With similar expressions, we are not simply saying that this doctor does not belong to the species of horses, rather than we recognize that the human being of men is not obvious, but it is an achievement. Here, the faith touches precisely this level of life: it allows to humanize our lives and the lives of the world, because it addresses to a life of love.

Moreover, we all know to love how difficult is: even as Christians we believe that to love truly another person we need of nothing less than the aid of God. Who among us does not know how much effort takes to love the other in his truth and not just the image that we have of him. Or how difficult is to be loved in our truth without giving in to excessive demands that the other has on me!

The first thing that we discover is what the Church did until now for education in the faith is only one side of the coin of the entire work of education in the faith. What do you want to say? In our society, until very recent years, the ecclesial communities, in preparing their activities of education in the faith (Catechism, the way of the sacraments, liturgical celebrations) were able to give assurance on what might be called the familiar catechumenate and the social catechumenate.

The family environment and, more generally, the social environment contributed -at least until the eighties of last century- to inject into the hearts of the children a sense of trust in the word of the Church, which was a first, but precious seed for the more explicit work which was then made in the hours of the catechism and participation in liturgical life.

The multiple changes, as we currently have in the families and society, and especially in the concept of being an adult, have established a new model of education to the human, to the life, that fewer and fewer reports to the traditional Western wisdom, with which Christianity since the fourth century AD, had managed to get in tune.

The watchwords of our time are no longer those of eternity, truth, sacrifice, obedience to the bond of the law, of the nature as an unchangeable framework of existence, all words "baptized" by Christianity. Today the words are those of the corporeity, of the moment, the democracy, the emotion, the technique, the experiment, the possibility, words with which the Christian faith have to try new alliances.

And then there are new phenomena, the "Rerum Novarum" of our time: the lengthening of the average, setting a broader time to be young, the political, cultural, sexual and women's economic empowerment, the redefining labor, economic globalization, the overwhelming input of new media, the blending of cultures and religions. Hence the dismantling of a unit of culture and a culture of unity and the imposing of a pluralism of fascinating but also disturbing thought.

If so in the past - thanks to a shared cultural horizon - to do the work of education in the faith they were at least three: family, society and the ecclesial community, now that triangle does not hold anymore. There are new dynamics that govern the humans and which carry a new meaning and feeling for life. Not by accident that the Italian bishops, in the document Education to the good life of the Gospel, said about the "cold current" that is experiencing the classic places of education: the family and school.

 Of course, the actual parents are not, usually, against the attendance of their children to the experience of the Church (the parents lead them to the Catechism, send them to church, sometimes to the summer camps too): the education is not through the instructions that one gives to an other, but through the eyes: we are what we've seen. Small people, in fact, look surprised not adults but what adults is watching. The adolescence means, literally, "time to grow up", staring what adults are staring.

Well, what kind of religiosity the adults, from thirty years, show to the small people? In their lives is dramatically narrowed the space for the meditation on the word of God, the frequency of liturgical celebrations, the speeches of the faith, and especially to the prayer. If the children do not see praying the parents and significant adults, with whom they come into contact -to pray is an easy way to "look" to God- it is unlikely to nurture the idea that the faith in the prayer is the more elementary expression, it is an important thing for their future life. Without the prayers of parents, it is difficult to find the faith of their children.

A good reason, therefore, the bishops are claiming a renewed attention to the ecclesial community in comparison with the adults. The adults who believe and who pray are the first and most effective witness of the faith that makes it more human and therefore more good (ie to love) the life.