Claim. Children born from heart-centered love create the path by which parents reach the center of love and understand God.
Elaboration. SMM says human beings are born through love, mature through parental love, broaden horizontally through marriage, and then bear children as “the fruit of that love” (CSG 4.4 §6, 126-245, 1983.4.24). A child born from a man and woman who share love based on heart “creates a path to the center of love,” and that center leads directly to God. By loving children, parents experience the love with which God created all things; by becoming parents, they also realize how much their own parents loved them. The section sets the law of love in order: love aged parents more than children, and God more than parents. Vertical love completes horizontal love.
See also. purpose-of-creation