Family synod: Archbishop of Glasgow leads morning prayer

The Church must meet the sadness of fractured families with words of love in order to heal division and give children peace of heart, said Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow in his prayer to open today’s session of the synod on the family at the Vatican.

According to Vatican Radio he said that “when husband and wife are happy together and are blessed with children, then love expands from two to three and four and five.. And when those things happen, we are privileged to behold the beauty and simplicity and strength of married love and of family love, a love which truly through the grace of Christ endures all things”.

He added: “When families fracture, love is the first casualty. Children’s peace of heart is shattered and they find themselves both loving and hating their parents at the same time.

“Into this sadness, the Church has to find a way to speak St Paul’s words of love, which compassionately excuse and forgive, but which also heal and renew and lift up again; where forgiveness is not accommodation or indifference but genuine and sometimes hard-won reconciliation, engendering new trust, new hope, new endurance, and new faithfulness, a new page in the story of love of husband and wife and their children”.