Catholic teaching accepts the natural truth that the family is the basic human society. On top of its natural dignity, the family has been raised by Jesus Christ -- by virtue of the Sacrament of Matrimony -- to the nature of a "Domestic Church".

The wider community of believers more commonly known as "the Church" is best understood in turn to be the "Family of God", a communion of persons with God as Father, we as children (through, with and in Jesus Christ His Son), and with a divinely appointed mother, Mary the mother of Jesus.

The following is the third of five web pages of our choice excerpts from the papal document Familiaris Consortio -- an apostolic exhortation on the role of the Family in the modern world, issued by Pope John Paul II in November 1981. Here, the Holy Father explains the prophetic role of the Domestic Church. We have used the official translation; boldfacing, highlighting, thematic subtitling, and hyperlinks have been added, however, to facilitate your personal study and reflection.

Faith as the Discovery and Admiring Awareness of God's Plan for the Family
Prophetic Role: Welcoming & Announcing The Word +
51.    As a sharer in the life and mission of the Church, which listens to the word of God with reverence and proclaims it confidently,¹ the Christian family fulfills its prophetic role by welcoming and announcing the word of God: it thus becomes more and more each day a believing and evangelizing community.
Welcoming the Word: The Obedience of Faith +
         Christian spouses and parents are required to offer "the obedience of faith".²  They are called upon to welcome the word of the Lord which reveals to them the marvelous news -- the Good News -- of their conjugal and family life sanctified and made a source of sanctity by Christ Himself. Only in faith can they discover and admire with joyful gratitude the dignity to which God has deigned to raise marriage and the family, making them a sign and meeting place of the loving covenant between God and man, between Jesus Christ and His bride, the Church.
Preparing for Marriage: A Journey of Faith +
         The very preparation for Christian marriage is itself a journey of faith. It is a special opportunity for the engaged to rediscover and deepen the faith received in Baptism and nourished by their Christian upbringing. In this way they come to recognize and freely accept their vocation to follow Christ and to serve the Kingdom of God in the married state.
Celebration of Marriage: Moment and Profession of Faith +
         The celebration of the sacrament of marriage is the basic moment of the faith of the couple. This sacrament, in essence, is the proclamation in the Church of the Good News concerning married love. It is the word of God that "reveals" and "fulfills" the wise and loving plan of God for the married couple, giving them a mysterious and real share in the very love with which God Himself loves humanity. Since the sacramental celebration of marriage is itself a proclamation of the word of God, it must also be a "profession of faith" within and with the Church, as a community of believers, on the part of all those who in different ways participate in its celebration.
Marriage: A Continuous Calling from God +
         This profession of faith demands that it be prolonged in the life of the married couple and of the family. God, who called the couple to marriage, continues to call them in marriage.³  In and through the events, problems, difficulties and circumstances of everyday life, God comes to them, revealing and presenting the concrete "demands" of their sharing in the love of Christ for His Church in the particular family, social and ecclesial situation in which they find themselves.
Family Life: A Permanent Education in the Faith +
         The discovery of and obedience to the plan of God on the part of the conjugal and family community must take place in "togetherness," through the human experience of love between husband and wife, between parents and children, lived in the Spirit of Christ. Thus the little domestic Church, like the greater Church, needs to be constantly and intensely evangelized: hence its duty regarding permanent education in the faith.

The Christian Family's Ministry of Evangelization
From Welcoming to Announcing the Word +
52.    To the extent in which the Christian family accepts the Gospel and matures in faith, it becomes an evangelizing community. Let us listen again to Paul VI: "The family, like the Church, ought to be a place where the Gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates. In a family which is conscious of this mission, all the members evangelize and are evangelized. The parents not only communicate the Gospel to their children, but from their children they can themselves receive the same Gospel as deeply lived by them. And such a family becomes the evangelizer of many other families, and of the neighborhood of which it forms part." ⁴
The Domestic Church & the Future of Evangelization +
         As the Synod repeated, taking up the appeal which I launched at Puebla, the future of evangelization depends in great part on the Church of the home.⁵  This apostolic mission of the family is rooted in Baptism and receives from the grace of the sacrament of marriage new strength to transmit the faith, to sanctify and transform our present society according to God's plan.
         Particularly today, the Christian family has a special vocation to witness to the paschal covenant of Christ by constantly radiating the joy of love and the certainty of the hope for which it must give an account: "The Christian family loudly proclaims both the present virtues of the Kingdom of God and the hope of a blessed life to come." ⁶ 
Absolute Need for Family Catechesis +
         The absolute need for family catechesis emerges with particular force in certain situations that the Church unfortunately experiences in some places: "In places where anti-religious legislation endeavors even to prevent education in the faith, and in places where widespread unbelief or invasive secularism makes real religious growth practically impossible, 'the Church of the home' remains the one place where children and young people can receive an authentic catechesis." ⁷

Ecclesial Service
An Original & Irreplaceable Ecclesial Ministry by Spouses +
53.    The ministry of evangelization carried out by Christian parents is original and irreplaceable. It assumes the characteristics typical of family life itself, which should be interwoven with love, simplicity, practicality and daily witness.⁸
Prepare Children for Their Calling & Mission +
         The family must educate the children for life in such a way that each one may fully perform his or her role according to the vocation received from God. Indeed, the family that is open to transcendent values, that serves its brothers and sisters with joy, that fulfills its duties with generous fidelity, and is aware of its daily sharing in the mystery of the glorious Cross of Christ, becomes the primary and most excellent seed-bed of vocations to a life of consecration to the Kingdom of God.
Parents' Evangelization of Adolescents +
         The parents' ministry of evangelization and catechesis ought to play a part in their children's lives also during adolescence and youth, when the children, as often happens, challenge or even reject the Christian faith received in earlier years. Just as in the Church the work of evangelization can never be separated from the sufferings of the apostle, so in the Christian family parents must face with courage and great interior serenity the difficulties that their ministry of evangelization sometimes encounters in their own children.
Married Couples' Collaboration with Diocese and Parish +
         It should not be forgotten that the service rendered by Christian spouses and parents to the Gospel is essentially an ecclesial service. It has its place within the context of the whole Church as an evangelized and evangelizing community. In so far as the ministry of evangelization and catechesis of the Church of the home is rooted in and derives from the one mission of the Church and is ordained to the upbuilding of the one Body of Christ,⁹  it must remain in intimate communion and collaborate responsibly with all the other evangelizing and catechetical activities present and at work in the ecclesial community at the diocesan and parochial levels.

To Preach the Gospel to the Whole Creation

54.    Evangelization, urged on within by irrepressible missionary zeal, is characterized by a universality without boundaries. It is the response to Christ's explicit and unequivocal command: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation".¹⁰
Wider Christian Witness of Married Couples +
         The Christian family's faith and evangelizing mission also possesses this catholic missionary inspiration. The sacrament of marriage takes up and reproposes the task of defending and spreading the faith, a task that has its roots in Baptism and Confirmation,¹¹ and makes Christian married couples and parents witnesses of Christ "to the end of the earth",¹² missionaries, in the true and proper sense, of love and life.
Missionary Activity Within One's Family +
         A form of missionary activity can be exercised even within the family. This happens when some member of the family does not have the faith or does not practice it with consistency. In such a case the other members must give him or her a living witness of their own faith in order to encourage and support him or her along the path towards full acceptance of Christ the Savior.¹³
Missionary Activity Beyond One's Family +
         Animated in its own inner life by missionary zeal, the Church of the home is also called to be a luminous sign of the presence of Christ and of His love for those who are "far away", for families who do not yet believe, and for those Christian families who no longer live in accordance with the faith that they once received. The Christian family is called to enlighten "by its example and its witness ... those who seek the truth".¹⁴
         Just as at the dawn of Christianity Aquila and Priscilla were presented as a missionary couple,¹⁵ so today the Church shows forth her perennial newness and fruitfulness by the presence of Christian couples and families who dedicate at least a part of their lives to working in missionary territories, proclaiming the Gospel and doing service to their fellowman in the love of Jesus Christ.
         Christian families offer a special contribution to the missionary cause of the Church by fostering missionary vocations among their sons and daughters¹⁶ and, more generally, "by training their children from childhood to recognize God's love for all people".¹⁷

Two more webpages on Familiaris Consortio follow ...

END NOTES
1. Vatican II, Dei Verbum, n. 1.
2. Romans 16:26.
3. Cf. Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, n. 25.
4. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 71.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Being itself an ecclesial community, the Christian family is the indispensable

                            precursor of Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs).
5. John Paul II, Address to the Third General Assembly of Latin American Bishops (28 Jan 1979), IVa.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This was echoed in the Fourth Synod of Manila held in October of the same year.
6. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, n. 35.
7. John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae, n. 68.
8. Cf. ibid., n. 36.
9. Cf. 1Corinthians 12:4-6; Ephesians 4:12-13.
10. Mark 16:15
11. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, n. 11.
12. Acts 1:8.
13. Cf. 1Peter 3:1-2.
14. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, n. 35; cf. Apostolican Actuositatem, n. 11.
15. Cf. Acts 18; Romans 16:3-4.
16. Vatican II, Ad Gentes, n. 39.
17. Vatican II, Apostolican Actuositatem, n. 30.