But this incident of Pilate’s wife reminds us that there is one place where the Christian’s influence may be decisive – at home.  Life is full of instances where people’s lives have been shaped by the influence of husband or wife.

And the opportunities of parents are particularly great.  Indeed their responsibility for using their influence to guide their sons and daughters to be good Church men and women, and true disciples of Our Blessed Lord, that responsibility would be overwhelming were not the corresponding privilege so high.

Those earliest years are when the foundations of a whole life are being laid, and it is the parents who, very largely, make or mar those years.  It is tragic that this tremendous responsibility of guiding an immortal soul for God is so often neglected, tragic that many parents give more thought and care to cultivating the very vegetables in their gardens or allotments than the characters of their own children.

So we must be all the more thankful for those parents who recognise that it is the holy will of God that their children, after making their way through this world, should in the end spend eternity in his visible presence. And it is the influence and example of a genuinely Christian home which sets their feet well and firmly on the way.