«If fathers live their faith coherently, God also acts in their children» - Interview with Fr. Guillermo Serra, LC on spirituality in the family.

A first piece of advice I would give is something very simple: Be open to God because many people get married in the Church and then forget that God is present in the marriage and He wants to give them many gifts. God is so wise that He gives those gifts through the husband and the wife, but you cannot take those gifts, but those gifts that you need for your marriage have to be given to you by your husband or your wife.

I like to talk about that table of gifts in marriage, when you get married, because there is also a spiritual table of gifts. That spiritual table has everything that God wants to give to the spouses and where you cannot come and take it, but it is your husband who has to take what is for you and give it to you; and you take what is for your husband and give it to him. That is why, I believe, it is so important to have communication, communion between the two of you, to have a spiritual center in the home where you can communicate with God and ask for those graces (those gifts); and many people forget that table of gifts and prefer to go to the one in the malls like Liverpool or Palacio de Hierro... It is much more important to take into account the spiritual table of gifts and use it because God wants to give you everything.

And how can we make the spirituality of one and the other compatible? Because maybe one likes to pray the rosary more and the other doesn't, one likes to go to Mass more and the other not so much. How can we live this together? And especially women - you have seen that we are a little more sensitive to spiritual matters - and men find it a little more difficult. How can we do with our husbands, not so that they come to all our spiritual activities, but at least to the basic ones?

I think we have to distinguish two things, first, man certainly has some qualities that are complementary to woman, and in spirituality this is also the case. The man is spiritual in a particular way and the woman in another and it is good that each one has his rhythm, his experience, but it is important to share those goods because they are goods, just as it is said that the man can be more rational and the woman more emotional, but they are not in contradiction, on the contrary, they complement each other, I believe that spirituality must have a complementary part. And it should also be noted that there are rational women and emotional men. Now, what are these spiritual practices? How to make them? How to decide what we do together? Well, it is something that both have to agree, I feel good if you accompany me, help me and we pray the rosary together..., a mystery of the rosary; then to agree, because I believe that it is important that both have that spiritual dimension worked, shared and valued, because if not the marriage is becoming smaller and smaller.

And how to share this spirituality with children, what do you recommend especially for mothers who have older children and want to lead them on the right path or lead them through a spiritual life, what do you recommend for them and for those who have younger children so that they can also live a spirituality?

With young children it is easy because they themselves, naturally, are open to God, to wonder, to stories, to Bible stories, they arrive at the first communion happy, hopefully well prepared and it is curious because that is when parents begin to start a new stage, which is where the child questions the father. The son asks you: Dad, why don't you go to communion? Dad, why don't you go to mass? And dad... and dad...? So it is a very nice confrontation, because spirituality is not my personal spirituality, my wife's or the family's, it is our son, our daughter, our children who begin to integrate and question us. That is a first stage, we would say, of crisis that is very beautiful because it can be a call to deepen our faith and to take it up again but with greater depth.

And the second part of your question, with teenage children, is the typical question of all mothers: Father, what do I do with my teenage son who does not want to go to Mass? Adolescence is the stage where they question everything and it is good that they question why it is good to go to Mass, why I have to go. Now, they have to be given the instruments, the tools to make that decision and to make it something coherent. And it is not easy, sometimes, to accompany an adolescent who questions everything; but deep down the question he has is about the God I have been taught. For the adolescent at that moment it is not relevant why he has to go to Mass. He has to discover that relevance and it is a task that only he can do, no matter how much you force him, he is not going to discover why God is relevant. “I go to Mass because my mom says so, but not because God is someone for me.” And that's when you have to give him space for him to question and also welcome that God who also wants him to question himself. God does not grab teenagers and force them in. No, on the contrary, what do you think of God? What experience do you have of God? What do you lack?

When I was 17 years old, I said: I will not go to mass again until I know what is happening at mass, and since that day I went back to mass everything has been different. Now I no longer go to mass, now I celebrate mass every day. So, God really acts, have faith, God acts. If the parents live their faith coherently, God also acts in the adolescent, in the whole family.

Father, could you tell us where we can find it on the internet and social networks? Especially because we are sure that more than one mom or dad will want to look it up for more information.

¿How to find me? In social networks, in almost all of them I am “Padre Guillermo Serra”. You can find me at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and also in TikTok, I will be waiting for you there as well.