family but to everybody who comes in front of you because Christ is not just in this (particular) family but in others,” he said.

Rada also talked about Pope Francis’ off-the-cuff remarks during the Festival of the Families in Philadelphia. He particularly liked the answer the pope once gave to a child by saying that before God created the world, “God loved, because God is love.”