STERLING HEIGHTS — The family that prays together stays together.

That may be true, but the family that says “please,” “thank you” and “excuse me” not only stays together, but also has found the secret to a happy and healthy life, says Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick.

The retired archbishop of Washington, D.C., was one of several speakers March 11 at the 20th annual Lenten Symposium sponsored by Holy Trinity Apostolate at SS. Cyril and Methodius Parish in Sterling Heights.

“The three most important words in a marriage are the three most important words in life: thank you, please and excuse me,” Cardinal McCarrick said. “If you’re wife or husband does something nice for you, you might be tempted to say, ‘We’ll, he or she is supposed to do it.’ But they need to hear ‘thank you.’ They need to hear that you appreciate them.”

The conference began with Mass celebrated by Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Robert J. Fisher and continued with talks from local and international speakers on the role of prayer and virtue in the life of the family. Video messages from local Catholic leaders played on the screen in between talks congratulating Holy Trinity Apostolate and its founder, Barbara Middleton, on the symposium’s 20th anniversary.

Sr. Mary Donata Farbaniec, OLM, from Poland, reflected on St. Faustina and Jesus’ message of Divine Mercy in the family, saying mercy and forgiveness is crucial to the domestic church.

Sr. Farbaniec said the sin that hurts Jesus most painfully is the sin of distrust in his mercy when things don’t seem to be going right, which led to St. Faustina having painted below the famous image of Divine Mercy: “Jesus, I trust in you.”

“Mercy is not cheap. Jesus paid tremendously for it,” Sr. Farbaniec said. “To venerate this image is to venerate Divine Mercy. And to venerate Divine Mercy means to trust in God and to be merciful to others.”

Fr. Stephen Pullis, priest-secretary to Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, spoke about how parents — especially fathers — can be a model of prayer and self-sacrifice for their children.

“We can tell people what to do, but they listen more to our actions,” Fr. Pullis said. “One of the biggest determinants of whether your children will attend church and continue in the practice of their faith is how much the father attends church.” According to studies, Fr. Pullis said, “if the father goes to Mass, the kids have a 75 percent chance of continuing in their faith.”

Fr. Pullis said it’s incumbent upon parents to teach their children to pray not just the ritual prayers of the Church, but also to spend time praying as a family and teaching children to offer their own intentions to God.

“Our faith should be a central aspect of what it means to be a family. We should come together as a family and pray these prayers that are really important to us,” Fr. Pullis said. “Family-oriented prayer gives us our identity in Jesus, an identity united in what God calls us to be.”

Other speakers included Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo, regional coordinator of the Vatican’s Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery of Integral Human Development; and Erin Mersino, senior legal counsel at Salt & Light Global, who spoke about living a countercultural life as a Catholic mother.

“When you look at the world through the eyes of a Catholic, and you have your heart focused on God and eternity, it is such a different view than when you only limit your vision to the world,” Mersino said.

Mersino, who as an attorney spent years arguing in court against the federal government’s contraception and abortion mandates, said it’s only when God’s view of the world is lost that evil can enter the family.

“The limited view of the world can never bring someone joy. Joy only comes from God,” Mersino said. “The world will pit a mother against her child and tell her to look at her own life, and not to consider her child’s. And the evil one will convince her that ending the life of her child is the right answer. The deception that goes into that is amazing, but it happens every day.”