Many news media reported that the World Synod of Bishops on the Family began Monday morning, but they were wrong. Those reporters don’t understand the centrality of the eucharistic liturgy in Catholic Christianity. The Synod began Sunday morning with the opening Mass presided over by Pope Francis, and his homily tells us the direction in which this Synod is headed.

Francis used the biblical readings read yesterday in every Catholic Church throughout the world as the assigned readings for this Sunday in the Church’s three-year cycle of readings. The Old Testament reading was taken from the second chapter of Genesis (2:18-24). It addresses the creation of man and women and the vocation of marriage as God’s loving plan from the beginning. The Gospel reading was from Mark where Jesus answers a question about the indissolubility of marriage by pointing back to that story(10:2-16). He reiterates the teaching that God created us male and female and that marriage is between one man and one woman, intended for life, open to children and formative of family.

Noting the significance of the appointed readings, Francis began his homily with these words: “This Sunday’s Scripture readings seem to have been chosen precisely for this moment of grace which the Church is experiencing.” The comment points in two directions. First, that the Lord intervened to ensure that this global conference reaffirms His plan without compromise. Second, that those charged with pastoral care for the Catholic Church around the whole world planned the Synod to begin with those readings. I believe both are true.

The Catholic Church celebrates great heroes of the faith by remembering them on particular dates — and yesterday, October 4, was the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, the saint whose name Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio took upon assuming the Chair of Peter. In the thirteenth century, another time the Church was challenged within and without, that Francis was praying before the cross in a broken down church when he heard the Lord tell him, “Go and rebuild my Church, which you can see is falling down in ruins.” He did what the Lord asked, and obediently rebuilt that ruined church, but the Lord meant more than Francis realized. Through a life lived in abandonment to God, Francis Bernadone helped change both the Church and the world. I am not alone in drawing the parallels with our own time.

As Francis said in his homily, a homily filled with deep spiritual insights: “Our experience today is, in some way, like that of Adam: so much power and at the same time so much loneliness and vulnerability.”

The image of this is the family. People are less and less serious about building a solid and fruitful relationship of love: in sickness and in health, for better and for worse, in good times and in bad. Love which is lasting, faithful, conscientious, stable and fruitful is increasingly looked down upon, viewed as a quaint relic of the past. It would seem that the most advanced societies are the very ones which have the lowest birth-rates and the highest percentages of abortion, divorce, suicide, and social and environmental pollution.

What did the pope tell us in his homily about meeting these challenges? Referring to marriage as the “fulfillment of God’s plan for his beloved creation,” he affirmed that marriage is the “loving union between a man and a woman, rejoicing in their shared journey, fruitful in their mutual gift of self.” This is what Jesus told us in the gospel reading when he said: “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female’. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh”.”

Francis noted that “In this extremely difficult social and marital context, the Church is called to carry out her mission in fidelity, truth and love.” The Church is called

to carry out her mission in fidelity to her Master as a voice crying out in the desert, in defending faithful love and encouraging the many families which live married life as an experience which reveals of God’s love; in defending the sacredness of life, of every life; in defending the unity and indissolubility of the conjugal bond as a sign of God’s grace and of the human person’s ability to love seriously. To carry out her mission in truth, which is not changed by passing fads or popular opinions.

Against the din of some who have an agenda to try to change the Church, rather than be changed by the liberating Gospel which she proclaims, I recently wrote that the Catholic Church will not change her teaching concerning marriage and family. She will not, because she cannot. It is a truth originated in God’s loving plan for the whole human race, revealed not only in Genesis 2 and Jesus’ teaching, but in the Natural Law which is a participation in God’s eternal law. But the Synod on the Family could still make a poor decision about the pastoral expression of the Church’s teaching or simply fail to speak up for marriage the way it should. We need a bold voice, speaking clearly about the nature of marriage and making clear how even in its restrictions the Church’s teaching expresses the good news Jesus offers us.

This Pope is well aware of the opposition of the devil and unafraid to address the subject. In November 2013, while preaching at a daily Mass, he gave one of many exhortations to resist the tactics of the devil that have accompanied his ministry. “There are no nuances. There is a battle and a battle where salvation is at play, eternal salvation” he said. “We must always be on guard, on guard against deceit, against the seduction of evil.”

That is why I ask all Christians to pray for this important synod. Some months ago, I wrote an article claiming that the attack on marriage is diabolical. I believe that the enemy has specifically set his fury against the Catholic Church precisely because she is holding firm to the truth about marriage and family when many other Christian communities are not. This fidelity to the truth about marriage enrages hell itself.

I conclude with words taken from that piece as a reminder and a plea: Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church (Matt. 16:18). The demons have tried for over two millennia, but they have failed. The evil one has set his scopes on the first cell of the Church, the Christian family. Is it any wonder that the enemy of the Lord’s loving plan for the whole human race, the Church, would seek to destroy the Church by attacking its smallest cell? The greatest weapon we have is not our argumentation and apologetics, as vital as they both are. Rather, it is to recognize that the attack is from the gates of hell and to wield the spiritual weapons the Lord has given us.