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APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
postsynodal AMORIS LAETITIA THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS TO THE BISHOPS PRIESTS AND DEACONS MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS TO MARRY CHRISTIANS AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL ON LOVE IN THE FAMILY
1 . The joy of love that you live in families is also the joy of the Church. As explained by the Synod Fathers, despite the many signs of marital crisis, “the desire for family remains alive, especially among young people, and motivates the Church.” [1] In response to this aspiration, “the Christian proclamation that as the family is really good news. ” [2]
2 . The synodal allowed to put on the table the situation of families in today’s world, to broaden our gaze and revive our awareness of the importance of marriage and the family. At the same time, the complexity of the issues proposals showed us the need to continue to deepen freedom with some doctrinal, moral, spiritual and pastoral. The reflection of the pastors and theologians, it is faithful to the Church, honest, realistic, creative, it will help us achieve greater clarity. The debates that are found in the media or in publications and even among the ministers of the Church ranging from unbridled desire to change everything without sufficient reflection or foundation, the attitude that claims to solve everything by applying general rules or excessive drawing conclusions from some theological reflections.
3 . Recalling that time is greater than the space, I wish to reiterate that not all doctrinal discussions, moral or pastoral need to be resolved with interventions of the Magisterium. Of course, in the Church it requires a unity of doctrine and practice, but this does not prevent that there are different ways to interpret some aspects of doctrine or some of the consequences that follow from it. This will happen until the Spirit will make us to all truth (cf. Jn 16:13), that is when we will introduce fully in the mystery of Christ and we can see it all with her look. Moreover, in each country or region you can look for more solutions inculturated, attentive to the traditions and local challenges. In fact, ‘cultures are very different and each general principle […] needs to be acculturated, if he wants to be observed and applied. ” [3]
4 . In any case, I must say that the synodal journey has brought him a great beauty and offered plenty of light. Thank you for the many contributions that have helped me to consider the problems of the world’s families in all their amplitude. The set of interventions of the Fathers, I listened with constant attention, it seemed a precious polyhedron consisting of many legitimate concerns and questions to be honest and sincere. So I thought it appropriate to draw up an Apostolic Exhortation to gather contributions of the two recent Synods on the family, joining other considerations to help guide reflection, dialogue and pastoral practice, and at the same time adversely courage, encouragement and assistance to families in their commitment and in their difficulties.
5 . This exhortation acquires special significance in the context of this Jubilee Year of Mercy. First, because I mean as a proposal for Christian families, that the stimuli to estimate the gifts of marriage and the family, and to maintain a strong love and full of values such as generosity, commitment, loyalty and patience . Second, because it aims to encourage everyone to be signs of mercy and closeness there where family life is not done properly or does not take place with peace and joy.
6 . In the development of the text, I will begin with an opening inspired by the Holy Scriptures, which gives an appropriate tone.From there I will consider the current situation of the families, in order to keep our feet on the ground. Then I remember some essential elements of the teaching of the Church on marriage and the family, to make room so the two central chapters, dedicated to love. Afterwards put in relief some pastoral ways we orient to build strong families and fruitful in God’s plan, and I will devote a chapter to the education of children. So I will focus on an invitation to mercy and pastoral discernment in front of situations that do not fully respond to what the Lord offers us, and finally will trace short family spirituality lines.
7 . Because of the wealth of the two years of reflection that has made the synodal process, this Exhortation faces, with different styles, many and varied themes. This explains its inevitable extension. So I do not recommend a general reading rushed. It can be better exploited, by both households by family pastoral operators, if delve patiently part after the other, or if you try what they will need in every practical situation. And ‘likely, for example, that spouses recognize themselves more in the fourth and fifth chapters, which pastoral workers have particular interest in the sixth chapter, and we all see very challenged by the eighth chapter. I hope that everyone, through reading, you feel called to care with love of family life, because they “are not a problem, are mainly an opportunity.” [4]
8 . The Bible is populated by families for generations by stories of love and family crises, from the first page, where it enters the family of Adam and Eve, with its burden of violence but also with the power of life that continues (see January 4), to the last page where they appear the wedding of the Bride and the Lamb (cf. Rev 21,2.9). The two houses that Jesus describes, built on the rock or on the sand (cf. Mt 7.24 to 27), represent many family situations, created by the freedom of those who live there, because, as the poet says, “every house is a candlestick» . [5] we are now in one of these houses, led by the Psalmist, through a song that still claims to be in the Jewish nuptial liturgy be in Christianity:
“Blessed are those who fear the Lord
and walk in his ways.
Of the labor of your hands you will feed,
you will be happy and you will have all the best.
Your wife, like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children like olive shoots
around your table.
This is how blessed
the man who fears the Lord.
the Lord bless you from Zion.
May you see the good of Jerusalem
all the days of your life!
May you see your children’s children!
Peace on Israel! “( Ps 128.1-6).
You and your bride
9 . Therefore we cross the threshold of this serene home, with his family sitting around the table festive. At the center is the father of the couple and the mother with all their love story. In them it is realized the primordial design that evokes Christ himself with intensity: “Have you not read that the Creator from the beginning made them male and female?” ( Mt 19,4). He takes up the mandate of the Book of Genesis: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they become one flesh” ( January 2.24).
10 . The two grand opening chapters of Genesis give us the representation of the human couple in its fundamental reality. In the original text of the Bible shine some decisive statements. The first, mentioned briefly by Jesus says: “God created man in his image; in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them “(1:27). Surprisingly, l ‘ “image of God” as a parallel explanatory precisely the pair “male and female”. This means that God Himself is sexed or that accompanies a divine companion, as they believed some ancient religions? Obviously not, because we know how clearly the Bible rejected as idolatrous these beliefs spread among the Canaanites of the Holy Land. You preserve the transcendence of God, but, as it is both the Creator, the fecundity of the human couple is the “image” alive and active, visible sign of the creative act.
11 . The couple who loves and creates life is the real “sculpture” living (not that of stone or gold that the Decalogue forbids), capable of manifesting the God creator and savior. So the fruitful love is to be the symbol of the intimate reality of God (cf. Jan.1.28; 9.7; 17,2-5.16; 28.3; 35.11; 48.3 to 4). To this must be that the narrative of the Book of Genesis, following the so-called “priestly tradition”, is crossed by various genealogical sequences (see 4,17-22.25-26; 5; 10; 11.10 to 32; 25,1- 4.12-17.19-26; 36): in fact, the ability to generate the human couple is the way in which it develops the story of salvation. In this light, the fruitful relationship of the couple becomes an image to discover and describe the mystery of God, which is fundamental in the Christian vision of the Trinity that is split in God the Father, the Son and the Spirit of love. The Triune God is a communion of love, and the family is his living images. They illuminate the words of St. John Paul II: “Our God, in his innermost mystery, is not solitude, but a family, since it has itself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love. This love, in God’s family, is the Holy Spirit “. [6] The family is therefore not something foreign to the divine essence. [7] This aspect of the Trinitarian couple has a new representation in Pauline theology since the Apostle puts it in connection with the “mystery” of the union between Christ and the Church (cf. Eph 5.21 to 33).
12 . But Jesus, in his reflections on marriage, refers us to another page of the Book of Genesis, chapter 2, where it appears an admirable portrait of the couple with bright details. We choose only two. The first is the human restlessness that seeks “a suitable partner for him” (vv. 18:20), which will solve the loneliness that bothers him and that is not quenched by the proximity of the animals and of all creation. The original Hebrew term refers us to a direct, almost “front” – eye to eye – even in a silent dialogue, because they love the silences are often more eloquent than words. And ‘the meeting with a face, a “she” that reflects the divine love and is “the first good, a help meet for him and a support column” ( Sir 36:26), says a wise biblical. Or even exclaim as the bride of the Song of Songs in a wonderful profession of love and self-giving in reciprocity: “My beloved is mine and I am his […] I am my beloved and my beloved is mine” (2 , 16; 6.3).
13 . From this encounter that heals loneliness they arise generation and family. This is the second detail that we can detect: Adam, who is also the man of all times and of all the regions of our planet, along with his wife gives birth to a new family, as Jesus repeats citing Genesis: “You cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh “( Mt 19,5; cf. January 2:24). The verb “join” in the original Hebrew indicates a close harmony, physical and inner adhesion, to the point that you use to describe the union with God, “clings to you; my soul” ( Ps 63.9 ), sings the psalmist. Thus it is evoking the marriage union not only in its sexual and body size, but also in its voluntary donation of love. The fruit of this union is to “become one flesh”, both physical embrace, both in the union of two hearts and life and, perhaps, in the child that will be born by the two, who will bring in itself, uniting both genetically both spiritually, the two “meat”.
Your children like olive plants
14 . Recall the song of the Psalmist. In it appear, in the house where the man and his wife are sitting at the table, the children, who accompany them “like olive plants” ( Ps 128,3), that is full of energy and vitality. If the parents are like the foundation of the house, the children are like “living stones” of the family (cf. 1 Pt 2,5). And ‘significant that in the Old Testament the word appearing several times after that God ( YHWH , the “Lord”) is “son” ( well ), a word that refers to the Hebrew verb that means “to build” ( banah ). Why Psalm 127 exalts the gift of children with images that relate both to the building of a house, both the social and commercial life that took place at the gate of the city: “Unless the Lord build the house, in vain the builders labor […] Here it is the heritage of the Lord’s children, his reward is the fruit of the womb. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children he had in his youth. Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full: will not be ashamed when he comes to the door to dealing with one’s enemies “(vv. 1.3-5). It ‘true that these images reflect the culture of an ancient society, however, the presence of children is in any case a sign of the fullness of the family in the continuity of the same history of salvation, from generation to generation.
15 . In this perspective we can ask another family size. We know that in the New Testament speaks of “the Church which meets in the house” (cf. 1 Cor 16:19; Rom 16.5; Col 4:15; Fm 2). The living space of a family could turn into a domestic church, in the Eucharist, the presence of Christ seated at the same table. Unforgettable is the scene painted in the Apocalypse: “I am the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me “(3:20). Thus emerges a house that bears within itself the presence of God, common prayer and thus the Lord’s blessing. And ‘what is said in Psalm 128 that we have taken as the basis: “That’s how the man blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion “(vv. 4-5).
16 . The Bible also considers the family as the headquarters of the catechesis of children. This shines in the description of the Easter celebration (cf. Ex 12.26 to 27; Dt 6.20 to 25), and was later made explicit in the haggadah Jewish, ie in the dialogic narrative that accompanies the ritual of the Passover meal. Even more, a psalm extols the family proclamation of faith: “What we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us we shall not conceal from their descendants, telling the next generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and powerful, and the wonders he has done. He established a teaching Jacob, appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to make known to their children, because the know the next generation, the children who will be born. They then will rise to tell their own children “(78.3 to 6). Therefore, the family is the place where the parents become the first teachers of the faith for their children. It ‘a “craft” task, from person to person, “When your son asks you tomorrow […] you shall tell him …” ( Ex 13:14). Thus the different generations will sing their song to the Lord, “and the young girls, old men, and children” ( Ps 148.12).
17 . Parents have a duty to make him seriously their educational mission, as often teach the scholars of the Bible (cf. Pr 3.11 to 12; from 6.20 to 22; 13,1; 22,15; 23,13- 14; 29,17). The children are called to accept and practice the commandment, “Honour thy father and thy mother” ( Ex 20:12), where “honor” the verb indicates the fulfillment of family and social commitments in their fullness, without neglecting them with excuses claims religious (cf. Mk 7.11 to 13). In fact, “he who honors his father atones for sins, who honors his mother is like one who lays up treasure” ( Sir 3,3-4).
18 . The Gospel reminds us that children are not a property of the family, but they have in front of their personal life journey. If it is true that Jesus is presented as a model of obedience to his earthly parents, being obedient to them (cf. Lk 2:51), it is also certain that He shows that the choice of the child’s life and his own Christian vocation may require a posting to carry out their dedication to the Kingdom of God (cf. Mt 10.34 to 37; Lk 9.59 to 62). Moreover, he himself, at age twelve, responding to Mary and Joseph who has a higher mission to accomplish beyond its historical family (cf. Lk 2.48 to 50). Therefore emphasizes the need for other deeper ties even within family relationships: “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and put it into practice” ( Lk 8:21). On the other hand, in the attention that he has placed the children – seen in the company of the ancient Near East as individuals with no special rights and as part of the family property – Jesus goes so far as to present them to adults almost as teachers, for their trust simple and spontaneous towards others, “Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whosoever shall humble himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven “( Mt 18.3 to 4).
A trail of suffering and blood
19 . The idyll presented by Psalm 128 does not deny a bitter reality that marks all the Holy Scriptures. And ‘the presence of pain, of evil, of violence that tear the life of the family and its intimate communion of life and love. Not for nothing the speech of Christ on marriage (cf. Mt 19.3 to 9) is inserted in a dispute over the divorce. The Word of God is a constant witness to this dark dimension which opens at the beginning when, through sin, the relationship of love and purity between the man and the woman turns into a domain: “Your husband will your instincts, and he shall rule over you “( Gen 3:16).
20 . It ‘a trail of suffering and blood running through many pages of the Bible, from the fratricidal violence of Cain and Abel of the various disputes between the children and between the wives of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and reaching out to tragedies that fill with blood the family of David, to the many family difficulties that run through the story of Tobit, or the bitter confession of Job abandoned: “my brothers have turned away from me, even my family I have become strangers. […] My breath is strange to my wife, and I shudder to the children of my womb “( Gb 19,13.17).
21 . Jesus himself was born in a modest family, which soon must flee to a foreign land. He enters Peter’s house where the mother-in-law lying sick of him (cf. Mk 1.30 to 31); gets involved in the drama of death in Jairus’ house and that of Lazarus (cf.Mk 5,22-24.35-43; Jn 11.1 to 44); hear the desperate cry of the widow of Nain in front of her dead son (cf. Lk 7.11 to 15);welcomes the invocation of the father of the epileptic in a small country village (cf. Mk 9.17 to 27). Meet collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus in their homes (cf. Mt from 9.9 to 13; Lk 19,1-10), and even sinners, like the woman who breaks into the house of the Pharisee (cf. Lk 7,36-50). He knows the anxieties and tensions of families and puts them in his parables: the children who leave home in search of adventure (cf. Lk 15.11 to 32) up to the difficult children with unexplained behavior (cf. Mt21,28- 31) or victims of violence (cf. Mk 12.1 to 9). He still cares about the wedding they run the risk of being embarrassing for the lack of wine (cf. Jn 2,1-10) or the inaction of the guests (cf. Mt 22.1 to 10), as well as knows the nightmare the loss of a coin into a poor family (cf. Lk 15.8 to 10).
22 . In this short path we find that the Word of God does not show himself as a sequence of abstract theory, but as a traveling companion for families who are in crisis or through some pain, and shows them the goal of the journey, when God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” ( Rev 21,4).
23 . At the beginning of Psalm 128, is the father as a worker, that with the work of his hands can support the physical well-being and serenity of his family: “Of the labor of your hands you will feed, you will be happy and you will have all good “(v. 2). That work is a fundamental part of the dignity of human life, it is deducted from the first pages of the Bible when it says that “the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” ( January 2.15). And ‘the representation of the worker who transforms matter and leverages the energies of creation, producing the “fatigue bread” ( Ps 127,2), in addition to cultivating himself.
24 . The work makes possible at the same time the development of society, the livelihood of the family and also its stability and its fruitfulness: “May you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see your children’s children! “( Ps 128.5-6). In the Book of Proverbs also it has the task of a mother, whose work is described in all its daily special, attracting the praise of the groom and children (see 31.10 to 31). The apostle Paul himself showed himself proud of having lived without being a burden to others, because he worked with his hands thus ensuring the sustenance (cf. Acts 18,3; 1 Cor 4:12; 9:12). He was so convinced of the necessity of work, which established a strict rule for his community: “Who does not want to work should not eat” ( 2 Thess 3:10; cf. 1 Thess 4:11).
25 . That said, we understand how unemployment and job insecurity become suffering, as there was in the little Book of Ruth, and as recalled by Jesus in the parable of the workers who sit in an enforced idleness, in the village square (cf. Mt 20 , 1-16), or as He experiences the fact of being so often it surrounded by needy and hungry. And ‘what the company is experiencing tragically in many countries, and this lack of labor strikes in different ways the serenity of families.
26 . Nor can we forget the degeneration that sin introduces into society when the human being behaves like a tyrant towards nature, devastating, using it selfishly and even brutal. The consequences are both desertification of land (see January 3,17-19) and economic and social imbalances, against which stands clearly the voice of the prophets, Elijah (see 1 Kings 21) up to the words Jesus himself speaks out against injustice (cf. Lk 12.13 to 21; 16.1 to 31).
27 . Christ introduced as a hallmark of his disciples, especially the law of love and the gift of self to others (cf. Mt 22:39; Jn13:34), and he did it through a principle that a father and mother are wont to testify in his own life: “No one has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” ( Jn 15:13). The fruit of love is also the mercy and forgiveness. In this line, is very emblematic scene showing an adulteress on the esplanade of the temple of Jerusalem, surrounded by his accusers, and then only with Jesus that no condemnation and calls for a more dignified life (cf. Jn 8,1- 11).
28 . In the horizon of love, essential in the experience of Christian marriage and the family, also stands out another virtue, rather ignored in these times of frantic and superficial relationships: tenderness. We use the sweet and intense Psalm 131. As is also found in other texts (cf. Ex 4:22; Is 49:15; Ps 27,10), the union between the believer and his Lord is expressed traits of love paternal and maternal. Here appears the delicate and tender intimacy that exists between a mother and her baby, a baby sleeping in his mother’s arms after being nursed. It is – as indicated by the Hebrew word Gamul – a child already weaned, they grab consciously to the mother that leads him to his chest. And ‘therefore it intimacy aware and not merely biological. Hence, the psalmist sings: “I’m staying calm and serene: like a child quieted at its mother” ( Ps 131,2). In parallel, we have many another scene, where the prophet Hosea puts into the mouth of God as father these moving words: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, […] (him) taught to walk by the hand [ …] I I drew him with cords of a man, with bonds of love, I was to them like one who raises an infant to his cheek, I bent over him to give him something to eat “(11,1.3-4).
29 . With this look, made of faith and love, of grace and commitment of human and divine Trinity family, we contemplate the family that the Word of God entrusted in the hands of man, woman and children because they form a communion of persons which is image of the union between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The generative and educational activities is, in turn, a reflection of the creative work of the Father. The family is called to share the daily prayer, reading God’s Word and the Eucharistic communion to grow the love and ever more converted into a temple where he lives the Spirit.
30 . In front of each family presents the icon of the Nazareth family, with its everyday life made of hard work and even nightmares, like when he had to suffer the incomprehensible violence of Herod, experience that is repeated tragically still in many families refugees rejected and helpless. Like the Magi, families are invited to contemplate the Child and His Mother, to bow down and worship him (cf. Mt 2:11). Like Mary, they are urged to live with courage and serenity to their family challenges, sad and exciting, and to keep and ponder in our hearts the wonders of God (cf. Lk 2,19.51). The treasure of the heart of Mary there are also all the events of each of our families, that she retains considerately. So it can help us to interpret them to recognize in the family history the message of God.
THE REALITY AND THE CHALLENGES OF FAMILIES
31 . The good of the family is decisive for the future of the world and of the Church. Countless analyzes have been made on marriage and the family, about their difficulties and current challenges. And ‘healthy pay attention to reality, because “the demands and calls of the Spirit also resound in the same historical events”, by which “the Church can be guided to a more profound understanding of the mystery of marriage and the family . ” [8] i do not pretend to present here all that could be said about the different issues related to the family in the current environment. But as the Synod Fathers made an insight into the reality of families around the world, I consider appropriate to collect some of their pastoral contributions, adding other concerns that come from my own eyes.
The current situation of the family
32 . “Faithful to Christ’s look at the reality of the family today in all its complexity, in its lights and its shadows. […] The anthropological and cultural change today affects all aspects of life and requires an analytical and diversified approach. ” [9] In the context of several decades ago, the bishops of Spain have already recognized a domestic reality with more spaces of freedom,” with a fair distribution of tasks, responsibilities and duties […] Making use of more personal communication between spouses, it helps to humanize the whole family life […] neither the society we live in or the one towards which we walk permit indiscriminate survival of forms and models of the past. ” [10] But” we are aware of the main orientation of anthropological-cultural changes, because of which individuals are less buoyant than in the past by the social structures in their affective and family life ‘. [11]
33 . On the other hand, “it must also be taken of the growing danger posed by an exaggerated individualism that distorts family ties and ends up considering each family member as an island, giving precedence, in some cases, the idea of a subject which is built according to his wishes taken as an absolute. ” [12] ” the voltages induced by an exasperated individualistic culture of the possession and enjoyment generate within the family dynamics of intolerance and aggression. ” [13] i would like to add pace of modern life, stress, social and labor organization, because they are cultural factors that jeopardize the possibility of permanent choices. At the same time we find ambiguous phenomena. For example, it can enjoy a customization pointing authenticity instead of reproducing predetermined behavior. It ‘a value which can promote the different skills and spontaneity, but that, bad oriented, can create constant distrust attitudes, escape from commitments, closing in comfort, arrogance. The freedom to choose allows you to project their lives and nurture the best of himself, but he did not noble objectives and personal discipline, degenerates into an inability to give himself generously. In fact, in many countries where it decreases the number of marriages, a growing number of people who decide to live alone, or who live together without cohabiting. We can also detect a commendable sense of justice; However, if misunderstood, it transforms citizens into customers claim that only the provision of services.
34 . If these risks are transferred to the understanding of the family, this can turn into a place of passage, to which it is addressed when it seems convenient for themselves, or where you go to claim rights, while the constraints remain abandoned to insecurity fickle the desires and circumstances. After all, today it is easy to confuse the genuine freedom with the idea that everyone sees as they like, as if beyond the individuals there were no truths, values and principles that guide us, as if everything was the same and you were to allow any thing. In this context, the ideal bed, with an exclusivity commitment and stability, ends up being destroyed by the conveniences contingent or sensitivity whims. You fear loneliness, you want a protection space and fidelity, but at the same time increases the fear of being caught by a report that would postpone the satisfaction of personal aspirations.
35 . As Christians we can not give up proposing marriage in order not to contradict the current sensitivity, to be fashionable, or feelings of inferiority in front of the moral and human degradation. We would be depriving the world of values that we can and must offer. Of course, it makes no sense to stop at a rhetorical denunciation of the existing evils, as if by that we could change something. Even it needs try to impose rules with the force of authority. We asked for a more responsible and generous effort, which is to present the reasons and motives for opting in favor of marriage and the family, so that people are more willing to respond to the grace that God gives them.
36 . At the same time we must be humble and realistic, recognizing that sometimes the way we present the Christian beliefs and the way to treat people helped cause what we now complain, so we are entitled to a healthy reaction self-criticism. On the other hand, we have often presented the marriage so that its unitive end, the invitation to grow in love and the ideal of mutual aid have remained in the shadows for a place almost exclusive emphasis on the duty of procreation. Nor have we done a good accompaniment of the new married couple in their early years, with proposals fit in with their schedules, their languages, their most practical concerns. Other times we have presented a theological ideal of marriage too abstract, almost artificially constructed, far from the actual situation and the real possibilities of the family as they are. This excessive idealization, especially when we have not awakened trust in grace, did not mean that marriage is more desirable and attractive, but quite the opposite.
37 . For a long time we believed that only by insisting on doctrinal issues, bioethical and moral, gave no reasons for the openness to grace, we had already taken enough families, consolidated the constraint of the couple and filled with meaning their lives together. We find it difficult to present the marriage more as a dynamic process of growth and development than as a burden to bear throughout life. Also we find it hard to give space to the conscience of the faithful, who often respond as closely as possible to the Gospel in the midst of their limitations and can carry out their personal discernment in front of situations where they break all the schemes. We are called to form consciences, not claim to replace them.
38 . We have to thank for the fact that most of the estimated family relations people who want to stand the test of time and which ensures respect for each other. So we can appreciate that the Church can offer accompanying spaces and assistance on issues related to the growth of love, to overcome conflicts and education of children. Many estimate the strength of the grace they experience in the sacramental Reconciliation and the Eucharist, which allows them to meet the challenges of marriage and the family. In some countries, especially in different parts of Africa, secularism has failed to weaken some traditional values and in each marriage produces a strong union between two extended families, which still remains a well-defined conflicts and difficulties management system . Today’s world also appreciates the testimony of spouses who have not only persevered in time but continue to pursue a common project and retain the affection. This opens the door to a successful ministry, welcoming, which makes possible a gradual deepening of the demands of the Gospel. However, many times we have acted with defensive and pastoral attitude we waste energy by multiplying the attacks on the decadent world, with little capacity to make proposals to indicate streets of happiness. Many do not perceive that the message of the Church on marriage and the family was a clear reflection of the preaching and the attitudes of Jesus, who at the same time proposing an ideal demanding and never lost his compassionate proximity to vulnerable people like the Samaritan woman or the woman adulteress.
39 . This does not mean not recognizing the cultural decadence that does not promote love and dedication. Consultations PRIOR to the last two Synods have revealed different symptoms of the “culture of the provisional”. I refer, for example, the speed with which people go from an emotional relationship to another. They believe that love, as in social networks, you can connect or disconnect at will of the consumer and also quickly lock. I also think the fear aroused by the prospect of a permanent commitment, obsession leisure, relationships that calculate the costs and benefits and are maintained only if they are a means to overcome the loneliness, for protection or to receive some service. He moved to the emotional relationships that happens with objects and the environment: everything is excludable, each disposable waste and breaks, exploits and squeezes until serving. And then goodbye. Narcissism makes people incapable of looking beyond themselves, to their own desires and needs. But those who use other sooner or later ends up being used, manipulated and abandoned by the same logic.It ‘worth noting that the ties breakages occur many times between adults who are looking for a kind of “autonomy” and reject the ideal of growing old together taking care of each other and sustaining.
40 . “At the risk of trivializing, we could say that we live in a culture that encourages young people not to start a family, because they are missing their chances for the future. But this same culture has so many other options which are also discouraged from starting a family. ” [14] In some countries, many young people” are often induced to postpone the wedding because of economic problems, work or study. Also sometimes for other reasons, such as the influence of ideologies that devalue marriage and family, the experience of the failure of other couples that they do not want to risk it, the fear of something they consider too big and sacred, social opportunities and economic benefits that derive from the co-existence, a conception purely emotional and romantic love, the fear of losing the freedom and autonomy, denial of something conceived as an institutional and bureaucratic. ” [15] We need to find the words, reasons and evidence to help us touch the most intimate fibers of young people, where they are more capable of generosity, commitment, love and even heroism, to invite them to accept with enthusiasm and courage the challenge of marriage.
41 . The Synod Fathers referred to the current ‘cultural trends that seem to impose an affectivity without limits, […] narcissistic affectivity, unstable and changeable that does not always help the parties to reach a greater maturity. ” They said they were concerned about “a certain spread of pornography and commercialization of the body, also favored by a distorted use of the internet” and for the “situation of those people who are forced to practice prostitution.” In this context, “the couples are sometimes uncertain, hesitant and struggling to find ways to grow. Many are those that tend to remain in the early stages of emotional and sexual life. The couple’s crisis destabilizes the family and can go through separation and divorce may have serious consequences on adults, children and society, weakening the individual and social ties. ” [16] The marital crisis often confront” briskly and without the courage of patience, audit, mutual forgiveness, reconciliation and even of sacrifice. The failures damage, so rise to new relationships, new couples, new partnerships and new marriages, creating complex family situations and problems for the Christian choice. ” [17]
42 . “The population decline, due to an anti-birth mentality and promoted by global policies of reproductive health, not only leads to a situation in which the succession of generations is no longer assured, but it is likely to lead over time to an economic impoverishment and a loss of hope for the future. The development of biotechnology has also had a strong impact on the birth rate. ” [18] They may have other factors such as” the industrialization, the sexual revolution, the fear of overpopulation, economic problems, […]. The consumer society can also discourage people from having children just to maintain their freedom and their way of life. ” [19] It ‘true that the right conscience of the couple when they were very generous in the transmission of life , can direct them to the decision to limit the number of children for sufficiently serious reasons, but only ‘for the sake of this dignity of conscience the Church rejects with all his might the enforcement actions of the State in favor of contraception, sterilization or even abortion. ” [20] These measures are unacceptable even in places with high birth rate, but it is notable that the politicians are also encouraging in some countries suffering the tragedy of a very low birth rate. As explained by the Bishops of Korea, this is “acting in a contradictory manner, and failing in his duty.” [21]
43 . The weakening of faith and religious practice in some companies has effects on families and leaves more sun with their difficulties. The Fathers stated that “one of the largest of the culture of poverty is loneliness, the result of the absence of God in people’s lives and the fragility of relations. There is also a general feeling of impotence in the face of socio-economic reality that often ends up crushing the families. […] Often families feel abandoned for lack of interest and lack of attention from the institutions. The negative consequences from the point of view of social organization are obvious: the demographic crisis the educational difficulties, fatigue in welcoming newborn life all’avvertire the presence of the elderly as a burden, to the spread of an emotional discomfort that sometimes comes violence. It is the responsibility of the State to create the laws and working conditions to ensure the future of young people and help them realize their project to found a family. ” [22]
44 . The lack of a dignified and adequate housing often leads to postpone the formalization of a relationship. It must be remembered that “the family has the right to decent housing, fitting for family life and commensurate to the number of members, in a physical environment that provides the basic services for the life of the family and the community.” [23] a family and a home are two things that refer to each other. This example shows that we must insist on the rights of the family, and not just on individual rights. The family is an asset from which the company can not do without, but it needs to be protected. [24]The defense of these rights is “a prophetic call in favor of the family institution, which must be respected and defended against all usurpations’, [25] especially in the current context where usually takes up little space in political projects. Families have, among other rights, to “be able to rely on an adequate family policy on the part of public authorities in the juridical, economic, social and fiscal ‘. [26] They are sometimes dramatic, the distress of the families when, in the presence of the illness of a loved one, have no access to adequate health services, or when you prolong the time without that you get a decent job. “The economic coercion exclude the access of families to education, cultural life and active social life. The current economic system produces various forms of social exclusion. Families are suffering especially the problems that relate to the job. The possibilities for young people are few and the job offer is very selective and precarious. The working days are long and often burdened by long transfer times. This does not help the families to meet among themselves and with their children, so as to feed their daily reports. ” [27]
45 . “There are many children who are born out of wedlock, especially in some countries, and many who then grow up with only one parent or in a family context broadened or composition. […] The sexual exploitation and constitutes one of the most scandalous and perverse of the present society. Even companies crossed from violence due to war, terrorism or organized crime presence, they see deteriorated family situations and especially in large cities and their suburbs grow the so-called street children phenomenon. ” [28] Sexual abuse children becomes even more scandalous when it occurs in places where they need to be protected, especially in families, schools and communities and Christian institutions. [29]
46 . Migrations “are another sign of the times to deal with and understand with their cargo of effect on family life.” [30] The last Synod gave great importance to this issue, stating that “touches, in different ways , entire populations, in different parts of the world. The Church has exercised in this field a major role. The need to maintain and develop this gospel witness (cf. Mt 25:35) appears more urgent than ever. […] Human mobility, which corresponds to the natural historical movement of peoples, can bring enrichment time for the family that emigrated since the country that welcomes. Another thing is the forced migration of families, resulting from situations of war, persecution, poverty, injustice, marked by the vicissitudes of a journey which often endangers the life, traumatize people and destabilizes families. The accompaniment of migrants requires a specific pastoral care given to families in migration, but also to the members of the families remained in their places of origin. This should be implemented while respecting their cultures, religious and human formation from which they come, the spiritual richness of their rites and traditions, including through a specific pastoral care. […] The migrations are particularly dramatic and devastating for families and for individuals when they occur outside the law and are supported by international networks of human trafficking. The same is true when involving women or unaccompanied children, forced to longer stays in places of passage, in refugee camps, where it is impossible to initiate a process of integration. Extreme poverty and other situations cause disintegration sometimes even families to sell their children for prostitution or for organ trafficking. ” [31] ” The persecution of Christians, as well as those of ethnic and religious minorities, in different parts the world, especially the Middle East, represent a big test: not only for the Church but also for the entire international community. Every effort should be supported to facilitate the stay of families and Christian communities in their native lands. ” [32]
47 . The fathers have devoted special attention “to the families of persons with disabilities, where the handicap, which bursts into life, generates a challenge, profound and unexpected, and upsets the balance, desires, expectations. […] They deserve great admiration families who accept with love the difficult test of a disabled child. They give to the Church and to society a valuable witness of fidelity to the gift of life. The family will be able to discover, together with the Christian community, new actions and language, forms of understanding and identity, in the reception path, and care of the mystery of fragility. People with disabilities constitute for the family a gift and an opportunity to grow in love, in mutual help and unity. […] The family that agrees with the eyes of faith the presence of persons with disabilities will be able to recognize and guarantee the quality and value of every life, with its needs, its rights and its opportunities. It will encourage services and care, and promote the company and affection, at every stage of life. ” [33] I wish to emphasize that the time devoted attention to migrants as to persons with disabilities is a sign of the Spirit. In fact, both situations are paradigmatic: put into play especially the way you live today BUSINESS logic merciful and integration of vulnerable people.
48 . “Most of the families respects the elderly, surrounding them with affection and considers them a blessing. A special appreciation goes to associations and family movements that operate in favor of the elderly, under the spiritual and social aspects […]. In highly industrialized societies, where their numbers tend to increase while decreasing the birth rate, they risk being perceived as a burden. On the other hand the care that they require often put a strain on their loved ones. ” [34] ” The enhancement of the final phase of life is now all the more necessary the more you try to remove in any case, the time of death.The fragility and Elder addiction are sometimes unfairly exploited for mere economic advantage. Many families tell us that you can face the last stages of life emphasizing the sense of fulfillment and integration of all existence in the Paschal Mystery. A large number of elderly people is accepted in church structures where they can live in a peaceful atmosphere on the material and spiritual plane. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are serious threats to families around the world. Their practice is legal in many states. The Church, while firmly opposes these practices, feels obliged to help families who take care of their elderly and sick members. ” [35]
49 . I want to emphasize the situation of families crushed by poverty, disadvantaged in many ways, where the limits of life is living in heartbreaking fashion. If all encounter difficulties, in a very poor house they become harder. [36] For example, if a woman has to raise her son alone, for a separation or other causes, and has to work without the ability to leave a ‘ other person, he grows into an abandon that exposes it to all kinds of risk, and his personal growth remains compromised. In difficult situations who live those most in need, the Church should have a special care to understand, to console, to integrate, without imposing them a set of rules as if they were stones, thereby obtaining the effect of making them feel judged and abandoned by the very Mother who is called to bring them the mercy of God. in this way, instead of offering the healing power of grace and the light of the Gospel, some want to “indoctrinate” the Gospel, turn it into “dead stones to throw at him other. ” [37]
50 . The responses received to the two consultations, carried out during the synodal journey, they mentioned the various situations which pose new challenges. Besides those already mentioned, many have referred to the educational function, which is in difficulties because, among other reasons, the parents come home tired and unwilling to speak, in many families there is no longer even the habit to eat together, and grows a variety of offers of distractions beyond the dependence on television. This makes it difficult the transmission of faith from parents to children. Others have reported that families are often sick of huge anxiety. It seems to be more concerned with preventing future problems to share this. This, which is a cultural issue, is aggravated due to an uncertain professional future, economic insecurity, or fear for the future of their children.
51 . It ‘was also mentioned drug addiction as one of the scourges of our time, that hurts many families, and often ends up destroying them. Something similar happens with alcoholism, gambling and other addictions. The family could be the place of prevention and good rules, but society and politics do not come to understand that a family at risk “losing the capability to help its members […] We note the serious consequences of this break in broken homes, uprooted children, abandoned elderly, orphans of living parents, teenagers and young disoriented and without rules. ” [38] As explained by the Bishops of Mexico, there are sad situations of domestic violence who are fertile ground for new forms of social aggression, because “family relationships also explain the predisposition to a violent personality. The families which influence in this sense are those that lack of communication; those with predominant defensive attitudes and the members do not support each other; where there are no family activities to encourage participation; in which the parents’ relationship with each other are often conflicting and violent, and the parents and children are characterized by hostility. The domestic violence is the school of resentment and hatred in the fundamental human relations. ” [39]
52 . No one can think that weaken the family as a natural society founded on marriage is something that is beneficial to society. It’s the other affect the maturation of the people, the care of community values and ethical development of cities and villages. It hears more clearly that only the exclusive and indissoluble union between a man and a woman carries a full social function, being a stable commitment and making it possible fertility. We must recognize the wide variety of family situations that may offer a certain rule of life, but de facto unions or same-sex, for example, you can not simplistically equate to marriage.No precarious union or closed to the transmission of life and assures us the future of society. But those who work today to support the spouses, to help them overcome the risks that threaten them, to accompany them in their educational role, to stimulate the stability of the marital union?
53 . “In some societies still maintain the practice of polygamy; in other contexts remains the practice of arranged marriages. […] In many contexts, not just Westerners, is spreading widely the practice of living together before marriage or even that of cohabitation not oriented to take the form of an institutional constraint. ” [40] In several countries the legislation facilitates the development of a multiplicity of alternatives, so that a connoted by exclusivity marriage, indissolubility and opening at the waist ends to appear an antiquated proposal among many others. Advances in many countries a legal deconstruction of the family that tends to adopt shapes based almost exclusively on paradigm of autonomy of the will. Although it is legitimate and fair that they reject old forms of traditional “family” characterized by authoritarianism and even violence, this should not lead to contempt of marriage but to the rediscovery of its true meaning and renewal. The strength of the family, “lies in its capacity to love and to teach you to love. As the wound can be a family, it can always grow from the love. ” [41]
54 . In this brief look at reality, I wish to point out that, although there have been notable improvements in the recognition of women’s rights and in its participation in the public space, there is still much to grow in some countries. It is not yet completely eradicated unacceptable costumes. First of all the shameful violence that sometimes is used against women, family abuse and various forms of slavery that do not constitute a masculine strong showing but a coward degradation. Verbal violence, physical and sexual exerted against women in some married couples contradicts the very nature of the conjugal union. I think the serious genital mutilation of women in some cultures, but also to inequality of access to decent jobs and the places where decisions are made. The story follows in the footsteps of the excesses of the patriarchal cultures where women were considered second-class, but also include the practice of ‘ “surrogate” or “exploitation and commodification of the female body in today’s media culture.” [42 ] Some believe that many current problems have occurred starting from the emancipation of women. But this argument is invalid, “is a lie, is not it. It ‘a form of male chauvinism “. [43] The same dignity between man and woman leads us to rejoice that you exceed the old forms of discrimination, and in families to develop a reciprocal style. If arise forms of feminism that we can not consider appropriate, equally we admire the work of the Spirit in the clearest recognition of the dignity of women and their rights.
55 . Man ‘plays an equally important role in the life of the family, with particular reference to the protection and support of wife and children. […] Many people are aware of the importance of their role in the family and living with the peculiar dell’indole masculine qualities. The absence of the father gravely marks the family life, the education of children and their inclusion in society. His absence may be physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual. This deficiency deprives children of an adequate model of the father’s behavior. ” [44]
56 . Another challenge, there were various forms of ideology, generically called gender , that “denies the difference and the reciprocal nature of man and woman. It envisages a society without gender differences, and empties the anthropological foundation of the family. This ideology leads educational projects and legislative guidelines that promote personal identity and radically released emotional intimacy from biological differences between male and female. Human identity is issued to an option individualistic, also changes over time. ” [45] It ‘disturbing that some ideologies of this type, which claim to answer certain aspirations sometimes understandable, seeking to establish itself as a single thought which also determine the education of children. One must not ignore that “biological sex ( sex ) and social-cultural role of sex ( gender ), can be distinguished but not separated.” [46] On the other hand, “the biotechnology revolution in the field of human procreation introduced the ability to manipulate the generative act, making it independent of the sexual relationship between man and woman. In this way, human life and parenthood have become reality modular and separable, subject mainly to the wishes of individuals or couples. ” [47] One thing is to understand human frailty and complexity of life, another thing is to accept ideologies that claim to be divided into two inseparable aspects of reality. We do not fall into sin to claim to replace us to the Creator. We are creatures, we are not omnipotent. Creation before us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to care for our humanity, and that means first of all accept it and respect it as it was created.
57 . I thank God because many families, which are far from considered perfect, live in love, bring their own vocation and go forward even if they fall many times along the way. Starting with the synodal reflections that remains a stereotype of the ideal family, but a questioner mosaic made up of many different realities, full of joys, tragedies and dreams. The realities that concern us are challenges. Let us not fall into the trap exhaust ourselves in autodifensivi groans, instead of arousing a missionary creativity. In all situations, “the Church feels the need to say a word of truth and hope. […] The great values of marriage and the Christian family correspond to research that crosses human existence. ” [48] If we see many difficulties, they are – as the bishops said in Colombia – an invitation to” liberate in us energies of translating hope in prophetic dreams, transforming actions and imagination of charity “. [49]
THE LOOKING TO JESUS: THE CALL OF THE FAMILY
58 . Faced with the families and among them must always resound again the first proclamation, what it is “the most beautiful, biggest, most attractive and at the same time the most necessary” [50] , and “must occupy the center of activity evangelization. ” [51] it is the main greeting,” what you must always go back to listen in different ways and that one must always go back to announce during the catechesis in one form or another. ” [52] Because” not there is nothing stronger, deeper, safer, more consistent and wisest of that ad, “and” the entire Christian education is above all the deepening of the kerygma . ” [53]
59 . Our teaching on marriage and the family can not cease to be inspired and transfigured in the light of this announcement of love and tenderness, not to become mere defense of a doctrine cold and lifeless. In fact, it may not even fully understand the mystery of the Christian family except in the light of the infinite love of the Father, which is manifested in Christ, who gave himself up to the end and is alive among us. Therefore I desire to contemplate the living Christ who is present in so many love stories, and invoke the fire of the Spirit on all the families of the world.
60 . Within this framework, this chapter contains a brief summary of the Church’s teaching on marriage and the family. In this respect, I will mention several papers presented by the Synod Fathers in their consideration of light that gives us faith. They began by looking to Jesus and indicated that he “looked to the women and men who met with love and tenderness, accompanying their steps with truth, patience, and mercy, in announcing the needs of God’s Kingdom.” [54] Similarly, the Lord is with us today in our commitment to live and transmit the Gospel of the family.
Jesus retrieves and completes the divine plan
61 . In the face of those who forbade the marriage, the New Testament teaches that “every creation of God is good, and nothing is rejected” ( 1 Tim 4,4). Marriage is a “gift” of the Lord (cf. 1 Cor 7.7). At the same time, because of this positive assessment, it places a strong emphasis on having care of this divine gift: “Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed is undefiled ‘( Heb 13.4). This gift of God includes sexuality: “I Refuse to one another” ( 1 Cor 7.5).
62 . The Synod Fathers recalled that Jesus, “referring to the primitive drawing on the human couple, reaffirms the indissoluble union between man and woman, while saying that” For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so “( Mt 19,8). The indissolubility of marriage ( “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder”: Mt 19,6), is not primarily intended as a “yoke” imposed on men, but as a “gift” made to people united in marriage. […] The divine condescension always accompanies human history, heals and transforms hardened hearts with his grace, steering it towards its beginning, through the way of the cross. The Gospels clearly the example of Jesus, who […] announced the dispatch on the meaning of marriage as the fullness of revelation that recovers the original plan of God (cf. Mt19,3). ” [55]
63 . “Jesus, who has reconciled all things in himself, reported the marriage and the family to their original form (cf. Mk 10,1-12).The family and marriage have been redeemed by Christ (cf. Eph 5.21 to 32), restored in the image of the Holy Trinity, the mystery from which flows all true love. The nuptial covenant, inaugurated in creation and revealed in the history of salvation, receiving the full revelation of its meaning in Christ and in his Church. From Christ through the Church, marriage and family receive the necessary grace to witness to the love of God and living the life of communion. The Gospel of the family through the history of the world since the creation of man in the image and likeness of God (cf. Jan. 1,26-27) until the fulfillment of the covenant mystery in Christ at the end of time with the marriage of the (cf. Ap 19,9). ” [56]
64 . “The example of Jesus is a paradigm for the Church. […] He inaugurated his public life with the sign at Cana, which to a wedding feast (cf. Jn 2,1-11). […] He shared moments of friendship daily with the family of Lazarus and his sisters (cf. Lk 10:38) and with Peter’s family (cf. Mt 8:14). He listened to the cries of parents for their children, returning them to life (cf. Mk 5:41; Lk7.14 to 15), and thus manifesting the true meaning of mercy, which involves the re-establishment of the Covenant (cf. John Paul II , Dives in Misericordia , 4). This appears clearly in the meetings with the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4.1 to 30) and the adulteress (cf. Jn 8.1 to 11), in which the perception of sin is aroused in front of gratuitous love of Jesus. ” [57]
65 . The Incarnation of the Word in a human family, in Nazareth, moved with his new history of the world. We need to immerse ourselves in the mystery of the birth of Jesus in Mary’s yes to the angel’s, when it was conceived the Word in her womb; also in the yes of Joseph, who gave his name to Jesus and took charge of Mary; on the feast of the shepherds to the manger;adoration of the Magi; the Flight into Egypt, where Jesus shares the pain of his people exiled, persecuted and humiliated; in religious waiting for Zechariah and joy that accompanies the birth of John the Baptist; in the promise made by Simeon and Anna in the temple; in admiration of the lawyers as they listen to the wisdom of Jesus teenager. And then penetrate the thirty long years in which Jesus earned the bread by working with his hands, whispering prayers and believing tradition of his people and being educated in the faith of his fathers, to make it bear fruit in the mystery of the Kingdom. This is the mystery of Christmas and the secret of Nazareth, full of fragrance family! And ‘the mystery that has fascinated Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Lisieux and Charles de Foucauld, and which can also quench Christian families to renew their hope and their joy.
66 . “The covenant of love and fidelity, of which lives the Holy Family of Nazareth, illuminates the principle that gives form to every household, and enables it to better face the vicissitudes of life and history. On this basis, each family, despite its weakness, can become a light in the darkness of the world. “Here we understand the way of life in the family. Nazareth remind us what the family, what the communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, its sacred and inviolable character; let us see how sweet and irreplaceable education in the family, teach us its natural function in the social order “(Paul VI, Discourse at Nazareth , January 5, 1964).” [58]
The family in Church documents
67 . The Second Vatican Council , in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes , was in charge of promoting the dignity of marriage and the family (cf. nn. 47-52). “It has defined marriage as a community of life and love (cf. 48), putting love at the center of the family […]. The “true love between husband and wife” (49) implies the mutual gift of self, includes and integrates the sexual dimension and affectivity, corresponding to the divine plan (cf. 48-49). Also emphasizes the rootedness in Christ of the couple: Christ the Lord “encounters Christian spouses in the sacrament of marriage” (48) and remains with them. In the incarnation, He takes on human love, purifies it, brings it to fulfillment, and gives spouses, with his Spirit, the ability to live it, pervading all their life of faith, hope and charity. In this way the couple are as consecrated and, through its own grace, build up the Body of Christ and are a domestic Church (cf. Lumen Gentium , 11), so that the Church, in order to fully understand her mystery, look to the Christian family, which manifests itself in a genuine way. ” [59]
68 . Subsequently, “Blessed Paul VI , in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, he has deepened the doctrine about marriage and the family. In particular, with the Encyclical Humanae Vitae , has highlighted the intrinsic link between marital love and generation of life: “The conjugal love requires in husband and wife an awareness of their mission of responsible paternity, on which rightfully today much he insisted upon, and which also must be exactly understood. […] The responsible exercise of parenthood implies, therefore, that spouses recognize their duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society, in a just hierarchy of values ”(n. 10). In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi , Paul VI pointed out the relationship between the family and the Church. ” [60]
69 . “Saint John Paul II has devoted special attention to the family through his catechesis on human love, the Letter to Familieshealthy Gratissimam and especially with the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio . In these documents, the Pope has defined the family “way of the Church”; He offered an overview of the human vocation to love and the woman; He has proposed the fundamental guidelines for the pastoral care of the family and the presence of the family in society. In particular, dealing with conjugal love (cf. Familiaris Consortio , 13), has described the way in which the spouses, in their mutual love, receive the gift of the Spirit of Christ and live their call to holiness “. [61]
70 . ” Benedict XVI , Encyclical Deus Caritas Est , has returned to the theme of the truth of love between man and woman which is fully illuminated only to the light of love of the crucified Christ (cf. 2). He reiterates that “marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa: the way of loving God becomes the measure of human” (11). Moreover, in the Encyclical Caritas in Veritate , highlighting the importance of love as a principle of life in society (cf. 44), where we learn the experience of the common good. ” [62]
71 . “Scripture and Tradition us open access to a knowledge of the Trinity is revealed with family traits. The family is the image of God, that […] is a communion of persons. In baptism, the voice of the Father designates Jesus as his beloved Son, and in this love we are given to recognize the Holy Spirit (cf. Mc 1,10-11). Jesus, who has reconciled all things in himself and has redeemed us from sin, not only reported the marriage and the family to their original form, but also has raised marriage to the sacramental sign of his love for the Church (cf. Mt 19,1-12; Mk 10,1-12; Eph 5.21 to 32). In the human family, gathered by Christ, it has returned the “image and likeness” of the Holy Trinity (see January 1.26), the mystery from which flows all true love. By Christ, through the Church, marriage and family receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s love. ” [63]
72 . The sacrament of marriage is not a social convention, an empty ritual or a mere external sign of a commitment. The sacrament is a gift for the sanctification and salvation of the spouses, because “their mutual membership is the real representation, by means of the sacramental sign, of the very relationship of Christ with the Church. Spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross; they are for one another, and for the children, witnesses of salvation, of which the sacrament makes them sharers. ” [64] Marriage is a vocation, as it is a response to the specific call to live conjugal love as imperfect sign between Christ and the Church. Therefore, the decision to marry and form a family must be the result of a vocational discernment.
73 . “The incorporation reciprocal gift of sacramental marriage is rooted in the grace of baptism which establishes the fundamental alliance of each person with Christ in the Church. In mutual welcome and with the grace of Christ the engaged promise total gift, loyalty and openness to life, they recognize as constituent elements of the wedding gifts that God gives them, taking seriously their mutual commitment, in his name and in front the Church. Now, in faith you can take the goods of marriage as best sustainable commitments through the help of the grace of the sacrament. […] Therefore, the gaze of the Church go to spouses as the heart of the whole family that also turns his gaze towards Jesus. ” [65] The sacrament is not a” thing “or a” force “, because really Christ himself “encounters Christian spouses through the sacrament of marriage. Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to follow him by taking upon himself his own cross, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens. ” [66] Christian marriage is a sign that not only it indicates how much Christ loved his standing in the Church sealed on the Cross, but makes present the love in the communion of the spouses. Uniting themselves in one flesh represent the marriage of the Son of God with human nature. Thus, “in the joys of their love and family life he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the Lamb. ‘Wedding banquet [67] Although” the analogy between the couple husband-wife and the Christ- Church “is a ‘analogy imperfect”, [68] it invites to invoke the Lord to pour out his love within the limits of marital relations.
74 . Sexual union, lived in a humane manner and sanctified by the sacrament, is itself for growth via newlyweds in the life of grace. It is the “nuptial mystery”. [69] The union of bodies is expressed in the words of consent, in which parents are welcomed and have given each other to share a lifetime. These words give meaning to sexuality, freeing it from any ambiguity. However, in reality, the whole common life of the spouses, the whole network of relationships that weave between them, with their children and with the world, will be impregnated and strengthened by the grace of the sacrament which flows from the mystery of the Incarnation and Easter , in which God has expressed his love for mankind and joined intimately to it. They will never be alone with their forces to meet the challenges that arise. They are called to respond to the gift of God with their commitment, their creativity, their resistance and daily struggle, but they can always invoke the Holy Spirit that sanctified their union, because it has received a gift is manifested again in every new situation .
75 . According to the Latin tradition of the Church, in the sacrament of marriage the ministers are the man and woman who marry, [70] who, expressing their mutual consent and expressing it in mutual physical gift, receive a great gift. Their consent and the union of bodies are the instruments of divine action that makes them one flesh. In Baptism was consecrated their ability to marry as ministers of the Lord to answer the call of God. Therefore, when two non-Christian spouses receive Baptism, it is not necessary to renew the promise of marriage and it is not sufficient that the refuse, since, because of baptism they receive, their union is thereby sacramental. Canon law also recognizes the validity of certain marriages that are celebrated without an ordained minister. [71] In fact the natural order has been hired by the redemption of Jesus Christ, so that “among the baptized, there can be no valid contract bed, it’s not for that fact a sacrament. ” [72] the Church can require that the act is public, the presence of witnesses and other conditions that have changed the course of history, however, this does not take away the newlyweds their character the ministers of the sacrament, nor diminish the centrality of man and consent of the woman, which is what in itself establishes the sacramental bond. In any case, we need to further reflect on the divine action in the wedding ceremony, which is placed a strong emphasis in the Eastern Churches, with the attach special importance to the blessing of the contracting parties as a sign of the gift of the Spirit.
seeds of the Word and imperfect situations
76 . “The Gospel of the family also eats the seeds that have yet to mature, and had to ensure those trees that have dried up and need not be neglected”, [73] so that, starting from the gift of Christ in the sacrament, ” may patiently be led forward, arriving at a richer understanding and a fuller integration of this mystery in their lives. ” [74]
77 . Assuming the biblical teaching that all things were created by Christ and for Christ (cf. Col 1:16), the Synod Fathers recalled that “the order of redemption illuminates and celebrates that of creation. Natural marriage, therefore, is fully understood in the light of his sacramental fulfillment, only by fixing our gaze on Christ you know in depth the truth about human relationships. “In reality it is only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man. […] Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear “( Gaudium et Spes , 22). It is particularly appropriate in key Christocentric understanding the natural properties of marriage, which constitute the good of the spouses ( good of the spouses ) “, [75] which includes unity, openness to life, fidelity and indissolubility, and all ‘ inside the Christian marriage also the mutual help in the journey towards a fuller friendship with the Lord. “The discernment of the presence of verbs sowing in other cultures (cf. Ad Gentes , 11) can also be applied to the reality marriage and family. In addition to the true natural marriage there are positive elements in the double forms of other religious traditions “, [76] although not even missing the shadows. We can say that “every person who wishes to form a family in this world to teach the children to rejoice in every action you propose to overcome evil – a family that shows that the Spirit is alive and active – will find the gratitude and esteem , whatever their nation, religion or region belongs. ” [77]
78 . “The look of Christ, whose light illumines every man (cf. Jn 1,9; Gaudium et Spes , 22) inspired by the pastoral care of the Church towards the faithful who simply live together or who got married only civil or are divorced and remarried . In the perspective of the divine pedagogy, the Church turns with love to those who participate in its life imperfectly: invoking with them the grace of conversion, encourages them to do good, to take care with love for each other and to serve the community in which they live and work. […] When the union reaches a remarkable stability through a public bond – and is characterized by deep affection, as responsibilities towards children, from ability to pass tests – can be seen as an opportunity to accompany the sacrament of marriage, where this is possible. ” [78]
79 . “In the face of difficult situations and families wounds, we must always remember a general principle:” Pastors must know that, for the sake of the truth, are obliged to discern situations “( Familiaris Consortio , 84). The degree of responsibility is not equal in all cases, and there may be factors that limit the ability of decision. Therefore, while the doctrine is clearly expressed, are to be avoided judgments that do not take into account the complexity of the different situations, and you must be attentive to the way in which people live and suffer because of their condition. ” [79]
The transmission of life and education of children
80 . Marriage is primarily an “intimate community of life and conjugal love” [80] which is good for the couple themselves, [81]and sexuality “is ordered to the love of man and woman married ». [82] Therefore also ‘spouses to whom God has not granted children can nevertheless have a conjugal life full of meaning, human and Christian.” [83] nevertheless, this union is directed to the generation “for its very nature. ” [84] The child that is born” is not added to the mutual love of the spouses; but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment “. [85] It comes as the end of a process, but instead is present from the beginning of their love as an essential feature that can not be denied without mutilating the same love. From the beginning the love rejects any impulse to withdraw into himself and opens to a fruitfulness that extends beyond its own existence. So no genital act of the spouses can deny this meaning, [86] although for different reasons can not always effectively create a new life.
81 . The child asks to be born of such love and not in any way, since he “is not something owed to one, but a gift”, [87] which is “the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents ». [88] Because” in the order of creation conjugal love between a man and a woman and the transmission of life are ordered one to the other (cf. in January from 1.27 to 28). In this way the Creator made partakers man and woman of the work of its creation and at the same time made them instruments of his love, entrusting to their responsibilities the future of humankind through the transmission of human life. ” [89]
82 . The Synod Fathers stated that “it is not difficult to see the spread of a mentality that reduces the generation of life to a variable of individual design or couple.” [90] The Church’s teaching “helps to live in a harmonious way and conscious communion between spouses, in all its dimensions, together with the generative responsibilities. Goes rediscovered the message of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI, which emphasizes the need to respect the dignity of the person in the moral evaluation of birth regulation methods […] The choice of foster care and adoption expresses a particular fruitfulness of ‘ marital experience. ” [91] With special gratitude, the Church” supports families who welcome, educate and surround their children suffering disabilities. ” [92]
83 . In this context, I must say that, if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is generated and edited, is a lacerating contradiction that will become the place where life is denied and destroyed. It is so great the value of a human life, and that is how the inalienable right to life of the innocent child who grows in its mother’s womb, that in no way can be presented as a right over her own body the ability to make decisions against this life, which is an end in itself and which can never be the object domain by another human being. The family protects life at every stage and even to its setting. Therefore, “to those who work in healthcare facilities, it recalls the moral obligation of conscientious objection. Similarly, the Church does not feel the urgency to assert the right to natural death, avoiding the aggressive treatment and euthanasia, “but” strongly rejects the death penalty. ” [93]
84 . The Fathers wished to emphasize that “a key challenge in front of which are families today is certainly that of education, made more challenging and complex by the current cultural reality and the great influence of the media.” [94] “The Church plays a valuable role in supporting families, starting from initiation Christian, through welcoming communities. ” [95] However it seems very important to remember that the integral education of children is the” most serious duty “and at the same time ‘primary law’ parents. [96] it is not just the errand or a burden, but also a vital and irreplaceable law they are supposed to defend and that no one should claim to remove them. The state provides an educational service in a subsidiary, accompanying the non-delegable function of parents, who have the right to freely choose the type of education – high quality and accessible – wishing to give their children according to their convictions. The school does not replace parents but is complementary to them. This is a basic principle: “Any other contributor in the education process must act on behalf of the parents, with their consent and, to some extent, of their duties.” [97] However, “it opened a rift between family and society, between family and school, the educational pact today broke; and so, the educational alliance of companies with family was plunged into crisis “.[98]
85 . The Church is called to work together, with proper pastoral action be the same parents can fulfill their educational mission.It must do more to help them enhance their specific role, and to recognize that those who have received the sacrament of marriage become real education ministers , because in forming their children build up the Church, [99] and in doing so accepted a vocation that God offers them . [100]
86 . “With deep joy and profound consolation, the Church looks to the families that remain faithful to the teachings of the Gospel, encouraging them and thanking them for the testimony they offer. Thanks to them, in fact, is made credible the beauty of faithful and indissoluble marriage forever. In the family, “you might call the domestic Church” ( Lumen Gentium , 11), the first mature ecclesial experience of communion between people, in which is reflected, for grace, the mystery of the Holy Trinity.”Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous forgiveness, constantly renewed, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one’s life” ( Catechism of the Catholic Church , 1657) “. [101]
87 . The Church is the family of families, constantly enriched by the lives of all domestic churches. Therefore, “in virtue of the sacrament of matrimony every family becomes in effect a good for the Church. In this perspective will certainly be a precious gift for the Church today, also consider the reciprocity between the family and the Church: the Church is good for the family, the family is good for the Church. The custody of the sacramental gift of the Lord involves not only the individual family, but the entire Christian community. ” [102]
88 . Love lived in families is a permanent force for the life of the Church. “The unitive end of marriage is a constant reminder of the growing and deepening of this love. In their union of love the couple experience the beauty of fatherhood and motherhood;share projects and efforts, desires and concerns; learn the mutual care and mutual pardon. In this love they celebrate their happy moments and support in the difficult passages of their life story […] The beauty of mutual and free gift, the joy for life that is born and the loving care of all members, from toddlers to seniors , are some of the fruits that make it unique and irreplaceable response to the family’s vocation, ” [103] so much for the Church and for the whole society.
89 . All that has been said is not enough to express the Gospel of marriage and the family if we do not dwell specifically to talk about love . Because we can not encourage a way of faithfulness and reciprocal donation unless we stimulate growth, the consolidation and deepening of conjugal and family love. In fact, the grace of the sacrament of marriage is intended first of all “to perfect the couple’s love.” [104] Even in this case remains valid that even “if I owned a lot of faith to move mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing. And if I give all my goods in food, and though I deliver my body to have pride, but have not love, I gain nothing “( 1 Cor 13.2-3). The word “love”, however, which is one of the most used, often appears disfigured. [105]
90 . In so-called hymn to charity written by St. Paul, we find some of the characteristics of true love:
“Love is patient,
benevolent is love;
love is not jealous,
it does not boast,
is not puffed up with pride,
not rude,
does not seek its own interests,
does not get angry,
do not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not enjoy injustice
but rejoices with the truth.
it bears all,
he believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things “( 1 Cor 13,4-7).
This is lived and cultivated in life who share every day the couple, with each other and with their children. Therefore, it is valuable to stop and explain the meaning of the expressions of this text, to attempt an application to the concrete existence of every family.
91 . The first expression is used macrothymei . Translation is not simply “that endures all things” because this idea is expressed at the end of v. 7. The sense is gathered from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which states that God is “slow to anger” ( Ex 34.6; Nm 14:18). It shows when the person is guided by impulses and avoid attack. It is a feature of the Covenant God who calls us to imitate him even within the family life. The texts in which Paul uses this term must be read against the background of the book of Wisdom (cf. 11:23; 12,2.15-18): at the same time when we praise the moderation of God in order to give space to repent , he insists on his power that manifests itself when it acts with mercy. God’s patience is an exercise of mercy towards the sinner and reveals the real power.
92 . Being patient does not mean let mistreat us continually, or tolerate physical aggression, or permit to treat us as objects.The problem arises when they claim that the reports are ideal or that people are perfect, or when we place ourselves at the center and expect only that face our will. Then all impatient there, everything leads us to react aggressively. If we do not cultivate patience, we will always have excuses to respond in anger, and eventually we will become people who can not live with, antisocial unable to dominate the impulses, and the family will turn into a battlefield. This is why God’s Word exhorts us: “vanish from you all bitterness and wrath and anger, shouting and slander with all malice” ( Ephesians 4:31). This patience is strengthened when I recognize that the other has the right to live on this earth with me, as it is. No matter if it is a nuisance for me, if it alters my plans, though harassing me with his way of being or with his ideas, it is not all over as I expected. Love always involves a sense of deep compassion, which leads to accept the other as part of this world, even when it acts in a way different from what I would have wanted.
93 . It follows the word chresteuetai , which is unique in the whole Bible, derived from Chrestos (good person, showing his goodness in the actions). However, given the location in which it is located, in close parallelism with the preceding verb, it becomes a complement. In this way Paul wants to make clear that the “patience” to be appointed in the first place is not an entirely passive attitude, but is accompanied by an activity, as a dynamic and creative reaction to others. It indicates that love does good to others and promotes them. Therefore it translates as “benevolent.”
94 . On the whole the text you see that Paul wants to insist that love is not just a feeling, but it must be understood in the sense that the “love” verb in Hebrew, meaning: “to do good “. As St. Ignatius of Loyola, “the love you have to put more in deeds than in words.” [106] In this way it can show all its fruitfulness, and allows us to experience the joy of giving, the nobility and the sized to give himself in superabundant way, without measuring, without demanding rewards, just for the sake of giving and serving.
95 . So you reject as contrary to the love an attitude expressed by the term zelos (jealousy or envy). Means that in love there is no room for feel sorry because of the other good (cf. Acts 7.9; 17.5). Envy is a sadness for the good of others which shows that we are not interested in the happiness of others, because we are solely focused on our well-being. While love makes us come out of ourselves, envy leads us to be centered on our ego. True love appreciates the successes of others, does not feel them as a threat, and gets rid of the bitter taste of envy. Accept the fact that everyone has different gifts and different paths in life. Thus it makes sure to find their own way to be happy and let others find theirs.
96 . Ultimately it is to fulfill the one that required the last two commandments of the Law of God: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor “( Ex 20:17). Love leads us to a sincere appreciation of each human being, acknowledging his right to happiness. I love that person, I look at it through the eyes of God the Father, who gives us everything “because we can enjoy” ( 1 Tim 6:17), and therefore accept it in me that can enjoy a good time. This same root of love, in any case, is what leads me to reject injustice by the fact that some have too much and others have nothing, or one that pushes me to ensure that those who are rejected by society can live a little ‘joy. But this is not envy but desire to equity.
97 . Following the expression perpereuetai , indicating vainglory, anxious to show himself superior to impress others with a pedantic attitude and quite aggressive. Those who love not only avoids talking too much about himself, but also because it is centered in the other, get to know its place, without claiming to stand in the center. The following word – physioutai – is very similar, because it shows that love is not arrogant. Literally expresses the fact that you do not “magnify” in front of others, and indicates something more subtle. It is not just an obsession to show their quality, but also makes losing a sense of reality. It is considered the largest one that was because we believed more “spiritual” or “wise men”. Paul uses this verb other times, for example, to say that “the knowledge fills with pride, but love builds up” ( 1 Cor 8,1). Namely, some believe great because they know more than others, and dedicate themselves to demand from them and control them, when in fact what makes us great is the love that includes care, support the weak. In another verse uses it to criticize those who “swell up with pride” (cf. 1 Cor4:18), but actually have more verbiage real “power” of the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 4:19).
98 . It ‘important that Christians live this attitude in the way they deal with unfamiliar formats in faith, fragile or less secure in their beliefs. Sometimes it’s the other ones, as part of their family, are supposed to be more grown up, become arrogant and insufferable. The attitude of humility appears here as something that is part of love, because in order to understand, forgive and serve others to the heart, it is essential to heal the pride and cultivate humility. Jesus reminded his disciples that in the world of power each trying to dominate the other, and this tells them, “will not be so among you” ( Mt 20,26). The logic of Christian love is not one of those who feel superior to others and needs to make them feel his power, but one for which “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” ( Mt 20:27). In family life can not reign the logic of domination of one over the other, or competition to see who is more intelligent or powerful, because this logic negates love. Also applies to the family this advice: “Put on all of humility toward one another, because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” ( 1 Pt 5,5).
99 . To love means also make themselves amiable, and here is the sense the expression aschemonei . He wants to show that love does not work in a rude, is not acting so rude, it is not hard in the stretch. His manners, his words, his gestures, are pleasing and not harsh or rigid. Detests make others suffer. Courtesy “is a school of sensitivity and lack of interest,” which requires the person who “cultivate his mind and senses, you learn to listen, to speak and at times to be silent.” [107] lovable Being is not a style that a Christian can choose or refuse: it is part of the essential needs of love, so “every human being is obliged to be affable to those around him.” [108] every day, ‘enter into the other’s life, even when it part of our lives, asks the delicacy of a non-invasive approach, which renews the confidence and respect. […] And love, the more intimate and profound, the more demands the respect of freedom and the ability to wait for the other to open the door of his heart. ” [109]
100 . To dispose of a real encounter with the other, it requires a loving gaze fixed on him. This is not possible when reigns a pessimism that highlights the flaws and mistakes of others, perhaps to make up their own complex. An amiable gaze allows us not dwell much on each other’s limits, and so we can tolerate it and unite in a common project, even if we are different. The amiable love generates constraints, cultivates ties, creates new integration networks, builds a solid social fabric. In this way protects itself, because without a sense of belonging can not support a dedication to others, everyone ends up only seek their own convenience and coexistence becomes impossible. An antisocial person believes that others exist to satisfy his needs, and that when they do they only do their duty. So there is no room for the love and kindness of his language. He who loves is able to say words of encouragement, that comfort, that give strength, they comfort, which stimulate. We see, for example, some words that Jesus said to the people: “Come on son!” ( Mt 9,2). “Great is your faith!” ( Mt 15:28). “Get up!” ( Mk 5,41). “It should be ‘at peace’ ( Lk 7,50). “Do not be afraid” ( Mt 14:27). No words that humiliate, which sadden, that irritate, who despise.In the family we must learn this sweet language of Jesus.
101 . We have said many times that to love others you must first love yourself. However, this hymn says that love “does not seek its own interests”, or “does not seek what is his.” This expression is used as well in another text: “Each one does not look for his own interests, but also those of others” ( Philippians 2.4). Faced with such a clear statement of the Scriptures, we must avoid attributing the love priorities for themselves as if it were the noblest of the gift of oneself to others. A certain priority of love for themselves can be understood only as a psychological condition, as those who are unable to love himself has difficulty to love others: “Who is bad with himself with those who will be good? […] No one is worse than those who hurt himself “( Sir14.5 to 6).
102 . However, the same Thomas Aquinas explained that “it is more proper to charity want to love you to want to be loved”[110] and that, in effect, ‘mothers, who are the ones they love the most, they look more to love that of being loved. ” [111]Therefore love can go beyond justice and overflowing for free,” expecting nothing “( Lk 6:35), until you get bigger love, which is” to give life ” for others ( Jn 15:13). It is still possible this generosity that allows you to donate for free, and to donate to the end?Surely you can, because it is what the Gospel asks: “Freely you have received, freely give” ( Mt 10,8).
103 . If the first expression of the hymn invited us to patience that avoids reacting sharply in the face of weaknesses or errors of others, now appears another word – paroxynetai – which refers to an inner reaction of outrage provoked by something external. It is an inner violence, the irritation does not show that puts us on the defensive ahead of the others, as if they were pesky enemies that must be avoided. Food such intimate aggression is useless. It just makes you sick and ends up isolating us. The outrage is healthy when it brings us to react in front of a grave injustice, but it is harmful when it could permeate all our attitudes toward others.
104 . The Gospel invites rather to look at the beam in their own eye (cf. Mt 7,5), and as Christians we can not ignore the constant invitation of God’s Word not to feed the anger: “Do not be overcome by evil” ( Rom 12,21). “And do not be weary in doing good” ( Gal 6,9). One thing is to feel the power that erupts aggression and another thing is to agree to it, let it become a permanent attitude: “Be angry but do not sin; not the sun go down on your anger “( Eph 4:26). Therefore, you should never finish the day without making peace in the family. “How do I make peace? Get on my knees? No! Only a small gesture, a little thing like that, and family harmony returns. Just a caress, without words. But never finish the day with your family without making peace. ” [112] The inner reaction to harassment caused by others should be first to bless the heart, desire the good of others, ask God to deliver him and heal: “Answer the wishing well. For to this you were called by God to inherit his blessing “( 1 Pt 3,9). If we have to fight against an evil, let’s do it, but we always say “no” to the internal violence.
105 . If we allow such a bad feeling to penetrate in our guts, we give space to that resentment that lurks in the heart. The phrase logizetai to kakon means “resentful”, “if you wrote down the door,” that is to say, it is resentful. The opposite is forgiveness, a forgiveness based on a positive attitude, which tries to understand the weakness of others and try to make excuses for the other person, as Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” ( Lk 23:34). Instead the tendency is often to look more and more faults, to imagine more and more bad things, to assume any kind of bad intentions, and so the resentment is growing and takes root. In this way, any errors or fall of the spouse can damage the bond of love and family stability. The problem is that sometimes you give each thing the same gravity, with the risk of becoming cruel for any other error. The proper exercise of their rights becomes a persistent and constant thirst for revenge rather than in a healthy defense of their dignity.
106 . When we are offended or disappointed, forgiveness is possible and desirable, but no one says it’s easy. The truth is that “the family communion can only be preserved and perfected through a great spirit of sacrifice. It requires, in fact, a ready and generous openness of each and every one of understanding, tolerance, forgiveness and reconciliation. No family ignores how selfishness, discord, tension, conflict violently attack and at times mortally wound its own communion: hence the multiple and varied forms of division in family life. ” [113]
107 . Today we know that in order to forgive, we need to go through the liberating experience to understand and forgive ourselves. So many times our mistakes, or the critical gaze of the people we love, we have lost the love towards ourselves. This leads us to the end to look at us from the other, to escape by the affection, to fill us with fear in interpersonal relationships.Therefore, to blame others turns into a false relief. You need to pray with their own history, to accept oneself, to know how to live with their limitations, and even to forgive, to be able to have this same attitude toward others.
108 . But this presupposes the experience of being forgiven by God, justified freely and not for our own merits. We were joined by a love prior to all our works, which always offers new opportunities, promotes and stimulates. If we accept that God’s love is unconditional, that the Father’s affection you should not buy or pay, then we can love beyond all, to forgive others even when they have wronged us. Otherwise, our family life will cease to be a place of understanding, support and encouragement, and will be a space of permanent tension and mutual punishment.
109 . The expression chairei epi te adikia indicates something negative inducted into the secret person of the heart. It is the poisonous attitude of those who rejoices when he sees that he does injustice to someone. The sentence is completed with the following, which is expressed in a positive way: synchairei te aletheia : rejoices with the truth. Namely, welcomes the good of the other, when his dignity is recognized, when you appreciate his skills and his good works. This is impossible for those who must always be compared and compete, even with one’s spouse, to the point of rejoicing secretly for his failures.
110 . When a person who loves can do good to another, or when they see that other things are going well, he lives with joy and in that way gives glory to God, because “God loves a cheerful giver” ( 2 Cor 9,7), our Lord appreciates especially those who rejoices in the other’s happiness. If you do not nurture our ability to enjoy the good of the other, and above all we focus on our needs, we condemn ourselves to living with little joy, since, as Jesus said, “it is more blessed to give than to receive” ( Acts20:35). The family must always be the place where anyone who does something good in life, knows that there it will celebrate with him.
111 . The list is completed with four expressions that speak of a totality: “everything.” It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. In this way, it strongly emphasizes the dynamic counter-cultural love, able to cope with anything can threaten.
112 . In the first place it is stated that “bears all things” ( panta stegei ). It differs from “takes no account of evil”, because this term has to do with the use of language; can mean “keep silent” about the negative that can be in the other person. Implies limiting judgment, contain the inclination to launch a conviction tough and relentless. “Do not condemn and you will not be condemned” ( Lk 6:37). Although it goes against our usual use of language, the Word of God asks us: “Do not speak ill of one another, brethren” ( Jas 4:11). Pausing to damage the image of the other is a way to strengthen its, to download the jealousies and envies no case do the damage we cause. Many times we forget that defamation can be a great sin, a serious offense to God, when it severely affects the good name of others by providing them very difficult to repair the damage. That is why the Word of God is so hard on his tongue, saying it is “the world of evil” that “infects the entire body and sets fire to the whole of our life” ( Jas 3,6), “it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison “( James 3.8). If “with it we curse men made in the likeness of God” ( Jas3.9), the love you take care of the image of the other, with a delicacy that leads to even preserve the good name of the enemy.In defending the divine law we must never forget this love need.
113 . The spouses who love each other and belong together, speak well of each other, try to show the good side of your spouse beyond its weaknesses and its mistakes. In any case, they remain silent as not to damage the image. But it is not only an external act, but comes from an inner attitude. Nor is the naivete of those who claim not to see the difficulties and weak points of the other, but it is the breadth of vision of those who placed those weaknesses and those are wrong in their context; points out that such defects are only a part, are not the totality of the being of. An unpleasant fact in the report is not the totality of that relationship. So we can simply accept that we are a complex combination of light and shadow. The other is not only what it bothers me. It’s much more than that. For the same reason, I do not pretend that his love is perfect to appreciate it. I love how it is and how it can, with its limitations, but the fact that his love is imperfect does not mean that it is false or that it is not real. It is real, but limited and land. So, if you expect too much, in some way I will do to understand, since it can neither accept to play the role of a divine being or to be at the service of all my needs. The love coexists with the imperfection, the excuse, and know how to stay quietly in front of the beloved limits.
114 . Panta pisteuei : “he believes all things.” For context, one must not understand this “faith” in the theological sense, but in the current “trust.” It is not only not to suspect that the other is lying or deceiving. This fundamental trust recognizes the light on God who hides behind the darkness, or the embers still burning under the ashes.
115 . This trust makes possible a relationship of freedom. No need to control the other, to meticulously follow in his footsteps, to prevent escapes from our arms. Love has confidence, leaving in freedom, he renounces control everything, to possess, to dominate. This freedom, which makes it possible spaces of autonomy, openness to the world and new experiences, allows that the report will enrich and does not become a inbreeding without horizons. Thus the couple, finding himself, can live the joy of sharing what they have learned and received outside the family circle. At the same time it makes possible the sincerity and transparency, because when one knows that the others put their trust in him and appreciate the goodness of the bottom, then it shows how, without concealment. One knowing always suspected him, who found them without compassion, who do not love him unconditionally, prefer to keep its secrets, to hide its failures and weaknesses, pretend what it is not. Conversely, a family in which he reigns a solid and loving trust, and where it always comes back to trust in spite of everything, it allows to emerge the true identity of its members and ensures that spontaneously waste deceit, falsehood and lies.
116 . Panta elpizei : do not despair of the future. In connection with the previous word, it indicates the hope of those who know that the other can change. Always hope that it is possible a maturing, a surprising flowering of beauty, the hidden potentialities of his being one day sprout. It does not mean that everything will change in this life. It implies to accept that certain things do not happen as one wants them, but maybe God writes straight with crooked lines of that person and draw some good from the evil that it can not get over this land.
117 . Here it should be noted the hope in its full sense, because it includes the belief in life after death. That person, with all its weaknesses, is called to the fullness of Heaven. There, completely transformed by the resurrection of Christ, there will no longer its fragility, its darkness nor its pathologies. Beyond the authentic being that person will shine with all its power for good and beauty. This also allows us, in the midst of the troubles of this land, to contemplate that person with a supernatural look, the light of hope, and wait for that fullness that one day receive in the heavenly Kingdom, though now it is not visible.
118 . Panta hypomenei means that bears a positive spirit all adversities. It means to remain steadfast in the midst of a hostile environment. Not simply to tolerate some troublesome things, but something broader: a dynamic resistance and consistent, able to overcome any challenge. It is love in spite of everything, even when all the context calls for something else. Manifests a dose of tenacious heroism, power against any negative current, an option for the good that nothing can overthrow. This reminds me of the words of Martin Luther King, when reiterating the choice of brotherly love even in the midst of the worst persecutions and humiliations: “The person who hates you more, has something good in himself; and even the nation that hates most, has something good in itself; Also the breed that most hates, has something good in itself. And when you get to the point of looking at the face of every human being and see a lot in him what religion calls “God’s image,” he begins to love him despite everything. No matter what you do, you see there the image of God. There is an element of goodness of which you can never get rid of […] Another way you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself to defeat your enemy, that is the moment in which you decide not to do it […] When you rise to the level of love, its great beauty and power, the only thing that you have to defeat the evil systems. The people who are trapped by that system you love them, but try to defeat that system […] I hate to hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me, and I return you off and you give me back the shot, and so on, it is clear that it will continue forever. Simply it never ends. Somewhere, someone has to have a little ‘common sense, and that’s the strongest person. The strong person is the person who is able to break the chain of hatred, the evil chain […] Someone must have faith and morality enough to break it and inject into the same structure of the universe the strong and powerful element of ‘ love. ” [114]
119 . In family life need to cultivate this power of love, which helps to combat the evil that threatens. Love refuses to be dominated by resentment, contempt towards the people, by the desire to injure or to pay something. The Christian ideal, and especially in the family, is love regardless. Sometimes I admire, for example, the attitude of people who had to be separated from your spouse for protection from physical violence, and yet, because of conjugal love that wants to push the feelings, have been able to act for its own good, though through other, in times of sickness, suffering or distress. This too is love regardless.
120 . The hymn of St. Paul, we have traveled, allows us to move to the conjugal charity. It is the love that unites the spouses,[115] sanctified, enriched and enlightened by the grace of the sacrament of marriage. It is “affective union”, [116] spiritual and altruistic, but brings together the friendship tenderness and erotic passion, although it is able to exist even when the feelings and passion will weaken. Pope Pius XI taught that such love permeates all the duties of married life and “holds the primacy of the nobility.” [117] In fact, such a strong love, poured out by the Holy Spirit, is the reflection indestructible alliance between Christ and humanity, which culminated in the dedication to the end, on the cross: “the Spirit which the Lord pours forth gives a new heart, and renders man and woman capable of loving each other as Christ has loved us. Conjugal love reaches that fullness to which it is interiorly ordained, conjugal charity. ” [118]
121 . Marriage is a precious sign, because “when a man and a woman celebrated the sacrament of Matrimony, God, so to speak, is” reflected “in them, marks them with his features and the indelible character of his love. Marriage is the icon of the love of God for us. Even God, in fact, is a communion of the three Persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit live always and forever in perfect unity. And this is precisely the mystery of marriage: God makes of the couple one life. ” [119] This results in very significant effect, everyday, because the bride and groom,” by virtue of the Sacrament, are invested with a real mission, because can make visible, starting from simple things, ordinary, the love with which Christ loves his Church, continuing to give his life for her. ” [120]
122 . However, it is not good to confuse different planes: one must not throw over two people limited the tremendous burden of having to perfectly reproduce the union that exists between Christ and his Church, because marriage as a sign implies “a dynamic process , which advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God. ” [121]
123 . After the love that unites us to God, conjugal love is the “greatest friendship.” [122] It ‘union that has all the characteristics of a good friendship: Research the welfare of others, reciprocity , intimacy, tenderness, stability, and similarity between friends that is being built with the shared life. But the wedding Add to this indissoluble exclusivity, which is expressed in stable project to share and build together all of existence. We are sincere and recognize the signs of reality: who is in love does not plan that this report can only be for a period of time, who lives intensely the joy of getting married does not think of anything passenger;those who accompany the celebration of a marriage full of love, even if fragile, hope that can last over time; Children do not just want their parents love each other, but also that they are faithful and always remain united. These and other signs show that in the very nature of married love is openness to the final. The union which crystallizes in bed forever promise, it is more than a social formality or a tradition, because it is rooted in the spontaneous inclinations of the human person; and, for believers, is a covenant before God that demands fidelity: “The Lord is witness between you and the wife of your youth, that you cheated, while your companion, and the wife of thy covenant: […] no one deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. Because I hate the repudiation “( Ml 2,14.15.16).
124 . A weak or sick love, unable to accept marriage as a challenge that requires you to fight, to be reborn, to reinvent itself and always begin again until death, is not able to sustain a high level of commitment. Gives way to the culture of provisional, that prevents a process of continuous growth. But “promise a love that is forever is possible when you find a bigger picture of their projects, which sustains us and allows us to donate the entire future of the loved one.” [123] Because such love can pass through all the tests and remain faithful despite everything, it requires the gift of grace which strengthen and elevate. As St. Robert Bellarmine, “the fact that a man and a woman come together in an exclusive and indissoluble bond, so they can not be separated, whatever the difficulties, and even when it has lost the hope of offspring, this does not can take place without a great mystery. ” [124]
125 . Marriage is also a friendship that included treasury notes of passion, but always oriented toward union gradually more stable and intense way. Because “it has not been set up only for procreation,” but in order that the mutual love “have their legitimate manifestations, is ripe developments and arrivals» [125] . This peculiar friendship between a man and a woman buys a totalizing character that is given only in the conjugal union. Just because it’s all-encompassing this union is also exclusive, faithful and open to the generation. He shares everything, including sexuality, always with mutual respect. The Second Vatican Council affirmed it by saying that “such a love, merging the human with the divine, leads the spouses to a free and mutual gift of themselves, which is expressed through feelings and gestures of tenderness and love pervades the whole life of the spouses “. [126]
126 . In marriage is good to take care of the joy of love. When the pursuit of pleasure is obsessive, it locked up in one area and does not allow you to find other types of satisfaction. The joy, however, broadens the ability to enjoy and you can add what actually taste different, even in the phase of life where the pleasure is turned off. This is why St. Thomas said that it uses the word “joy” to refer to the amplitude expansion of the heart. [127] The joy bed, you can also live in the midst of suffering, implies accepting that marriage is a necessary combination of joys and hardships, tensions and rest, of suffering and deliverance, of satisfaction and research, annoyances and pleasures, always in the path of friendship, that drives the couple to take care of one another: “render mutual help and service.” [128]
127 . The love of friendship is called “charity” when it seizes and appreciate the “high” value that has the other. [129] The beauty – “the top” of the other value that does not coincide with the its physical or psychological attractions – allows us to enjoy the sanctity of his person without the imperative need to possess her. In the consumer society it is impoverished aesthetic sense and so turns off the joy. Everything there is to be bought, owned and consumed; even people. Tenderness, however, is one manifestation of that love which is free from selfish desire to selfish possession. It leads us to vibrate in front of a person with immense respect and a certain fear of them give or take away his freedom. Love for each other implies that taste to contemplate and appreciate what is beautiful and sacred of his personal being, which exists beyond my needs. This allows me to seek his well even when I know it can not be mine or when it became physically unpleasant, aggressive or annoying.Therefore, “the love that one has appreciated another person depends on the fact that giving something for free.” [130]
128 . The aesthetic experience of love is expressed in the look that contemplates the other as an end in himself, even if he is sick, old or no sensitive to do. The look he appreciates enormously important and lesinarlo usually produces damage. How many things do sometimes spouses and children to be considered and taken into account! Many injuries and crises have their origin in the time when we stop contemplarci. This is what they express some complaints and protests that feel in families. “My husband looks at me, it seems that for him I am invisible.” “Please, look at me when I talk.” “My wife does not look at me anymore, now only has eyes for the children.” “In my house not interested in anyone or even see me, as if I did not exist.” Love opens the eyes and allows you to see, beyond all, how much is a human being.
129 . The joy of this contemplative love must be cultivated. Since we are made to love, we know that there is no greater joy in sharing a good thing: “Give and accept gifts, and fun” ( Sir 14:16). The most intense joys of life come when you can procure the happiness of others, in a foretaste of heaven. He should remember the happy scene in the film Babette’s Feast , where the generous cook receives a grateful hug and praise: “How delizierai the angels.” It is sweet and comforting joy that comes from procuring pleasure to others, to see them enjoy. This joy, of brotherly love effect, is not that the vanity of the beholder himself, but of those who loves and welcomes the good of the beloved, that is poured into the other and become fruitful in him.
130 . On the other hand, the joy is renewed in pain. As St. Augustine said, “the greater was the danger in the battle, the more intense is the joy in the triumph.” [131] Having suffered and fought together, the couple can experience that it is worth it, because they got something good, they learned something together, or because they can better appreciate what they have. Few human joys are so deep and joyful as when two people who love each other have conquered together something that has cost them a great shared effort.
131 . I want to tell young people that none of this is adversely affected when love takes over the institution of marriage mode.The union is in that institution how to channel its stability and its real and concrete growth. It ‘s true that love is much more than an external control device or a form of marriage contract, but it is equally certain that the decision to give the marriage a configuration visible in companies with certain commitments, manifests its relevance: shows identification seriousness with each other, is in excess of individualism adolescence, and expresses the firm decision to belong to each other. Getting married is a way of expressing that really has left the maternal nest to weave other strong bonds and take on a new responsibility in the face of another person. This is worth much more than a mere spontaneous association for mutual gratification, it would be a marriage privatization. Marriage as a social institution is a tool for the protection and mutual commitment to the maturing of love, because the decision for each other will grow in strength, solidity and depth, and at the same time so that it can fulfill its mission in society. So the marriage is beyond fleeting fashion and persists. Its essence is rooted in the very nature of the human person and his social nature. It implies a series of obligations which flow from love itself, however, by a determined and generous love so much that it is capable of risking the future.
132 . Choose the marriage in this way expresses the real and effective decision to transform two roads in one way, come what may, and despite any challenge. Because of the seriousness of this public commitment of love, it can not be a hasty decision, but for the same reason it can not be postponed indefinitely. Engage another in an exclusive and definitive always it involves a share of risk and daring bet. The rejection of such a guarantee is selfish, interested, petty, can not recognize the rights of others and never get to present it to the company as worthy of being loved unconditionally. On the other hand, those who are truly in love, they tend to show others their love. Love materialized in a contract marriage before others, with all the obligations that result from this institutionalization, is a manifestation and protection of a “yes” that you give unconditionally and without restrictions. That “yes” is to say to each other that you may always be trusted, it will not be abandoned if they lose attractiveness, or if you will have difficulty if you will offer new possibilities for pleasure or selfish interests.
I love that manifests itself and grows
133 . The love of friendship unifies all aspects of married life and helps family members to move forward in all its phases.Therefore gestures that express such love must be constantly cultivated, without avarice, the generous words rich. In the family “it is necessary to use three words. I would like to repeat it. Three words: permission, thanks, sorry. Three key words! “. [132] ” When a family is not intrusive and you ask “permission”, when in a family is not selfish and learn to say “thank you”, and when in a family one notices who did a bad thing and knows how to ask “sorry” in that family is no peace and no joy. ” [133] we are not stingy to use these words, we are generous in repeating them day after day, because” some silences weigh, at times even in the family, between husband and wife, between parents and children, between brothers. ” [134] Instead, the right words, said at the right time, protect and nourish the love day after day.
134 . All this is accomplished in a process of ongoing growth. This so particular form of love which is marriage, is called to a constant maturity, because it always apply what St. Thomas Aquinas said of charity: “Charity, because of its nature, does not have a limit of increase, since it is a participation in the infinite love which is the Holy Spirit. […] Not even by the subject of the can put a limit, because with the growth of charity, even more and more grows the ability to further increase. ” [135] St. Paul urged strongly:” The Lord make you increase and abound in the love of you and for all “( 1 Thessalonians 3:12); and he adds: “With regard to fraternal love […] we urge you, brothers, to progress even more” ( 1 Thessalonians 4.9 to 10). Even more.Married love is not first of all speaking about the guards as an obligation, or repeating a doctrine, but fortifying thanks to a steady growth under the impulse of grace. The love that grows begins to take risks, and we can grow only correspond to the divine grace through more acts of love, acts of affection more frequent, more intense, more generous, more tender, more cheerful. The husband and wife “experience the meaning of their oneness and always more fully achieve.” [136] The gift of divine love that is poured out on the couple is both a call to a steady development of this gift of grace.
135 . There are good some fantasies of an idyllic and perfect love, private thereby to each stimulus to grow. Heavenly idea of earthly forget that the best is one that has not yet been reached, the wine matured over time. As they reminded the Bishops of Chile, “there are no perfect families that we hear in misleading advertising and consumerism. In them do not pass the years, there is no disease, pain, death […]. Advertising consumerist displays an illusion that has nothing to do with the reality they face every day, fathers and mothers of families. ” [137] It is healthier to accept realistically the limits, challenges and imperfections, and heed the call to grow together, to mature love and cultivate union strength, come what may.
136 . The dialogue is a privileged mode and basic necessities for living, expressing and mature love in married and family life.But it requires a long and demanding training. Men and women, adults and young people, have different ways of communicating, use different languages, they move with other codes. The way to ask questions, the answers mode, the tone used, the time and many other factors can affect communication. Moreover, it is always necessary to develop certain attitudes that are an expression of love and makes authentic dialogue possible.
137 . Holding time, quality time, which is to listen patiently and carefully, until the other has given all that he needed to express.This requires asceticism not to start talking before the appropriate time. Instead of starting to offer opinions or advice, make sure you have listened to everything that the other needs to be said. This implies making inner silence to hear no noise in the hearts and minds: to shed all haste, to put aside their own needs and urgencies, make room. Many times one spouse does not need a solution to their problems but to be heard. He must feel that his sentence was read, his disappointment, his fear, his anger, his hope, his dream. However, these complaints are common: “Do not listen to me. When it seems that he’s doing it, actually he is thinking of something else. ” “I speak and I feel that is waiting for it to end once and for all.” “When I try to change the subject, or gives me quick answers to close the conversation.”
138 . Develop the habit of giving real importance to another. It is about giving value to his person, to recognize that the right to exist, to think independently and to be happy. Never underestimate what you can say or claim, although it is necessary to express their point of view. This is where the underlying belief that everyone has a contribution to make, because they have a different experience of life, because they look at things from another point of view, because they have matured other concerns and have other skills and insights. You can recognize the truth of the other, the importance of his deepest concerns and backing of what he says, even behind aggressive words. For this reason we must try to put yourself in his shoes and interpret the depth of his heart, find the one that fascinates him and take that passion as a starting point for further dialogue.
139 . Mental Amplitude, not to shut himself obsessively on a few ideas, and flexibility to change or add their own opinions. It is possible that by my thought and other thoughts can emerge a new synthesis that enriches both. The unity to which we must aspire is not uniformity, but a “unity in diversity” or “reconciled diversity”. In this enriching form of fraternal communion, the different meet, respect, appreciate, while maintaining different shades and accents that enrich the common good. You need to break free from the obligation to be the same. And it also takes cunning to notice the “interference in time” that can appear, so they do not destroy a process of dialogue. For example, recognizing the bad feelings that may emerge and relativize so do not affect communication. It is important to the ability to express what you feel without hurting; use a language and a way of speaking that they can be more easily accepted or tolerated on the other, even though the content is demanding; expose their criticism, however, without downloading the anger as a form of revenge, and avoid a moralistic language that only seeks to attack, irony, blame, injure. Many discussions in the pair are not very serious issues. Sometimes it’s the little things, little importance, but what alters the minds is how to say them or attitude that is assumed in the dialogue.
140 . Having gestures of attention for each other and demonstrations of affection. The love overcomes the worst barriers.When you can love someone, or when we feel loved by him, we can better understand what he wants to express and make us understand. Overcoming fragility that leads us to have fear of the other as if it were a “competitor”. It is very important to base its security on deep choices, beliefs and values, and not to win an argument or that there is reason given.
141 . Finally, we recognize that in order for the dialogue to be fruitful must have something to say, and this requires an inner wealth that feeds in reading, personal reflection, prayer and openness to society. Otherwise, the conversations become tedious and inconsistent. Not concerned about its spirit and there is a variety of relationships when each spouse with other people, family life becomes inbred and dialogue is impoverished.
142 . The Second Vatican Council taught that this conjugal love “involves the good of the whole person; therefore, it has the potential to enrich the special dignity of the body and expressions of psychic life and ennoble them as elements and special friendship Marital signs “. [138] There must be some reason for the fact that a love without pleasure or passion does not it is enough to symbolize the union of the human heart with God: “All mystics have claimed that supernatural love and heavenly love are the symbols of which are in love to the research room, more than friendship, more than in sentiment branch or in dedication to a cause. And the reason is quite rightly in its totality. ” [139] Why not pause to talk about feelings and sexuality in marriage?
143 . Desires, feelings, emotions, what the classic called “passions”, occupy an important place in marriage. They are generated when an “other” is present and is manifested in their lives. It belongs to every living being move towards another reality, and this trend has always affective basic signs: the pleasure or pain, joy or pain, tenderness or fear. They are the basis of most basic psychological. The human being is a living of this land and everything he does and look is full of passions.
144 . Jesus as a real man, living things with a charge of emotion. So it pained him the rejection of Jerusalem (cf. Mt 23:37), and this situation made him shed tears (cf. Lk 19,41). Also he felt compassion for the suffering of the people (cf. Mk 6:34). Seeing people cry was moved and disturbed (cf. Jn 11:33), and He Himself mourned the death of a friend (cf. Jn 11:35). These manifestations of his feelings showed how far his human heart was open to others.
145 . Try an emotion is not something morally good or bad in itself. [140] Beginning to feel desire or rejection is not sinful nor reprehensible. What is good or bad is the act that one performs pushed or accompanied by a passion. But if the feelings are fed, sought after and because of them we commit evil deeds, evil lies in the decision to feed them and the evil acts that follow.Along the same lines, taking pleasure for someone is not in itself a good thing. If with such pleasure I make sure that that person will become my slave, the feeling will be at the service of my selfishness. To believe that we are good only because they “have feelings” is a terrible deception. There are people who feel capable of great love just because they have a great need for affection, but they are not able to fight for the happiness of others and live locked up in their desires. In this case the feelings distract from the great values and hide selfishness that does not make it possible to grow a healthy and happy family life.
146 . On the other hand, if a passion accompanies the free act, it can express the depth of that choice. Love double door to make sure that all the emotional life becomes good for the family and is at the service of life in common. The maturity comes at a family when the emotional life of its members is transformed into a feeling that does not dominate or obscure the great options and values but that supports their freedom, [141] rises from it, enriches it, adorns and makes harmony for the good of all.
God loves the joy of his children
147 . This requires a pedagogical process, a process that involves sacrifices. It is a conviction of the Church that many times has been rejected, as if it were the enemy of human happiness. Benedict XVI has raised this question with great clarity: “The Church with all her commandments and prohibitions, the most precious thing in life does not make us bitter, perhaps? Not she blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator for us, offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine? “. [142] But he replied that, although there have been exaggerations in Christianity or asceticism diverted , the official teaching of the Church, faithful to the Scriptures, has not rejected “eros as such, but has declared war on a warped and destructive, because this counterfeit divinization of eros […] deprives it of its dignity and dehumanizes. ” [143]
148 . The emotion and instinct education is necessary, and to this end it is sometimes essential to ask some limit. The excess, the lack of control, the obsession with one type of pleasures, eventually weaken and sicken the same pleasure, [144] and damage family life. In fact you can make a nice walk with the passions, which means more and more direct them in a self-giving project and full self-realization that enriches interpersonal relationships within the family. Does not imply giving up moments of intense joy, [145] but hire them in a mix with other moments of generous dedication, patient hope, of inevitable exhaustion, stress for an ideal. Family life is all this and deserves to be lived fully.
149 . Some spiritual currents insist on eliminating the desire to break free from pain. But we believe that God loves human joy, that He created everything, “because we can enjoy” ( 1 Tim 6:17). Let joy well in front of his tenderness when he proposes to us: “Son, treated well […]. Do not deprive yourself of a happy day “( Sir 14,11.14). Even a married couple responds to the will of God by following the Bible’s invitation: “The day is happy ‘happy’ ( Ecclesiastes 7:14). The issue is to have the freedom to accept that pleasure are other forms of expression in different stages of life, according to the needs of mutual love. In this sense, it can accept the proposal of some Eastern masters who insist sull’allargare consciousness, not to remain prisoners in very limited experience that we would close the prospects. This expansion of consciousness is not the denial or destruction of desire, but rather its expansion and its perfection.
150 . All this leads us to talk about the sexual life of the spouses. God created sexuality, which is a wonderful gift for his creatures. When you cultivate and you avoid missing control is to prevent that from occurring, “the impoverishment of an authentic value.” [146] St. John Paul II rejected the idea that the teaching of the Church leads to “a denial of the value of human sex “or simply tolerate” the very necessity of procreation. ” [147] the sexual needs of the spouses is not a reproach, and” it is not in any way need to put that in question. ” [148]
151 . To those who fear that with the education of the passions and sexuality will affect the sexual spontaneity of love, St. John Paul II replied that the human being is “called to full and mature spontaneity of the relations,” which “is the result of the gradual discernment of the impulses of his heart. ” [149] it is something that is won, since every human being” with perseverance and consistency must learn what is the meaning of the body. ” [150] sexuality is not a resource to reward or entertain, since it is an interpersonal language where the other is taken seriously, with its sacred and inviolable value. In this way “the human heart becomes a participant, so to speak, of another spontaneity.” [151] In this context, eroticism appears as a manifestation of specifically human sexuality. In it you can find “the nuptial meaning of the body and the true dignity of the gift.” [152] In his catechesis on the theology of the human body, St. John Paul II taught that sexual corporeity “is not only source of fruitfulness and procreation “but has” the ability to express love, that love in which the person becomes a gift. ” [153] the more healthy eroticism, although it joined a search for pleasure, presupposes the astonishment, and therefore it can humanize the pulses.
152 . Therefore, in any way we can understand the erotic dimension of love as a bad permission or as a burden to bear for the good of the family, but as a gift of God that beautifies the meeting between the spouses. Since this is a sublimated passion from love admiring the other’s dignity, become a “full and very clear affirmation of love” that shows us the many wonders that the human heart is capable, and so for a moment, “you perceive that ‘ human existence has been a success “. [154]
153 . In the context of this positive vision of sexuality, it is appropriate to set the theme in its integrity and with a healthy realism. In fact we can not ignore that many times sexuality becomes depersonalized and also is full of diseases, so that “becomes more and more occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts.” [155] In this age becomes a high risk that sexuality is dominated by the poisonous spirit of ‘ “disposable.” The other’s body is often handled as something to keep until provides satisfaction and to be despised when he loses attractiveness. You can perhaps ignore or conceal the constants forms of domination, bullying, abuse, perversion and sexual violence, which are the result of a distortion of the meaning of sexuality and burying the dignity of others and the call to love in an obscure search of themselves?
154 . It is not superfluous to recall that even in marriage sexuality can become a source of suffering and manipulation. For this we must make clear that “a conjugal act imposed on the spouse with no regard to his condition and his righteous desires is not a true act of love and therefore denies a need rectum moral order in the relationships between spouses”. [ 156] acts their sexual union of the spouses respond to the nature of sexuality willed by God if they are “made in a truly human way.” [157] this is why St. Paul exhorted: “Let no one in this field offend or deceive his brother “( 1 Thes 4,6). Although he wrote at a time when dominated a patriarchal culture, in which the woman was considered to be completely subordinated to man, however, taught that sexuality should be a matter to be discussed between husband and wife: he pointed out the possibility of postponing the sexual relations for a time, however, “by mutual agreement” ( 1 Cor 7.5).
155 . St. John Paul II gave a very subtle warning when he said that man and woman are “threatened by the insatiability.” [158]That is, they are called to an ever more intense, but the risk it is to pretend to erase the differences and the inevitable distance that exists between the two. Because each has its own dignity and unrepeatable. When the precious belonging together turns into the domain, “change […] essentially the structure of communion in the interpersonal relationship.” [159] In the logic of domination, even those who dominates eventually denied their dignity [160] and ultimately ceases to “identify subjectively with his own body”, [161] since it deprives it of all meaning. Live sex as an escape from himself and to have withdrawn their union beauty.
156 . It ‘important to be clear in rejecting any form of sexual submission. Therefore it is appropriate to avoid any improper interpretation of the text of the Letter to the Ephesians, where he calls for “the wives are [subjected] to their husbands” ( Eph5:22). St Paul here is expressed in their cultural categories of time, but we must not take this cultural coating, but the message revealed that underlies the whole of the passage. We resume the wise explanation of St. John Paul II: “The love excludes any kind of submission, so his wife would become a servant or slave of her husband […]. The community or units that they must be on account of marriage, is accomplished through a mutual donation, which is also a mutual subjection. ” [162] This is why it is also said that” husbands ought to love their wives as their own body “( Eph 5:28). Actually the biblical text invites to overcome the comfortable individualism to live turned to the others: “to each other” (Be subject Eph 5:21). Between spouses this mutual “submission” acquires a special meaning and is meant as belonging to each other freely chosen, with a set of characteristics of loyalty, respect and care. Sexuality is so inseparable in the service of married friendship, because it is geared to making sure that the other live in fullness.
157 . However, the refusal of the distortion of sexuality and eroticism should never lead us to despise or neglect. The ideal of marriage can not only be configured as a generous donation and sacrifice, where each renunciation of all personal needs and cares only to the good of others without any satisfaction. Remember that true love knows also receive other hand, is able to accept themselves as vulnerable and needy, it does not give to accept with sincere gratitude and happy corporal expressions of love in the caress, embrace, kiss, and the sexual union . Benedict XVI was clear about that: ‘Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. ” [163] For this reason,” no man You can not even live by oblative descendant. He can not always give, he must also receive. Who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift “. [164] This requires, in any case, remember that the human balance is fragile, it is always something that resists being humanized and that at any moment can erupt again , recovering his most primitive tendencies and selfish.
158 . “Many people who live without marriage are not only dedicated to their family of origin, but often make great services in their circle of friends, in the ecclesial community and in professional life. […] Many, then, put their talents to serving the Christian community in the name of charity and volunteering. Then there are those who do not marry because they have given their lives for love of Christ and neighbor. From their dedication the family, in the Church and in society, it is very glorious. “[165]
159 . Virginity is a form of love. As a sign, it reminds us of the concern for the Kingdom, the urgency to devote himself unreservedly at the service of evangelization (cf. 1 Cor 7:32), and is a reflection of the fullness of heaven, where “they neither marry nor be married “( Mt 22,30). St. Paul recommended it because they expected an imminent return of Jesus and wanted everyone to only concentrate on evangelization: “The time is short” ( 1 Cor 7:29). However it remained clear that it was a personal opinion and a wish (cf. 1 Cor 7.6 to 8), and not a call of Christ: “I have no command from the Lord” ( 1 Cor 7:25). At the same time, recognizing the value of different calls: “Each receives his own gift from God, one after this manner, and one of another” ( 1 Cor 7.7). In this sense, St. John Paul II affirmed that the biblical texts “do not provide reason to support either the ‘” inferiority “of marriage, nor the” superiority “of virginity or celibacy” [166] because of sexual abstinence. Rather than talking about the superiority of virginity in every respect, it seems appropriate to show that the different states of life are complementary, so that one can be more perfect for some aspect and the other may be from a different point of view.Alexander of Hales, for example, said that in a sense the marriage can be considered superior to the other sacraments: it symbolizes something as big as “the union of Christ with the Church, or the union of the divine nature with the human one.” [ 167]
160 . Therefore, “it is not to diminish the value of marriage in favor of continence,” [168] and “there is however no basis for an alleged opposition […]. If, according to a certain theological tradition, we speak of the state of perfection ( status perfectionis ), you do not by reason of continence itself, but about the whole of life based on the evangelical counsels. ” [169] However, a married person can live charity in the highest degree. Therefore “it comes to that perfection which flows from charity, through fidelity to the spirit of those recommendations. Such perfection is possible and accessible to every man. ” [170]
161 . Virginity has the symbolic value of love that does not need to possess the other, and thus reflects the freedom of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is an invitation to the spouses that they may live their conjugal love in the final perspective of love to Christ, as a common way to the fullness of the Kingdom. In turn, the love of the spouses has other symbolic values: on the one hand, is a unique reflection of the Trinity. In fact, the Trinity is full unity, in which, however, there is also the distinction. In addition, the family is a Christological sign, because it shows the closeness of God who shares human life by joining to it in the Incarnation, the Cross and Resurrection: each spouse become “one flesh” with each other and provides himself entirely to share with the other until the end. While virginity is an “eschatological” sign of the Risen Christ, marriage is a “historic” sign for those who walk on the earth, a sign of Christ the ground that he agreed to join us and gave himself up to give blood. Virginity and marriage are, and should be, different modes of love, because “man can not live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed. ” [171]
162 . Celibacy runs the risk of being a comfortable solitude, offering freedom to move with autonomy, to change places, tasks and choices, to dispose of their own money, to attend different people according to the attractiveness of the moment. In this case, it shines the testimony of married people. Those who have been called to virginity can be found in the number of married couples a clear sign of the generosity and unbreakable fidelity of God to his covenant, which can stimulate their hearts to a more concrete availability and self-giving. In fact there are married people who maintain their loyalty when your spouse has become physically uncomfortable, or when it does not meet their needs, despite many occasions invite them to infidelity or abandonment. A woman can take care of her sick husband and there, next to the Cross, returns to repeat the “yes” of His love until death. In this love is manifested in a splendid way the dignity of those who love, dignity as a reflection of charity, since it is proper to charity to love than to be loved. [172] We can also be found in many households a service capacity of self-offering and tender in comparisons of difficult children and even ungrateful. This makes these parents sign a free and disinterested of Jesus. Everything becomes an invitation to live celibate persons because of their dedication to the Kingdom with greater generosity and availability. Today secularism has eclipsed the value of a union for life and has detracted from the richness of the double dedication, that “it is necessary to deepen the positive aspects of conjugal love.” [173]
163 . The prolongation of life makes you see anything that was not common in other times: the intimate relationship and mutual membership must be kept for four, five or six decades, and this implies the need to return to choose on several occasions. Maybe your spouse is no longer attracted by an intense sexual desire that moves him toward the other person, however, feel the pleasure to belong to her and that it belongs to him, to know that it is not only, to have an “accomplice” who knows all the his life and his story and shares everything. It is the companion in the journey of life with which they can address the difficulties and enjoy the finer things. This also generates a satisfaction that accompanies the desire their conjugal love. We can not promise us to have the same feelings for life. But we can certainly have a stable common project, commit ourselves to love and to live together until death do us part, and always live a full intimacy. The love that we promise exceeds any emotion, feeling or mood, although it may include them. It wants a deeper well, with a decision of the heart that involves the whole of existence. So, in the midst of an unresolved conflict, and though many confused feelings are circumventing the heart, it is kept alive every day the decision to love, to belong, to share all of life and to continue to love and forgive. Each of the two makes a journey of growth and personal change. During this journey, the love celebrated every step and every new stage.
164 . In the history of a marriage, the physical appearance changes, but this is not a reason why the amorous attraction is less.There he falls for a whole person with its own identity, not only of a body, even if that body, beyond the ravages of time, never ends to somehow express that identity staff that has won the hearts. When others can no longer recognize the beauty of that identity, the love spouse continues to be able to perceive it with the instinct of love, and love does not disappear. It reaffirms its decision to belong to it, choose it again and expresses that choice through a true closeness and full of tenderness. The nobility of his decision for it, being intense and deep, awakens a new form of emotion in the fulfillment of conjugal mission. Because “the excitement caused by another human being as a person […] does not tend to the conjugal act itself.” [174] Captures other sensitive expressions for love “is a single reality, but with different size; from time to time, one or other dimension may emerge more clearly. ” [175] The constraint find new ways and requires a determination to always shoot again establish it. However, not only to preserve it, but to make it grow. It is the way to build day by day. But none of this is possible unless you invoke the Holy Spirit, if not cries every day asking for his grace, if you do not look for his supernatural power, if he is asked anxiously pour its fire above our love for strengthen it, direct it and turn it into every new situation.
165 . Love always gives life. For this, conjugal love “does not end with the couple […]. The couple, while giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the reality of children, living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and mother. ” [176]
166 . The family is not only the scope of the generation, but also acceptance of life that comes as a gift from God. Every new life “allows us to discover the free dimension of love, which never ceases to amaze us. And ‘the beauty of being loved before: the children are loved before they arrive. ” [177] This reflects the primacy of God who always takes the initiative, because the children” are loved until you have done anything for deserve it. ” [178] However,” many children from the beginning are rejected, abandoned, robbed of their childhood and their future. Someone dares to say, almost apologetically, that it was a mistake to make them come to the world. This is shameful! […] What do we make solemn declarations of human rights and children’s rights, if we punish children for the mistakes of the adults? “. [179] If a child comes into the world in circumstances not want to, parents or other family members, must do everything possible to accept it as God’s gift and to take on the responsibility of welcoming it with openness and affection. Because “when it comes to children who are in the world, no sacrifice of adults will be judged too expensive or too large, in order to prevent a child think you are a mistake, not worth anything or being abandoned to the wounds of life and arrogance of men. ” [180] the gift of a new child that the Lord entrusts to dad and mom begins with the welcome, it continues with the case along the earthly life and has as final destiny the joy of eternal life. A serene look to the ultimate fulfillment of the human person will make parents more aware of the precious gift entrusted to them: to them indeed God gives you to choose the name by which He will call each of her children for eternity. [181]
167 . Large families are a joy for the Church. In them the love expresses its generous fruitfulness. This does not mean forgetting a healthy warning of St. John Paul II, when he explained that responsible parenthood is not “unlimited procreation or lack of awareness about the significance of bringing up children, but rather the empowerment of couples to use their inviolable liberty wisely and responsibly, taking into account social and demographic realities as well as their own situation and legitimate desires. ” [182]
168 . Pregnancy is a difficult time, but also a wonderful time. The mother collaborates with God because they produce the miracle of a new life. Motherhood comes from a “particularly female organism potential, which with creative peculiarity serves for the conception and of the human being”. [183] Every woman takes part “of the mystery of creation, which is renewed in human generation.” [ 184] As the Psalm says: “you knit me in my mother’s womb” (139.13). Every child that forms inside his mother is an eternal plan of God the Father and His everlasting love, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I consecrated you” ( Jer 1 , 5). Each child is always in the heart of God, and at the moment he is conceived marks the eternal dream of the Creator. What we think is worth the embryo from the instant in which it is conceived! You have to look at him with the same look of love of the Father who sees beyond appearances.
169 . The pregnant woman can participate in this project of God dreaming his son: “All the moms and dads have all dreamed their son for nine months. […] You can not be a family without the dream. When a family loses the ability to dream, the children do not grow and love does not grow, life fades and goes out. ” [185] Within this dream, for a pair of Christian spouses, necessarily it appears Baptism. Parents prepare him with their prayers, entrusting his son to Jesus even before his birth.
170 . With the progress of science today you can know in advance what color hair will the baby and what diseases will suffer in the future, because all the physical characteristics of that person are inscribed in its genetic code already in the embryonic stage. But the Father who created it fully knows. He alone knows what is most valuable, what is most important, because he knows who that child, what is your deepest identity. The mother takes him in her womb needs to ask God for light to know in depth their child and waiting for what he really is. Some parents feel that their child does not arrive at the best time. They need to ask the Lord to heal and strengthen them them to fully accept that child, to be able to wait with the heart. It is important that the child feels expected. He is not a complement or a solution for an aspiration subjective. It is a human being, with immense value and can not be used for their own benefit. Therefore, it is not important if this new life will serve you or not, if it possesses characteristics that you like it or not, if it meets or not your projects and your dreams. Because “children are a gift. Each one a unique individual […]. A son you love it because it is a child, not because it is beautiful, or because it is like this and that; no, because it is a child! Not because he thinks like me, or embodies my desires. A son is a son. ” [186] Parental love is the love of God the Father means that awaits tenderly the birth of each child, accepts it unconditionally and accepts it for free.
171 . In any pregnant woman would ask affectionately take care of your joy, that nothing may seize your inner joy of motherhood. That child deserves your joy. Do not allow the fears, concerns, or problems turn off other people’s comments to be God’s instrument to bring happiness to the world a new life. Take care of what you need to do or make, but without obsessing, and praises like Mary: “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden” ( Lk 1.46 to 48). Alive with clear enthusiasm among your inconvenience, and pray to the Lord to watch your joy because you can pass it on to your child.
172 . “The children, newborn, begin to receive as a gift, along with the nurturing and care, the confirmation of the spiritual qualities of love. Acts of love pass through the gift of the personal name, the sharing of language, the intentions of the looks, the illuminations of smiles. They learn how the beauty of the bond between humans rush to our soul, seeking our freedom, accepts the diversity of the other, recognizes and respects it as a partner. […] And this is love, that brings a spark of the one God. ” [187] Every child has the right to receive the love of a mother and a father, both necessary for its maturation integrated and harmonious. As stated by the Australian Bishops, both “contribute, each in a different way, to the growth of a child. Respect the dignity of a child is to affirm its necessity and its natural right to a mother and a father. ” [188] It is not just the love of the father and mother taken separately, but also of love between them, perceived as the source of their existence, as the nest that welcomes and as the foundation of the family. Otherwise, the child seems to be reduced to a whimsical possession. Both man and woman, father and mother are “cooperating with the love of God the Creator and almost its interpreters.” [189] They show their children the mother’s face and the Lord’s fatherly face. Also they teach together the value of reciprocity, the meeting between different, where each contributes its own identity and also knows how to get the other. If for some reason inevitable lacks one of the two, it is important to seek some way to compensate, to facilitate the proper maturation of the child.
173 . The feeling of being orphans who experience today many children and young people is deeper than we think. Now we recognize as fully legitimate, and even desirable, that women want to study, work, and develop their skills and have personal goals. But at the same time we can not ignore the need that children have the maternal presence, especially in the first months of life. The reality is that “the woman stands before man as a mother, the subject of the new human life that it is designed and developed, and it is growing in the world.” [190] The decrease of the maternal presence with its feminine qualities It constitutes a serious risk to our land. I appreciate feminism when it does not pretend uniformity or denial of motherhood. Because the size of the woman implies all the rights stemming from his inalienable human dignity, but also by his feminine genius, essential for society. Its capabilities specific to women – especially motherhood – also give the duties, because his being a woman also carries a special mission on this earth, that society must protect and preserve for the good of all. [191]
174 . In fact, “the mothers are the strongest antidote to the spread of individualism selfish. […] They are the ones to witness the beauty of life. ” [192] No doubt,” a society without mothers would be an inhuman society, because mothers always know how to bear witness, even in the worst moments, tenderness, dedication, moral strength . Mothers often send even the most profound sense of religious practice in the early prayers, in the first acts of devotion that a child learns […]. Without mothers, not only there would be no new believers, but the good faith would lose some of its simple, deep heat. […] Dear mothers, thank you, thank you for what you are in the family and what you give to the Church and to the world. ” [193]
175 . The mother, who protects the child with his tenderness and compassion, it helps to bring out the confidence, to experience that the world is a good place that welcomes him, and this allows you to develop self-esteem that promotes capacity for intimacy and empathy. The father figure, on the other hand, helps to perceive the limits of reality and is characterized mainly for guidance, for output to the wider world and challenging, for the invitation to the effort and struggle. A father with a clear and happy male identity, which in turn join in his leg to his wife the affection and the welcome is as necessary as the mother’s care. There are roles and flexible tasks, which adapted to the specific circumstances of each family, but the clear and well-defined presence of the two figures, male and female, creates the most suitable environment to the child’s maturity.
176 . It is said that our society is a “society without fathers.” In Western culture, the father figure would symbolically absent, distorted, faded. Even virility seems questioned. There has been an understandable confusion, because “at first, it was perceived as a liberation: liberation from the father-master, by his father as a representative of the law that is imposed from the outside, from her father as a censor of the children happiness and an obstacle to the emancipation and autonomy of young people. Sometimes in some houses reigned in the past authoritarianism, in some cases even oppression. ” [194] However,” as often happens, we go from one extreme to another. The problem of our time does not seem to be so much the intrusive presence of the fathers, but rather their absence, their inaction. Fathers are sometimes so focused on themselves and on their work and sometimes on their individual achievements, as well forget the family. And leave alone the small and young. ” [195]The father’s presence, and therefore its authority, is also affected by increasing the time that is dedicated to the media and entertainment technology. Also today, the authority is viewed with suspicion and adults are severely challenged. They themselves abandon the certainties and therefore do not offer the children safe guidelines and well-founded. It is not healthy that they exchange roles between parents and children: what harms the proper process of maturation that children need to do, and denies them a love capable of guiding them and help them mature. [196]
177 . God puts the father in the family because, with the valuable characteristics of his masculinity, “is close to his wife, to share everything, joys and sorrows, struggles and hopes. And [because] it is close to the children in their growth: when they play and when they engage when they are carefree and when they are distressed, when they express themselves and when they are silent, when they dare, and when they are afraid, when they make a wrong step and when found the street; father present, always. To say this is not the same as saying the controller. Because the fathers too controllers cancel the children. ” [197]Some fathers feel useless or unnecessary, but the truth is that” children need to find a father waiting for them when they return from their failures. Will do anything to not admit it, not to let it show, but they need it. ” [198] It is not good that children will remain without fathers and so stop being children ahead of time.
178 . Many married couples can not have children. We know how much suffering this entails. On the other hand, we also know that “marriage has not been set up only for procreation […]. And so even though the offspring, very often so strongly desired, there is the marriage endures as a community and communion of all life, and retains its value and its indissolubility. ” [199]Moreover,” motherhood is not a exclusively biological reality, but it is expressed in different ways. ” [200]
179 . Adoption is a way to achieve motherhood and fatherhood in a very generous way, and I wish to encourage all those who can not have children to broaden and open their conjugal love to welcome those who are deprived of a proper family environment. They never repent of having been generous. Adopt is the act of love to give a family to those who have not. It is important to insist that the legislation to facilitate the procedures for adoption, especially in cases of unwanted children, in order to prevent abortion or abandonment. Those who face the challenge to adopt and welcome a person unconditionally, free way, become the mediation of God that says: “Although your mother may forget, yet I will not forget you” (cf. Is 49:15).
180 . “The choice of foster care and adoption expresses a particular experience marital fertility, beyond the cases where it is painfully marked by infertility. […] In the face of those situations where as they help to recognize the child is purported at any cost, as the law of its completion, adoption and foster care rightly understood show an important aspect of parenting and the sonship, the children, both natural and adoptive or entrusted, shall be other than itself and must accept them, love them, take care and not just put them in the world. The best interests of the child should always inform decisions on adoption and foster care. ” [201] On the other hand,” the trafficking of children between countries and continents should be prevented by appropriate legislative measures and controls of the Member. ” [202 ]
181 . It ‘should also remember that procreation and adoption are not the only ways to live the fruitfulness. Even the family with many children is called to leave his mark in the society where it is inserted, to develop other forms of fertility which are like an extension of the love that sustains it. Christian families should not forget that “faith does not remove us from the world, but more profoundly in it. […] Each of us, in fact, plays a special role in the preparation of the. Coming of God’s Kingdom ” [203] The family does not think of herself as an enclosure called to protect themselves from society. All that remains is to wait, but it comes out by itself in the joint search. Thus it becomes a place of integration of the person with the company and a point of union between the public and the private. Spouses need to gain a clear and convinced awareness of their social duties. When this happens, the affection that unites them is not less, but is filled with new light, as expressed in the following verses:
“Your hands are my caress
my everyday chords
I love you because your hands
strive for justice.
If I love you because you are
my love my accomplice and all
and for the side street next to
us much more than two. ” [204]
182 . No family can be fruitful if it is conceived as too different or “separate”. To avoid this risk, we should remember that the family of Jesus, full of grace and wisdom, was not seen as a family “strange” as a strange house, and distant from the people.Precisely for this reason, people found it hard to recognize the wisdom of God, and saying, “Where did this man get these things? […] Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary? “( Mk 6.2 to 3). “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” ( Mt 13,55). This confirms that it was a simple family, close to all, inserted in a normal way in the people. Even Jesus grew up in a closed and exclusive relationship with Mary and Joseph, but he moved with pleasure in the extended family where there were relatives and friends.This explains that, when they returned from Jerusalem, his parents accept that the twelve-year-old boy got lost in the caravan for a whole day, listening to stories and sharing the concerns of all: “Believing that he was in the company, made a day of journey “( Lk 2:44). But sometimes it happens that some Christian families, to the language they use, the way of saying things, for the style of their tract, for the continuous repetition of two or three issues are seen as distant, as separate from society, even their own relatives feel despised or judged by them.
183 . A married couple that experiences the power of love, knows that this love is called to heal the wounds of the abandoned, to establish the culture of encounter, to fight for justice. God has entrusted the project to the family to make “domestic” the world, [205] so that all should come to feel every human being as a brother: “A careful look at the daily life of men and women today shows immediately the need that c ‘it is everywhere a strong injection of family spirit. […] Not only the organization of the common life is always more strands in a bureaucracy completely foreign to the fundamental human bonds, but even the social and political conduct often shows signs of degradation. ” [206] Instead open families and solidarity make room for the poor, are likely to forge friendships with those who are worse off. If you really care about the Gospel, can not forget what Jesus says: “All I have done to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” ( Mt 25,40). Ultimately, what we are asked to live so eloquently in this text: “When you give a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, because they themselves do not also invite and you be repaid. In contrast, when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; and you will be blessed “( Lk 14.12 to 14). You will be blessed! Here is the secret of a happy family.
184 . With the testimony, and even with the word, the families speak of Jesus to others, they transmit the faith, awaken the desire of God, and show the beauty of the Gospel and the way of life that we hear. So Christian couples paint the gray of public space by filling it with the colors of fraternity, social sensitivity, the protection of vulnerable people, the luminous faith, active hope. Their fertility widens and results in a thousand ways to make the love of God in society.
185 . In this line should take very seriously a biblical text that is usually interpreted out of context, or in a very general terms, so you can disregard its most immediate and direct meaning, which is markedly social. It is 1 Cor 11.17 to 34, where St. Paul addresses a shameful situation of the community. In that context, some wealthy people tended to discriminate against the poor, and this occurred even convivial encounter that accompanied the celebration of the Eucharist. While the rich enjoyed their delicious food, the poor were as spectators and were hungry, “one is hungry, and another is drunk. Do you not have houses to eat and to drink? Or do you despise the Church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? “(Vv. 21-22).
186 . The Eucharist calls for the integration in the one ecclesial body. Those who approach the Body and Blood of Christ can not simultaneously offend that same body operating scandalous divisions and discrimination among its members. It is in fact to “prove” the Lord’s body, to recognize it with faith and love is in the sacramental signs and in the community, otherwise it eats and drinks judgment (cf. v. 29). This biblical text is a serious warning for the families that are closed again in their own comfort and isolate themselves, but more specifically for families who remain indifferent to the suffering of poor families most in need.The Eucharist thus becomes a constant appeal to every individual to “examine himself” (v. 28) in order to open the doors of his family to a greater communion with those who are rejected by society and therefore really receive the Sacrament of ‘ Eucharistic love that makes us one body. Do not forget that “the” mysticism “of Sacramento has a social character.” [207] When those who communicate not let themselves push for a commitment to the poor and the suffering, or agree to other forms of division, contempt and injustice, the Eucharist is received unworthily. Instead, families that eat the Eucharist with the right hand, strengthen their desire for fraternity, their social meaning and their commitment with the needy.
Family life in the broad sense
187 . The small family should not isolate themselves from the extended family, where there are parents, uncles, cousins and even neighbors. In such a large family, there may be some who need help or at least companionship and gestures of affection, or there may be much suffering in need of a comfort. [208] The individualism of these times sometimes leads to shut themselves in security of a small nest and see others as a threat harassing. However, this isolation does not offer more peace and happiness, but it closes the heart of the family and the wider horizon devoid of existence.
188 . Firstly we talk of their parents. Jesus reminded the Pharisees that the abandonment of the parents is contrary to God’s Law (cf. Mk 7.8 to 13). No one is good for losing the consciousness of being a son. In each person, “even if one becomes an adult, or old, even if it becomes a parent, if it occupies a position of responsibility, beneath all this it is the child’s identity. We are all children. And this always brings us back to the fact that life does not succeed we given us but we have received it. The great gift of life is the first gift we have received. ” [209]
189 . Thus, “the fourth commandment asks the children […] to honor father and mother (cf. Ex 20,12). This commandment comes after those concerning God himself. It contains something sacred, something divine, something that is at the root of every other kind of respect among men. And in the fourth commandment biblical wording is added: “thy days may be long in the land the Lord your God gives you.” The virtuous link between generations is a guarantee of the future, and it guarantees a truly human history. A society of children that parents do not honor without honor is a company […]. It is a company destined to fill with dry and greedy young people “. [210]
190 . But there is also the other side of the coin: “A man will leave his father and mother” ( January 2:24), says the Word of God. This is sometimes not realized, and the marriage is not taken to the end because it is not accomplished such waiver and such dedication. Parents should not be abandoned or neglected, however, to be united in marriage must leave them, so that the new house is the abode, the protection, the platform and the project, and you can really become “one flesh” ( ibid. ). In some marriages it happens that they hide a lot of things to one’s spouse, who instead say to their parents, to the point that matter most parents’ opinions that the feelings and opinions of the spouse. It is not easy to sustain this situation for a long time, and it is possible only temporarily, while creating the conditions to grow in confidence and dialogue. Marriage challenge to find a new way of being children.
191 . “Do not throw me away in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength decline” ( Ps 71.9). It is the cry of the elderly, who fears the oblivion and contempt. Just as God calls us to be his instruments to hear the plea of the poor, He also expects us to listen to the cry of the elderly. [211] This challenges families and communities, because “the Church can not and will not comply with a mentality of impatience, let alone indifference and contempt, towards old age. We must awaken the collective sense of gratitude, of appreciation, of hospitality, they do feel the elderly living part of his community. The elderly are men and women, fathers and mothers who have been before us on our own street, in our own home, in our daily battle for a dignified life. ” [212] Therefore,” as I would like a church that challenges the culture scrap with overflowing joy of a new embrace between the young and the elderly. ” [213]
192 . St. John Paul II invited us to pay attention to place the elderly in the family, because there are cultures that “in the wake of disordered industrial and urban development have led and continue to lead the elderly to unacceptable forms of marginalization” . [214] the elders help to perceive “the continuity of generations” with “the charisma to mend the rips.” [215]many times they are the grandparents who ensure the transmission of the great values to their grandchildren and “many people can see that their grandparents owe their initiation to the Christian life “. [216] their words, their touch or their mere presence helps children to recognize that history does not begin with them, who are heirs of a long way and that we must respect the background that precedes us. Those who break ties with the story will find it difficult to weave stable relationships and to recognize that they are not the masters of reality. Therefore, “the attention to the elderly makes the difference of a civilization.In a civilization is no attention to the elderly? There is no place for the elderly? This civilization will go ahead if it is able to respect the wisdom, the wisdom of the elderly. ” [217]
193 . The lack of historical memory is a serious flaw in our society. And ‘the mentality of immature’ ‘it’s been. ” Know and be able to react in the face of past events is the only way to build a future that makes sense. You can not educate without memory: “Call to mind those early days” ( Heb 10:32). The stories of the elderly do very well to children and young people, because they put them in connection with the history of the family lived is both the district and the country. A family that does not respect and did not care of his grandparents, who are her memory alive, disintegrated family; however a family that remembers is a family that has a future. Therefore, “in a society where there is no place for the elderly or are discarded because they create problems, this company carries the death virus”, [218] since “tears from their roots.” [219 ] the contemporary phenomenon of feeling orphaned, in terms of discontinuity, displacement and fall of certainties that shape the life, challenges us to make our families a place where children can take root in the soil of a collective history.
194 . The relationship between the brothers deepens with the passage of time, and “the bond of brotherhood that is formed between the children in the family, if it takes place in an atmosphere of education open to others, is the great school of freedom and of peace. With family, with brothers you learn human society […]. Maybe we are not always aware, but it is the family that introduces fraternity in the world! From this first experience of fraternity, nourished by the suffering and family education, the brotherhood style radiates like a promise on the whole society. ” [220]
195 . Growing sibling offers the beautiful experience of a mutual care, to help and to be helped. Therefore ‘fraternity in the family shines in a special way when we see the concern and patience, the affection with which they are surrounded the brother or sister weak, sick, or handicapped. ” [221] It must be recognized that” have a brother, a sister who loves you is an experience strong, priceless, irreplaceable, ” [222] but it must be patiently teach their children to be as brothers. Such practical training, sometimes tiring, is a true school of social life. In some countries there is a strong tendency to have only one child, so the experience of being brother begins to be uncommon. In case it was not possible to have more than one child, you will have to find ways to ensure that the child does not grow alone or isolated.
196 . Apart from the small circle formed by the spouses and their children, there is the extended family that can not be ignored.In fact, “love between man and woman in marriage and in derivative form and broader way, the love between members of the same family – between parents and children, brothers and sisters, relatives and family members – is animated and sustenance by an unceasing inner dynamism leading the family to ever deeper and more intense communion, the foundation and soul of conjugal and family life. ” [223] In this context, are also part and the friends and family friends, and even the community of families who support each other in times of difficulty, social commitment and faith.
197 . This should accommodate extended family with lots of love single mothers, children without parents, single women who must carry on the education of their children, people with disabilities who require a lot of affection and closeness, young people who struggle against a dependent, unmarried people, those separated or widowed women who suffer loneliness, the elderly and the sick who do not receive the support of their children, to include in their breasts’ even the most affected by natural disasters in the pipelines of their lives. ” [224 ] It can also help to offset the weakness of the parents, or to discover and report in time possible situations of violence or abuse suffered by children, giving them a healthy love and family support when their parents can not secure it.
198 . Finally, we can not forget that in this extended family there are also in-law, the mother-in-law and all the relatives of the spouse. Their own love delicacy is to avoid seeing them as competitors, such dangerous people as invaders. The conjugal union asks to respect their traditions and customs, try to understand their language, limit criticism, take care of them and integrate them in some way in your heart, even when you should preserve the legitimate autonomy and intimacy of the pair.These attitudes are also a delicious way to express the generosity of the commitment of love to one’s spouse.
CHAPTER SIX
199 . The synodal journey dialogues have led to envisage the need to develop new pastoral ways, which I will now try to summarize in a general way. They will be different communities have to develop more practical and effective proposals, which take into account both the teachings of the Church of both local needs and challenges. Without claiming to present here a pastoral family, I intend to limit myself only to collect some of the major pastoral challenges.
Announce the Gospel of the family today
200 . The Synod Fathers insisted that the Christian families, by the grace of the marriage sacrament, are the main subject of the pastoral care of families, especially providing “the joyful witness of married couples and families, house churches.” [225] For this They stressed that “it comes to experience that the Gospel of the family is the joy that” fills the heart and the whole life “, because in Christ we are” set free from sin, from sadness, from the inner emptiness, isolation “( Evangelii gaudium , 1). In light of the parable of the sower (cf. Mt 13.3 to 9), our task is to cooperate in planting: the rest is the work of God. Nor should we forget that the Church preaches about family is a sign of contradiction “, [ 226] but the couple appreciate that pastors offer them reasons for a bold bet on a strong love, strong, durable, able to cope with everything that is present in their way. The Church wishes to reach out to families in humble understanding, and his desire is “to accompany each and every family that they may discover the best way to overcome the difficulties in their path.” [227] Do not just enter a general concern for the family in the great pastoral projects. So that families can always be more active members of family ministry, requesting “an evangelization and catechetical effort addressed within the family”, [228] that the orient in this direction.
201 . “That’s why it requires the whole Church a missionary conversion: you must not stop at a purely theoretical announcement and dropped from the real problems of the people.” [229] The family ministry “has to experience that the Gospel of the family’s response to the deepest expectations of the human person: his dignity and the complete fulfillment in reciprocity, in communion and fruitfulness. It is not only to present legislation, but to propose values, responding to the needs that they see today, even in the most secular countries. ” [230] In addition,” has also underlined the need for evangelization which should denounce frankly i cultural, social conditions, political and economic, as the space given over to market forces, which prevent genuine family life, leading to discrimination, poverty, exclusion and violence. To this must be developed dialogue and cooperation with the social structures, and should be encouraged and supported the laity who are committed as Christians in the cultural and socio-political. ” [231]
202 . “The main contribution to the pastoral care of families is offered by the parish, which is a family of families, that combines the contributions of small communities, movements and ecclesial associations.” [232] Along with a pastoral specifically geared to families, there is a possible need for “a more adequate training for priests, deacons, men and women religious, to the catechists and for others. pastoral agents” [233] in the responses to consultations sent to all over the world, it is found that the ordained ministers often lack adequate training to deal with complex current problems of families. It may also be useful in this sense the experience of the long Eastern tradition of married priests.
203 . The seminarians should have access to a wider interdisciplinary training on engagement and marriage, and not merely the doctrine. In addition, the training does not always allow them to express their psycho world. Some bring in their life experiences his wounded family, with parents and with the absence of emotional instability. Need to be guaranteed during the formation of a maturing so that future ministers possess psychic equilibrium that their job demands. Family ties are essential to fortify healthy self-esteem of the seminarians. Therefore it is important that accompany families throughout the workshop process and the priesthood, as they help to strengthen it realistically. In this sense it is the combination of healthy life times in the seminar with other parish life, making it possible to take greater contact with the concrete reality of families. In fact, throughout his pastoral life the priest is encountered especially with families. “The presence of the laity and families, in particular the presence of women in priestly formation, promotes the appreciation of the diversity and complementarity of the different vocations in the Church.” [234]
204 . The answers to the consultation also express insistently the need for formation of lay leaders in family ministry with the help of psychologists, family physicians, community physicians, social workers, lawyers for children and families, with the opening to receive the contributions of psychology, sociology, sexology and also the counseling . The professionals, especially those who have accompanying experience, help to embody the pastoral proposals in real situations and real concerns of families. “Trips and training courses specifically pastoral ministers will prepare them to enter the same path of marriage preparation in the broader dynamic of the Church’s life”. [235] A good pastoral preparation is important “in view of the specific emergency situations determined by cases of domestic violence and sexual abuse. ” [236] this in no way diminishes, but complements the fundamental value of spiritual direction, of the invaluable spiritual resources of the Church and of sacramental Reconciliation.
Driving the engaged in the journey of preparation for marriage
205 . The Synod Fathers stated in different ways that you have to help young people discover the value and richness of marriage. [237] They must be able to grasp the attractiveness of full union that elevates and perfects the social dimension of existence, It gives sexuality its largest sense, and at the same time promotes the good of the children, offering them the best environment for their growth and education.
206 . “The complex social realities and challenges that the family is facing today require a greater commitment of all Christian communities in the preparation of engaged couples for marriage. You need to remember the importance of the virtues. Among them chastity is precious condition for genuine love interpersonal growth. With regard to this need, the Synod Fathers were unanimous in stressing the need for greater involvement of the entire community favoring the testimony of the same families, as well as a grounding of marriage preparation in the way of Christian initiation, emphasizing the marriage relationship with baptism and the other sacraments. It has also highlighted the need for specific programs to prepare to be married to be true experience of sharing in ecclesial life and deepen the different aspects of family life. ” [238]
207 . I invite the Christian community to recognize that accompany the journey of love of engaged is good for themselves. As they said good bishops of Italy, those who marry are for the Christian community, “a valuable resource because by engaging sincerely to grow in love and in mutual gift, can help to renew the fabric of the entire ecclesial body : the particular form of friendship which they live can become contagious, and grow in friendship and fraternity, the Christian community to which they belong. ” [239] There are several legitimate ways to organize the next marriage preparation, and every Church local discern which one is better, by ensuring adequate training at the same time does not alienate young people from the sacrament. This is not to give them all the Catechism, nor saturate them with too many arguments. In fact, even in this case, that is that “not much knowledge contents and satisfies the soul, but the feel and taste things interiorly.” [240] It affects more quality than quantity, and priority should be given – along with a renewed proclamation of the kerygma – those content, transmitted in an attractive and friendly, help them to engage in a course of a lifetime “with great generosity and spirit.” [241] it is a kind of “initiation” to sacrament of marriage to provide them with the necessary elements to be able to get with the best provisions and start with some solid family life.
208 . It ‘should also find ways, through the missionary families, the families themselves engaged couples and various pastoral resources, to provide a remote preparation that matures their love with an accompaniment full of closeness and testimony. Are often very useful the engaged groups and the proposed optional lectures on a variety of subjects that really interest to young people. However, some custom moments are essential, since the main goal is to help everyone so that I learn to love this concrete person, with whom want to share all my life. Learn to love someone is not something that is improvised, nor can it be the goal of a short course prior to the celebration of marriage. In fact, every person is preparing for marriage from birth. All that his family has given him would allow him to learn from its own history and make it capable of a full and definitive commitment.Probably those who arrive better prepared to get married are those who have learned from their parents what a Christian marriage, in which both were selected without conditions and continue to renew that decision. In this respect, all pastoral actions aimed at helping the couple to grow in love and to live the Gospel in the family, are invaluable help because their children should prepare themselves for their future married life. Nor should we forget the valuable contributions of the popular ministry. To take a simple example, I remember the Valentine’s day, which in some countries is better exploited by traders not by the creativity of the shepherds.
209 . The preparation of those who have already formalized an engagement, when the parish community can follow them well in advance, must also give them the opportunity to recognize incompatibilities and risks. This way you can come to realize that it is not reasonable to focus on that relationship, not to expose themselves to a predictable failure that will have very painful consequences. The problem is that the initial blunder leads to try to hide or relativize many things, you avoid disagreements, and thus only be driven out forward the difficulties. The engaged couple should be encouraged and helped to be able to express what everyone expects of an eventual marriage, their own way of understanding what is love and commitment, what you want on the other hand, the kind of life together that you would like to design. These conversations can help you see that in fact the contact points are scarce, and that the mutual attraction alone will not be sufficient to support the union. Nothing is more fickle, unstable and unpredictable of desire, and you should never encourage a decision to get married if you are not thorough other motives which give to that provided real chances of stability.
210 . However, if you recognize clearly the other’s weak points, you must have a realistic confidence in the ability to help you build the best of his person to counterbalance the weight of its fragility, with a strong interest in promoting it as being human.This implies accepting with determination the opportunity to address some sacrifices, hard times and conflict situations, and the firm decision to prepare for this. It must be able to identify the warning signs that could have the relationship, to find before getting married means that enable to successfully address them. Unfortunately, many come to the wedding without knowing each other. They are just fun together, have made experiences together, but have not addressed the challenge to show themselves and to learn who he really is the other.
211 . So much preparation as the next most prolonged accompanying should see to it that their boyfriends do not see him getting married as the end of the road, but that they take marriage as a vocation that throws them forward, with firm and realistic decision passing together through all the trials and difficult times. The pastoral and premarital pastoral care of marriage must be above all a pastoral of the bond, where you make changes elements that help it to mature love is to overcome the hard times. These contributions are not only doctrinal beliefs, and neither can be reduced to the precious spiritual resources that always offers the Church, but also have to be practical itineraries, well embodied tips, taken from the experience strategies, psychological guidance. All of this constitutes a pedagogy that can not ignore the current sensitivity of young people, to be able to mobilize within. At the same time, in the preparation of engaged couples, you must be able to show them places and people, or available counseling families, who can turn to for help when you presentassero difficulties. But we must never forget to offer them the sacramental Reconciliation, which allows to place the sins and mistakes of the past life, and the same report, under the influence of the merciful forgiveness of God and of his saving power.
The preparation of the celebration
212 . The preparation to be married tends to focus on the invitations, the clothes, the party and the innumerable details that consume so much economic resources as energy and joy. The engaged couple arrive exhausted and worn at the wedding, instead of devoting their best resources to prepare as a pair for the big step that will do together. This mindset is also reflected in some of de facto unions, which never come to the wedding because they think too expensive festivities, instead of giving priority mutual love and its formalization in front of others. Dear boyfriends, have the courage to be different, do not be devoured by the consumer society and appearance. What matters is the love that unites you, fortified and sanctified by grace.You are able to choose a sober and simple celebration, to put love above all. Pastoral workers and the whole community can help ensure that this priority will become the norm and not the exception.
213 . In the more immediate preparation is important to illuminate the bride and groom that they may live with great depth the liturgical celebration, helping them to understand and live the meaning of each gesture. We recall that such a large commitment as one that expresses matrimonial consent, and the union of bodies that consumes the marriage, when it comes to two baptized, you can only be interpreted as signs of God’s Son made flesh, and combined with his Church in covenant love.In the baptized, the words and gestures are transformed into a language that expresses the faith. The body, with the meanings that God wanted to infuse into it by creating it, “is transformed into the language of the ministers of the sacrament, aware that in the marriage covenant manifests and realizes the mystery.” [242]
214 . Sometimes boyfriends do not perceive the theological and spiritual weight of consensus, which illuminates the meaning of all subsequent actions. And ‘necessary to highlight that those words can not be reduced to this; they imply a totality that includes the future, “until death do you part.” The meaning of consent shows that “freedom and truth are not opposed, rather than mutually supporting, both in interpersonal relationships, as in social ones. Indeed, we think of the damage they produce, in the civilization of global communication, inflation of unfulfilled promises […]. Honoring his word, fidelity to the promise, you can not buy nor sell. Can not be imposed by force, but even cherish without sacrifice. ” [243]
215 . The Bishops of Kenya have observed that “too focused on the wedding day, the bride and groom will forget that they are preparing for a commitment that lasts a lifetime.” [244] must be helped to understand that the sacrament is not only a time which then becomes part of the past and memories, because it exerts its influence over the entire married life, permanently.[245] the procreative meaning of sexuality, body language and gestures of love lived in the history of a married couple, they become a “uninterrupted continuity of liturgical language,” and “married life becomes, in a sense, the liturgy.” [246]
216 . You can also meditate with the biblical readings, and enrich the understanding of the meaning of the rings that we give ourselves to each other, or other signs that are part of the ritual. But it would not be good to arrive at the wedding without having prayed together, for each other, asking for God’s help to be faithful and generous, wondering with God what He expects of them, and also consecrating their love in front to an image of Mary. Those who accompany them in preparing for marriage should guide them so that they know live these moments of prayer that can do them very well. “The wedding liturgy is a unique event, which lives in the family and social context of a party. The first of the signs of Jesus came to the wedding feast of Cana: the good wine of the miracle of the Lord, who gives joy to the birth of a new family, is the new wine of the Covenant of Christ with the men and women of all times. […] Frequently, the celebrant has the opportunity to address an assembly made up of people who participate little in ecclesial life or belong to other Christian denominations or religious communities. It is a precious occasion of the announcement of the Gospel of Christ. ” [247]
Accompany in the early years of married life
217 . We have to recognize as a great value that you understand that marriage is a matter of love, you can only marry those who choose freely and love. However, when love becomes a mere attraction or a vague affection, this means that the spouses suffer an extraordinary fragility when affectivity in crisis or when the physical attraction is less. As these confusions are frequent, it is essential to accompany the newlyweds during the first years of married life to enrich and deepen the conscious decision and free to belong to oneself and to love each other until the end. Many times the time of the engagement is not enough, the decision to marry is quick for different reasons, and, to make matters worse, the maturation of the young people has been delayed. Therefore, the newly-weds are having to complete the journey that should have been made during the engagement.
218 . On the other hand, I wish to insist that one of the family pastoral challenge is to help discover that marriage can not be understood as something finished. The union is real, it is irrevocable, and has been confirmed and consecrated by the sacrament of marriage. But in joining, the couple become the stars, masters of their own history and creators of a project that must be advanced together. His gaze turns to the future that we must build day by day with the grace of God, and for this reason does not claim by the spouse who is perfect. We must put aside the illusions and to accept it as it is: unfinished, called to grow, on the way. When his gaze to the spouse is constantly critical, this indicates that you have not even taken the wedding as a project to build together, with patience, understanding, tolerance and generosity. This means that love is replaced gradually by one interrogator and implacable gaze, from the control of the merits and rights of each individual, from the protests, from the competition and from self. So they are become unable to support one another for the maturation of both growth and for the union. The new spouse is necessary to present this with realistic clarity from the start, so that they become aware of the fact that they’re starting. The “yes” that they exchanged is the beginning of a journey, with a target capable of overcoming what could impose conditions or obstacles that frapponessero. The blessing received is a grace and a push for this more open way. Often it helps that they go sit to dialogue in drawing up their concrete project in its objectives, in its tools, in its details.
219 . I remember a refrain that said that the standing water becomes corrupt, fails. This is what happens when the life of love in the early years of marriage stagnates, it stops being on the move, it ceases to have that healthy restlessness that pushes it forward. The dance thrown forward and young love, dance with those eyes marveled hopeful must not stop. In engagement and in the first years of marriage, hope is the one that has in itself the power of yeast, one that makes you look beyond the contradictions, conflicts, contingencies, the one who always see beyond. And ‘that sets in motion all odds to keep a path of growth. The same hope invites us to live fully the present, putting your heart into family life, because the best way to prepare and consolidate the future is to live the present well.
220 . The journey involves going through several stages that call to give themselves generously: from the initial attraction characterized by markedly sensitive, you go to need each other felt like part of their lives. From there it goes to the taste of belonging to each other, then the understanding of the entire life as a project of both, the ability to put the happiness beyond his own needs, and to the joy of seeing their marriage as good for society. The ripeness of love also involves learning how to “negotiate.” It is not an attitude concerned or a commercial game, but ultimately an exercise of mutual love, because this negotiation is a web of mutual offerings and sacrifices for the good of the family. In each new stage of married life, you must sit down and negotiate the agreements again, so that there are no winners and losers, but they will win both. At home the decisions are not taken unilaterally, and the two share the responsibility for the family, but each house is unique and each bed synthesis is different.
221 . One of the causes that lead to the breaking up of marriages is to have too high expectations about the married life. When you discover the reality, more limited and problematic than you had dreamed, the solution is not to think quickly and irresponsibly to separation, but take marriage as a maturing process, in which each of the spouses is an instrument of God to grow the other. You can change, growth, development of the potential good that everyone carries within itself. Every marriage is a “history of salvation”, and this is supposed to start from a fragility that, thanks to the gift of God and a creative and generous response, gradually gives way to a more solid and precious reality. The mission perhaps bigger than a man and a woman in love is this: make each other more human and more women. Grow is to help each other to mold in his own identity. For this love is crafted. When you read the Bible passage on the creation of man and woman, is observed before God that shapes the man (see January 2.7), then you realize that something is missing from the woman essential and plasma, and then sees the man surprise: “Ah, now I do, this yes!”. And then it seems to hear the wonderful dialogue in which man and woman begin to discover each other. In fact, even in difficult times the other returns to surprise and open new doors to find themselves, as if for the first time; and in every new stage return to “mold itself” one another. Love makes one respects each other, and practice patience own craftsman who has been inherited by God.
222 . The accompaniment should encourage couples to be generous in the communication of life. ‘In accordance with personal and humanly full of conjugal love, the right way for family planning is that of a consensual dialogue between the spouses, the respect of time and consideration of the dignity of the partners. In this sense, the Encyclical Humanae Vitae (cf. 10-14) and the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (cf. 14; 28-35) must be rediscovered in order to awaken the willingness to procreate in contrast to a mentality often hostile to life [ …]. The responsible choice of parenthood implies the formation of conscience, which is “the most secret core and his sanctuary, where he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths” ( Gaudium et Spes , 16). The more the couple try to listen to their conscience God and his commandments (cf. Rom 2:15), and become spiritually accompany, the more their decision will be intimately free from a subjective arbitrariness and the adjustment to the ways of behaving of their environment. ” [248] remains valid as clearly stated in the Second Vatican Council:” the spouses […], by mutual agreement and with joint effort, will form a right judgment, taking into account both their own welfare and that of the children, those already born and those which are expected to be born; evaluating the material and spiritual conditions of their time and of their state of life; and finally, taking into account the good of the family community, of temporal society and the Church itself. This judgment ultimately it must formulate, before God, the spouses themselves. ” [249] On the other hand,” the use of methods based on “natural cycles of fertility” ( Humanae Vitae , 11) will be encouraged. It will highlight that “these methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom” ( Catechism of the Catholic Church , 2370). It must always be emphasized that children are a wonderful gift from God, a joy for parents and for the Church. Through them the Lord renews the world “. [250]
223 . The Synod Fathers stated that “the first years of marriage are a vital and delicate period during which couples grow in the awareness of the challenges and of the meaning of marriage. Hence the need for a pastoral accompaniment that continues after the celebration of the sacrament (cf. Familiaris Consortio , Part III). Is of great importance in this pastoral presence of married couples experienced. The parish is regarded as the place where experienced couples can be made available to the younger ones, with the possible contribution of associations, ecclesial movements and new communities. Necessary to encourage both parties to a fundamental attitude of welcome of the great gift of children. Please note the importance of family spirituality, prayer and Sunday Eucharist, encouraging couples to meet regularly to promote the growth of the spiritual life and solidarity in the concrete demands of life. Liturgies, devotional practices and Masses celebrated for families, especially on the anniversary of marriage, were cited as vital to promote evangelization through the family. ” [251]
224 . This path is a matter of time. Love needs time available and free, that puts other things in the background. It takes time to converse, to hug without haste, to share projects, to listen, to look, to appreciate, to strengthen the relationship. Sometimes the problem is the fast pace of society, or the times imposed by work commitments. Other times the problem is that as long as you pass along has no quality. We share only a physical space, but without paying attention to one another. Pastoral workers and groups of families should help young married couples or fragile to learn to meet at such times, to stop the facing each other, and also to share moments of silence which oblige them to experience the presence of spouse.
225 . The spouses who have a good experience of “apprenticeship” in this sense can provide the practical tools that have been useful for them: the programming of moments to be together free of charge, recreational time with their children, the various ways of celebrating important things, the shared spirituality spaces. But they can also teach you tricks that help fill in the content and meaning of these moments, to learn to communicate better. This is all-important when it is off the news of the engagement. Because when you do not know what to do with the shared time, one or the other of the spouses end up taking refuge in technology, invent other commitments, will seek other arms or run away from uncomfortable intimacy.
226 . The newlyweds are also encouraged to create their own habits, which offer a healthy feeling of stability and security, and are built with a set of shared daily rituals. It is good to always give yourself a kiss in the morning, bless themselves every night, wait for the other and welcome him when he comes, go out sometime together, sharing household chores. But at the same time, it is good to stop the habits with the feast, not to lose the ability to hold family, to rejoice and celebrate the good experiences. They need to be surprised together for God’s gifts and food together with enthusiasm for life. When you know celebrate, this ability renew the energy of love, frees him from the monotony and filled with color and hope the daily habits.
227 . We Pastors must encourage families to grow in faith. This is why it is good to encourage frequent confession, spiritual direction, to participation in retreats. But do not forget to invite to create spaces of weekly family prayer, because “the family that prays together stays together.” As well, when we visit the houses, we should invite all family members at a time to pray for one another and for the family entrusted to the hands of the Lord. At the same time, it should encourage each spouse to take some moments of prayer in solitude before God, because each has its secret crosses. Why not tell God what troubles the heart, or ask him the strength to heal their wounds and to implore the light of which it needs to sustain its commitment? The Synod Fathers also stressed that “the Word of God is the source of life and spirituality for the family. The whole family ministry will let modeling within and train members of the domestic Church the prayerful reading of Sacred Scripture and the Church. The Word of God is not only good news for the privacy of individuals, but also a criterion of judgment and a light to the discernment of the various challenges confronting the spouses and families. ” [252]
228 . It is possible that one of the spouses is not baptized or who do not want to live the commitments of faith. In that case, the other’s desire to live and grow as a Christian means that the indifference of the spouse have lived with pain. Nonetheless, you can find some common values to be able to share and cultivate with enthusiasm. Anyways, love the unbelieving mate, give him happiness, relieve their suffering and share life with him is a real path of sanctification. On the other hand, love is a gift from God, and there, where spreads makes its transforming power, in sometimes mysterious ways, to the point that “the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the wife unbelieving husband is sanctified by faith “( 1 Cor 7:14).
229 . The parishes, movements, schools and other Church institutions can play different mediations to treat and revive families.For example, through tools such as: meetings of neighboring couples or friends, short retreats for spouses, specialist conferences on very specific issues of family life, marriage counseling centers, missionaries trained operators to talk to the couple about their difficulties and aspirations, consulting on different family situations (addictions, infidelity, domestic violence), areas of spirituality, training workshops for parents with troubled children, family assemblies. The parish office should be able to welcome you with warmth and care of family emergencies, or to target easily to those who can give help.There is also a pastoral support which is given in groups of married couples, the service that mission, prayer, training or mutual aid. These groups offer an opportunity to give, to live the opening of the family to others, to share their faith, but at the same time they are a means of strengthening the spouses and raise them.
230 . It is true that many married couples disappear from the Christian community after the wedding, but many times we waste some occasions when they return to be present, where we could reproduce them so attractive ideal of Christian marriage and bring them closer to the accompanying spaces: I refer, for example, to the Baptism of a child, the first Communion, or when participating in a funeral or the wedding of a relative or a friend. Almost all spouses reappear on these occasions, that could be better exploited. Another avenue of approach is the blessing of the houses, or the visit of an image of the Virgin, which offer the opportunity to develop a pastoral dialogue on the situation of the family. It can also be useful to more mature couples entrust the task of following the latest couple of their neighborhood, to meet them, to follow them in their early stages and offer them a path of growth. With the pace of modern life, most of the spouses will not be willing to frequent meetings, and we can not reduce us to a ministry of small elites . Today the family ministry must be essentially missionary, outgoing, close, rather than being reduced to be a factory of courses in which a few assist.
Enlighten crisis, anxieties and difficulties
231 . A word goes to those who have already aged love the new wine of the engagement. When the wine is aging with this experience of the way, there appears, blooms in all its fullness, the loyalty of small moments of life. It is the loyalty of waiting and patience. This fidelity full of sacrifices and joys be as flourishing age when everything becomes “seasoned” and the eyes become sparkling in the contemplation of their children’s children. So it was from the beginning, but now it is made aware of, settled, matured in the daily surprise of the day by day rediscovery, year after year. As taught by St. John of the Cross, “the old lovers [are] the ones already exercised and tested.” They have no “sensitive fervor, of ebullitions and external fervor fires. They now can taste the sweetness of the love of wine in substance, already fermented and placed inside the soul. ” [253] This supposes to have been able to overcome together the crises and times of anguish, no escape from the challenges and without hiding difficulty.
232 . The story of a family is crossed by crises of every kind, which are also part of its dramatic beauty. It must help to discover that a crisis has passed does not lead to a less intense relationship, but to improve, to settle and develop the Union wine. Do you live together forever be less happy, but to learn to be happy in a new way, starting from the possibilities opened up by a new stage. Every crisis involves an apprenticeship that allows to increase the intensity of shared life, or at least to find a new meaning to the bed. In no way we must resign ourselves to a downward curve, in an inevitable deterioration, a mediocrity to bear. On the contrary, when the marriage is assumed as a task which also involves overcoming obstacles, every crisis is perceived as an opportunity to get together to drink the best wine. It is good to accompany the spouses so that they are able to accept the crises that may come, take up the gauntlet and assign them a place in family life. The experts spouses and formats must be able to accompany others on this finding, so that the crisis does not scare them or lead them to make hasty decisions.Every crisis conceals good news you need to know how to listen honing hearing of the heart.
233 . The immediate reaction is to resist facing the challenge of a crisis, becoming defensive, feeling that escapes their control, because it shows the failure of their way of life, and this bothers. Then you use the method to deny the problems, hide them, relativize their importance, only bet on the passage of time. But that delays the solution and leads to consume a lot of energy in a futile concealment that still complicate things more. The constraints are deteriorating and is being consolidated an isolation that harms intimacy. Not dealt with in a crisis, one that is compromised is communication. In this way, little by little, what was “the one I love” passes to be “who always accompanies me in life”, then just “the father or the mother of my children”, and eventually a stranger.
234 . To address a crisis must be present. It’s hard, because sometimes people are isolated to not show what I feel, step aside in a silence mean and deceitful. In these moments it is necessary to create spaces to communicate heart to heart. The problem is that it becomes more difficult to communicate well in a time of crisis if you never learned how to do it. It is a true art that you learn in times of calm, to put it into practice in hard times. It must help discover the hidden causes in the hearts of the spouses, and address them as a birth that will pass and leave you a new treasure. But the response to consultations made note that in difficult or critical situations the majority does not use the pastoral care, because I do not feel sensitive, close, realistic, incarnate. For this, let us now try to approach to the twin crises with a look that does not ignore their burden of pain and anguish.
235 . There are common crisis that usually happens in all marriages, as the crisis of the beginning, when the differences and to break away from parents must learn to make compatible; the crisis or the arrival of his son, with his new emotional challenges;the crisis of raising a child, changing the habits of parents; the crisis of adolescence of his son, which demands a lot of energy, destabilizes the parents and sometimes opposed them together; the crisis of the “empty nest”, which obliges the couple to re-look at herself; the crisis caused by the old age of the parents of the couple, which require more presence, more attention and difficult decisions. They are demanding situations that cause fear, guilt, depression or fatigue that can seriously undermine the union.
236 . To these are added the personal crisis affecting couples, linked to the economic difficulties, work, emotional, social, spiritual. And they add unexpected circumstances that may affect the family life and which demand a path of forgiveness and reconciliation. Just when he tries to take the step of forgiveness, each one has to wonder with serene humility if he has not created the conditions for exposing others to commit certain errors. Some succumb families when spouses blame each other, but “experience shows that with adequate and with the action of the grace of reconciliation a large percentage of double crisis is overcome satisfactorily help. Knowing how to forgive and feel forgiveness is a fundamental experience in family life. ” [254] ” The laborious art of reconciliation, which requires the support of grace, needs the generous cooperation of relatives and friends, and sometimes even outside help and professional. ” [255]
237 . It has become common that when one feels he is not receiving what you want, or do not realize what they dreamed, what seems to be enough to end a marriage. So there will be no marriage that lasts. Sometimes, to decide that it is all over just a disappointment, an absence in a time when you needed the other, a wounded pride or an undefined fear. There are specific situations of inevitable human frailty, to which it attaches too great emotional weight. For example, the feeling of not being fully paid, jealousies, differences that may arise between the two, the attraction aroused by other people, new interests that tend to take possession of the heart, the physical changes of the spouse, and many other things that, rather than attacks against love, are opportunities that invite you to recreate it once more.
238 . In these circumstances, some have the maturity to again choose the other as a traveling companion, beyond the limits of the report, and accept with realism that can not meet all the cherished dreams. Avoid considered the only martyrs, appreciate small and limited possibilities offered by their family life and aim to strengthen the bond in a building that will require time and effort. Because basically they recognize that every crisis is like a new “yes” that makes it possible that the reborn love strengthened, transfigured, matured and enlightened. From a crisis you have the courage to seek the deep roots of what is going on, to renegotiate the substantive agreements, to find a new balance and take together a new stage. With this constant open attitude we can face many difficult situations! In any case, recognizing that reconciliation is possible, today we discover that “a ministry dedicated to those whose marriage relationship has broken seems particularly urgent.” [256]
239 . It is understandable that in families there are many difficulties when one of its members has not matured his way of relating, because it did not heal the wounds of some phase of his life. His childhood and his evil lived adolescence are fertile ground for personal crises that end up hurting marriage. If all people were matured normally, the crisis would be less frequent and less painful. But the fact is that sometimes people need to realize at forty a backward maturation that were supposed to reach the end of adolescence. Sometimes he loves with an egocentric their child’s love, set at a stage where reality is distorted and you live at the whim that everything must revolve around the self. It is an insatiable love, crying and crying they get what they want. Other times you love it with a love attached to an adolescent phase, marked by the contrast, from the acid criticism, the habit of blaming others, by the logic of feeling and imagination, where others have to fill our empty or support our whims .
240 . Many end their childhood without ever having experienced being loved unconditionally, and this hurts their ability to trust and to give himself. A relationship badly lived with their parents and siblings, that has never been healed, reappears, and damages the marital life. So we have to make a path of liberation which has never faced. When the relationship between the spouses does not work well, before making important decisions, we should make sure that everyone has done this nursing path of their own history. This demands to recognize the need to heal, to ask insistently for the grace to forgive and forgive and to accept help, to seek positive reasons and to return to try again and again. Each one should be very sincere with himself to admit that his way of living love has these immaturity. Although it may seem obvious that all the blame is the other, it is never possible to overcome a crisis just waiting for the other changes. It must also wonder about things that one could personally mature or heal to help overcome the conflict.
Accompany after ruptures and divorces
241 . In some cases, consideration for his dignity and the good of the children implies putting a firm limit to the excessive demands of the other, to a great injustice, violence or disrespect become chronic. It must be recognized that “there are cases where the separation is inevitable. Sometimes it can become even morally necessary, precisely when it comes to subtract the weaker spouse, or young children, the most serious wounds caused by the arrogance and violence, and exploitation dall’avvilimento, dall’estraneità and indifference. ” [257] However, “should be considered as a last resort, after all other reasonable attempts at reconciliation have proved vain.” [258]
242 . The Fathers have indicated that “a particular discernment is essential to accompany pastorally separated, divorced, abandoned. It should be welcomed and appreciated especially the suffering of those who have suffered unjustly separation, divorce or abandonment, or have been forced by the spouse abuse to break the cohabitation. Forgiveness for the injustice is not easy, but it is a journey that the grace makes possible. Hence the need for a ministry of reconciliation and mediation also through specialized counseling centers to be established in the diocese. ” [259] At the same time,” you are divorced but have not remarried who are often witnesses of marital fidelity, must be encouraged to find in the Eucharist the food that sustains them in their state. The local communities and the Pastors must accompany these people with care, especially when there are children or is severe their situation of poverty. ” [260] A double failure becomes much more traumatic and painful when there is poverty, because they are much less resources to reorient its existence. A poor person who loses the protection of the family environment is doubly exposed to abandonment and all types of risks to its integrity.
243 . For divorced living a new union, it is important to feel that they are part of the Church, which “are not excommunicated” and are not treated as such, because they always form the ecclesial communion. [261] These situations “require careful discernment and a great respect accompaniment, avoiding any language and attitude that makes them feel discriminated against and promoting their participation in community life. Caring for them is not for the Christian community a weakening of his faith and his testimony about the indissolubility of marriage, on the contrary it expresses precisely this cure his charity. “[262]
244 . On the other hand, a large number of Fathers “stressed the need to improve the accessibility and agile, possibly totally free, the procedures for the recognition of cases of nullity.” [263] The slowness of the process creates discomfort and weary people. My two recent documents on this subject [264] have led to a simplification of the procedures for a possible declaration of nullity of marriage. Through them I also wanted to “make it clear that the same bishop in his Church, which is made up of a pastor and leader, is, on that court between the faithful entrusted to him.” [265] Therefore, “the implementation of these documents It constitutes a great responsibility for the diocesan Ordinaries, called to judge for themselves some cases and, in any case, to ensure easier access of the faithful to justice. This involves the preparation of an adequate number of staff, composed of clerical and lay, which devote a priority to this ecclesial service. It will therefore be necessary to provide separate individuals or couples in crisis, an information service, advice and mediation, tied to family ministry, which will also welcome people in view of the preliminary investigation to the matrimonial process (see Mitis iudex , art. 2-3). ” [266]
245 . The Synod Fathers also showed “the consequences of separation or divorce on children, in any case innocent victims of the situation.” [267] Above all considerations that you want to do, they are the first concern , which it must not be obscured by any other interest or objective. Separated parents to address this prayer: “Never, never, never take his son as a hostage! We’re separated by so many difficulties and reasons, life has given you this test, but the children are not the ones who bear the brunt of this separation, are not used as hostages against the other spouse, they grow feeling that Mom speaks well of dad, even though they are not together, and that the father speaks well of the mother. ” [268] it is irresponsible to spoil the image of the father or mother with the goal to corner the affected child, to take revenge or to defend themselves, because this will damage the inner life of that child and will result in difficult to heal wounds.
246 . The Church, though including the conflicts that spouses have to cross, can not cease to be the voice of the most vulnerable, who are the children who suffer, often in silence. Today, “despite our apparently evolved sensibility, and all our refined psychological analysis, I wonder if we have not anesthetized even than the wounds of children. […] We feel the weight of the mountain that crushes the soul of a child, in families where there is bad and you do evil, to break the bond of marital fidelity? “. [269] These bad experiences not are of help to those children mature to be able to firm commitments. For this, the Christian communities should not be left alone divorced parents who live a new union. On the contrary, they should include them and accompany them in their educational function. For “how we could recommend for these parents to do everything possible to educate children in the Christian life, by giving them the example of a convinced faith and practiced, if we kept them away from the life of the community, as if they were excommunicated? You must make sure you do not add more weight than those that children, in these situations, already are having to bring. ” [270] To help heal the wounds of parents and welcome them spiritually, it is also good for children who are in need of the familiar face of the Church that welcomes them in this traumatic experience. Divorce is bad, and the growth in the number of divorces is very worrying. For this, no doubt, our most important pastoral task about families, is to strengthen the love and help to heal the wounds, so that we can prevent the spread of this drama of our time.
247 . “The issues related to mixed marriages require specific attention. Marriages between Catholics and other baptized “have, despite their particular character, numerous elements that could well be used and developed, both for their intrinsic value and for the contribution they can make to the ecumenical movement.” For this purpose “is to be found […] cordial cooperation between the Catholic minister and the non-Catholic, since the time of marriage preparation and marriage” ( Familiaris Consortio, 78). About the Eucharistic sharing, please note that “the decision to admit or not the non-Catholic party of the marriage to Eucharistic communion must be taken in accordance with the existing general rules, both for Eastern Christians as for other Christians, and taking into account this particular situation, namely, that receive the sacrament of Christian marriage two baptized Christians. Although the spouses of a mixed marriage have in common the sacraments of baptism and marriage, the Eucharistic sharing can only be exceptional and, in any case, consideration to the provisions set out “(Pont. Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism , March 25, 1993, 159-160). “[271]
248 . “The marriages with disparity of cult are a privileged place for inter-religious dialogue […] involve some special difficulties both with regard to the Christian identity of the family, both religious education of children. […] The number of families of marriages with disparity of cult, an increase in mission territories and even in countries of long Christian tradition, calls for the urgent need to provide for pastoral care varied according to the different social and cultural contexts. In some countries, where freedom of religion does not exist, the Christian spouse is obliged to move to another religion in order to marry, and can not celebrate the canonical marriage in the disparity of cult or baptize the children. We therefore reiterate the need for religious freedom is respected with regard to all. ” [272] ” It is necessary to pay particular attention to people who join in such marriages, not only in the period prior to the wedding. Unique challenges facing couples and families in which one partner is Catholic and the other a non-believer. In such cases it is necessary to bear witness to the Gospel ability to immerse themselves in these situations so as to make possible the education of their children in the Christian faith. ” [273]
249 . “Particular difficulties are situations that affect access to the baptism of persons who are in a condition complex double.These are people who have contracted a double stable in a time when still at least one of them did not know the Christian faith.The Bishops are called to exercise, in these cases, a pastoral discernment commensurate with their spiritual good. ” [274]
250 . The Church has modeled her attitude to the Lord Jesus that in the boundless love he offered to every person without exception. [275] With the Synod Fathers I took into account the situation of the families who live the experience of having their internal homosexual person, experience not easy either for the parents or for their children. So we would like first of all to reiterate that every person, regardless of their sexual orientation, must be respected in their dignity and welcomed with respect, with care to avoid “every sign of unjust discrimination” [276] and particularly all forms of aggression and violence. Towards families it is rather to ensure a respectful accompaniment, so that those who show a homosexual tendency can have the help needed to fully understand and carry out the will of God in their lives. [277]
251 . During the debate on the dignity and mission of the family, the Synod Fathers noted that “some projects equivalent to marriage to unions between homosexual persons, there is no foundation whatsoever to assimilate or establish analogies, even remotely unions homosexuals and God’s plan for marriage and the family “; and it is unacceptable “that the local Churches subjected to pressure in this matter and that international bodies condition one financial aid to poor countries to the introduction of laws that establish the” marriage “between persons of the same sex.” [278]
252 . Single parents often originate from “biological mothers or fathers who have never wanted to integrate into family life, violent situations where a parent has had to flee with her children, death of a parent, abandonment of the family part of one of the parents, and other situations. Whatever the cause, the parent who lives with the child must find support and comfort from other families that make up the Christian community, as well as in the parish pastoral organizations. These families are often further afflicted by the severity of the economic problems, the uncertainty of a precarious job, the difficulty for child support, the lack of a home. ” [279]
When the plant death its sting
253 . Sometimes family life is seen requested by the death of a loved one. We can not fail to give the light of faith to accompany the families who are suffering at this time. [280] Leaving a family when a death wounds would be a lack of mercy, losing pastoral opportunity, and this attitude can close us the doors for any other work of evangelization.
254 . I understand the anguish of those who have lost a beloved person, a spouse with whom he shared many things. Jesus himself was moved and wept at the wake of a friend (cf. Jn 11,33.35). And how can we understand the lament of those who have lost a child? Indeed, “it is as if to stop the time: it opens an abyss that swallows the past and also the future. […] And sometimes you even get to accuse God. How many people – I understand them – get angry with God. ” [281] ” Widowhood is a particularly difficult […] some show of being able to pour their energies with even more dedication on the children and grandchildren, finding in this expression of love a new educational mission. […] Those who can not count on the presence of family of fun and from whom receive affection and closeness must be supported by the Christian community with particular attention and availability, especially if you are in poverty. ” [282]
255 . In general mourning for the dead can last quite a long time, and when a pastor wants to accompany this process, must adapt to the needs of each of its stages. The whole course is crossed by questions: the causes of death, on what could have been done, what a person lives at the moment before death … With a genuine process and patient prayer and inner freedom, peace returns . At one point of mourning you must be helped to discover that those who have lost a loved one we still have a mission to accomplish, and that it does no good to want to prolong the suffering, as if this was an act of homage. Your loved one does not need our suffering, nor is flattering that we ruin our lives. Nor is the best expression of love and remember her name it at all times, because it means to cling to a past that no longer exists, instead of loving the real person who is now in the hereafter. His physical presence is no longer possible, but, if death is something powerful, “as strong as death is love” ( Ct 8,6).Love possesses an insight which enables him to listen without sound and see the invisible. This is not to imagine the loved one as it was, but it can be converted to accept, as it is now. Risen Jesus, when her friend Maria wanted to hug him hard, not to touch the churches (cf. Jn 20:17), to lead to a different meeting.
256 . We comforted to know that there is complete destruction of those who die, and faith assures us that the Risen Lord will never abandon us. So we can prevent the death “to poison the life of spoil our affections, to make us fall into the darkest void.”[283] The Bible speaks of a God who created us out of love, and that made us so that our life does not end with death (cf. Wis3,2-3). Saint Paul speaks of an encounter with Christ immediately after death: “I long to depart this life and be with Christ” ( Phil1:23). With Him, after death awaits us what God has prepared for those who love him (cf. 1 Cor 2.9). The preface of the Liturgy of the dead as beautifully expressed: “If we are saddened by the certainty of having to die, we are consoled by the promise of immortality. Your faithful people life is not taken away but transformed. ” In fact, “our loved ones have not disappeared in the darkness of nothingness: the hope assures us that they are in good hands and strong of God”. [284]
257 . A way to communicate with our loved ones who have died is to pray for them. [285] The Bible says that “pray for the dead” is something “holy and devout” ( 2 Mac 12.44 to 45). Pray for them “can not only help them, but also make effective their intercession for us.” [286] The Book of Revelation presents the martyrs as interceding for those who suffer injustice on earth (cf. 6,9-11), in solidarity with this world on the way. Some saints, before dying, consoling loved ones and promised that they would be close to them to help them. St. Therese of Lisieux felt he wanted to continue to do good from heaven. [287] San Domenico said that “it would be more useful after death, […] more powerful in getting through.” [288] They are bonds of love,[289] because “the union of those who are on the journey with the brethren in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted […], it is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods.” [290]
258 . If we accept death, we can prepare ourselves to it. The way is to grow in love for those who walk with us, until the day in which “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” ( Rev 21,4). In this way we also prepare ourselves to find our loved ones who have died. As Jesus back to his mother that her son was dead (cf. Lk 7:15), similarly will do with us. We do not waste energy stopping years and years in the past. The better we live on this earth, the more happiness we can share with our loved ones in heaven. The more we manage to mature and grow, the more we bring good things to the heavenly banquet.
STRENGTHENING THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
259 . Parents always have an impact on the moral development of their children, for good and bad. As a result, the best thing is that they accept this inevitable responsibility and realize consciously, enthusiastic, reasonable and appropriate. Because this educational function of families is so important and has become very complex, I wish myself in a special way on this point.
260 . The family can not give up being a place of support, supporting, guiding, even if it has to reinvent its methods and find new resources. It needs to envisage what it expose their children. For this purpose must not avoid wondering who are those that deal with giving them fun and entertainment, those who enter their homes through the screens, those who rely on them to guide them in their spare time. Only moments we spend with them, talking with simplicity and affection of the important things, and healthy opportunities we create for them to occupy their time will allow to avoid a harmful invasion. There is always need for vigilance. The abandonment is never good. Parents need to guide and prepare children and adolescents so that they know to deal with situations in which there may be, for example, risks of assault, abuse or addiction.
261 . However, the obsession is not educational, and you can not have control of all the situations in which a child may be getting through. Here applies the principle that “time is greater than the space.” [291] In other words, it comes to generating more than dominate space processes. If a parent is obsessed to know the whereabouts of her son and control all its movements, just try to dominate its space. This way you do not educate, not strengthen, not prepare for the challenges. What is interesting is mostly generated in the child, with much love, maturation processes of its freedom, of preparation, of integral growth, cultivation of authentic autonomy. Just so that child will have in himself the elements it needs to know how to defend and to act with intelligence and foresight in difficult circumstances. Therefore, the big question is where is the child physically, with those who are at this moment, but where is in an existential sense, where it is positioned in terms of its beliefs, goals, his desires, his project of life. This is why the questions I ask parents are: “Let us understand” where “the children really are on their way? Where really their soul, we know? And above all, we want to know? “. [292]
262 . If the maturity was only the development of something that is already contained in the genetic code, there would be plenty to do. Prudence, good judgment and common sense does not depend on factors purely quantitative growth, but by a whole range of items that are summarized in the interiority of the person; to be more precise, in the middle of his freedom. It is inevitable that every son surprised us with projects that spring from this freedom, to break our patterns, and it is good that to happen. Education involves the task of promoting responsible freedom, which the intersections are able to choose from with common sense and intelligence; People who understand without reservation that their lives and those of their community is in their hands, and that this freedom is a great gift.
263 . Even if the parents need the school to ensure a basic education to their children, can never fully delegate their moral formation. The emotional and ethical development of a person requires a fundamental experience: to believe that their parents are trustworthy. This is an educational responsibility: with the affection and the testimony generate confidence in children, to inspire in them a loving respect. When a child does not feel to be valuable to his parents despite being imperfect, or does not perceive that they nourish a genuine concern for him, this creates deep wounds that cause many difficulties in their development. This absence, this emotional abandonment, causes a deeper pain of a possible correction that may be received for a bad deed.
264 . The parents’ task includes an education of the will and a development of good habits and emotional inclinations for good.This implies that present themselves as desirable behaviors to learn and inclinations to be cultivated. But it is always a process that goes from imperfection to greater fullness. The desire to adapt to society, or the habit of giving up immediate satisfaction to fit a standard and make a good living together, is already in itself an initial value that creates provisions to rise then towards higher values. Moral formation should always be realized with active methods and an educational dialogue involving sensitivity and their children language. In addition, this training will be implemented by inductively, so that the child can get to discover for themselves the importance of certain values, principles and standards, instead of imporgliele as unquestionable truth.
265 . To do good is not enough “to judge properly” or know clearly what must be done, although this is a priority. Many times we are inconsistent with our beliefs, even when they are solid. As the consciousness we said a particular moral judgment, sometimes have more power other things that attract us, if we have not acquired that good grasped by the mind to take root in us as deep emotional inclination, as a taste for the good that weights more than other attractions and that makes us feel that what we took as well so is “for us” here and now. An effective ethics training involves showing the person to what extent Agree to herself acting well. Today it is often ineffective ask for something that requires effort and sacrifice, without showing clearly the good with what you could achieve.
266 . It is necessary to develop habits. Even the habits acquired by children have a positive function, allowing large internalized values translate into healthy and stable external behaviors. Someone may have feelings sociable and a good disposition towards others, but if for a long time you are not accustomed to the insistence of the adults to say “please”, “allowed”, “thank you”, its good inner disposition not easily result in these expressions. The strengthening of the will and the repetition of certain actions build moral conduct, and without the conscious repetition, free and appreciated certain good behaviors not Completes education at such conduct. Motivations, or the attraction we feel toward a certain value, they become non-virtues without these acts adequately motivated.
267 . Freedom is something great, but we can lose it. Moral education is a growing freedom through proposals, motivations, practical applications, incentives, prizes, samples, models, symbols, reflections and exhortations, reviews of the way of acting and dialogues that help people develop those stable inner principles that can move spontaneously to do good. Virtue is a belief that has turned into an internal principle and stable action. The virtuous life, therefore, builds freedom, strengthens and educates, preventing the person becomes slave of inclinations compulsive dehumanizing and anti-social. In fact, the same human dignity requires that each “act through conscious and free choice, as moved and determined by personal convictions”.[293]
The value of the penalty as a stimulus
268 . Equally, it is essential to raise the child and the adolescent to realize that the bad actions have consequences. It must awaken the ability to place themselves in the shoes and to repent for his suffering when he was hurt. Some sanctions – to aggressive antisocial behavior – can achieve this goal in part. It is important to orient the child with firmness to ask for forgiveness and repair the damage caused to others. When the educational process shows its fruits in a maturing of personal freedom, the child itself at some point begin to recognize with gratitude that it was good for him to grow up in a family and also withstand the demands imposed by the training process.
269 . The correction is a stimulus when at the same time you appreciate and recognize the efforts and when the son discovers that his parents keep alive a patient trust. Proper child with love feels considered, he perceives that someone feels that his parents recognize its potential. This does not require that parents be immaculate, but who know how to humbly acknowledge their limitations and show their staff to be best effort. But a witness whose children need from parents is that they do not allow themselves to be carried away by anger. The son who commits a bad deed, to be corrected, but never as an enemy or as one to which you download their aggression. Also an adult should recognize that certain bad actions are related to the fragility and their age limits. This would be detrimental to a constantly sanctioning attitude, which would not help to perceive the different severity of the actions and cause discouragement and irritation: “Fathers, do not provoke your children” ( Eph 6,4; cf. Col 3:21).
270 . The key thing is that the discipline does not turn into a mutilation of desire, but a stimulus to always go beyond. How to integrate discipline and inner dynamism? How to ensure that discipline is a design limit of the journey to be undertaken by a child and not a wall that we do cancel or dimension of education which inhibits? We must find a balance between two equally harmful extremes: one would expect to build a world fit the desires of the child, growing feeling subject of rights but not responsibilities. The other extreme would take him to live without awareness of his dignity, to his unique identity and his rights, tortured by the duties and submissive to realize the desires of others.
271 . Moral education implies ask a child or a young man only those things that do not represent a disproportionate sacrifice for him, only to demand that stress dose that does not cause resentment or purely forced actions. The ordinary route is proposing small steps that can be understood, accepted and appreciated, and involve a proportionate renunciation. Otherwise, ask for too much, do not get anything. The person may be released as soon as the authority, probably stop doing good.
272 . The ethical formation sometimes results in contempt due to experiences of abandonment, disappointment, lack of affection, or a bad image of the parents. They are projected on ethical values distorted images of the father and mother figures, or the weaknesses of the adults. For this we need to help adolescents make the analogy: the values are achieved particularly by some very exemplary, but you also realize imperfectly and in different degrees in practice. At the same time, since the resistance of the young people are very linked to negative experiences, we must help them travel a healing of this inner world wounded, so that they can access to understanding and reconciliation with people and society.
273 . When contemplating the values, you have to proceed little by little, progress in different ways depending on the age and the concrete possibilities of the people, without trying to apply strict and unchanging methods. The valuable contributions of psychology and educational science show that it must be a gradual process in the acquisition of changes in behavior, but also that freedom needs to be channeled and stimulated, because left to itself can not guarantee its maturation. Freedom it situated, real, is limited and conditioned. It is not a pure ability to choose the good with total spontaneity. It not always adequately distinguishes between act “voluntary” and act “free.” Someone may want something evil with a great force of will, but because of an irresistible passion or a bad education. In such a case, its decision is strongly voluntary, does not contradict the inclination of his will, but it is not free, because it is almost impossible not to choose the evil. It’s what happens with a compulsive drug addict. When you want to do it with all his strength, but it is so conditioned that for the moment is not able to take a different decision. Therefore, its decision is voluntary, but not free. It makes no sense “let choose freely” because in fact can not choose, and expose the drug does nothing more than increase dependence. He needs the help of others and an educational path.
Family Life as an educational context
274 . The family is the first school of human values, where you learn the proper use of freedom. There are tendencies gained in childhood that permeate the depths of a person and last for a lifetime as an emotion favorable against a value or as a spontaneous rejection of certain behaviors. Many people act for life in a certain way because they consider valid that way of acting that have assimilated from childhood, as if by osmosis: “I have taught so”; “This is what they taught” me. Familiar context you can also learn to discern critically the messages of various media. Unfortunately, many times some television programs or certain forms of advertising have a negative effect and weaken the values received in family life.
275 . In the present age, where reigns the anxiety and technological hurry, important role of families is educating the ability to wait. This is not to forbid the children to play with electronic devices, but to find ways to generate in them the ability to differentiate between different logics and not to apply the digital speed in every area of life. Procrastination is no denying the desire, but postpone his satisfaction. When children or adolescents are not educated to accept that some things have to wait, they become bullies, submit everything to the satisfaction of their immediate needs and grow with the vice of “all at once.” This is a great deception that does not promote freedom, but the poisons. Instead, when one is trained to learn to postpone some things and waiting for the right time, it teaches what it means to be master of himself, self in front of their impulses. So when the child experiences that can take charge of himself, enriches your self-confidence. At the same time, this teaches him to respect the freedom of others. Of course that does not mean demand from children who are acting as adults, but neither must despise their ability to grow in the maturation of a responsible freedom. In a healthy family, this apprenticeship takes place in the ordinary way through cohabitation requirements.
276 . The family is the scope of the primary socialization, because it is the first place where one learns to be placed facing each other, to listen, to share, to endure, to respect, to help, to live. Education must arouse the feeling of the world and of society as a “family atmosphere”, it is an education to learn “to live” beyond the limits of your own home. In the family it is taught to recall the close, caring, greeting. There it breaks the first of the deadly circle selfishness to recognize that we live together with others, with others, who are worthy of our attention, our kindness, of our affection. There is no social bond without this daily dimension, almost microscopic: being together in close proximity, incrociandoci at different times of the day, taking care of the one that affects all, soccorrendoci each other in small daily things. The family has to invent every day new ways of promoting mutual recognition.
277 . In the family you can also reset the consumption pattern to provide together with the common house: “The family is the protagonist of integral ecology, because it is the primary social subject, which contains within itself the two when beginners the basis of human civilization on earth: the principle of communion and the principle of fertility. ” [294] Likewise, the tough times and tough family life can be very educational. It is what happens, for example, when an illness occurs, because “the face of illness, even family difficulties arise, because of human weakness. But, in general, the time of the disease increases the strength of family ties. […] An education that takes away from sensitivity to human disease, dries up the heart. It means that children are “anesthetized” to the suffering of others, unable to confront the suffering and to live the experience of limits. ” [295]
278 . The educational meeting between parents and children can be facilitated or hindered by technologies of communication and entertainment, more and more sophisticated. When they are used can be useful to connect the members of the family despite the distance. Contacts can be frequent and help solve problems. [296] But it must be clear that no substitute or replace the need for more personal and profound dialogue that requires physical contact, or at least, the voice of the other person. We know that sometimes these means away instead of approaching, as the hour of the meal when everyone is focused on his mobile phone, or when one spouse falls asleep waiting for the other, who spends hours struggling with some electronic device.Family, this too must be an incentive for dialogue and agreements, making it possible to give priority to the meeting of its members without falling into senseless prohibitions. However, you can not ignore the risks of new forms of communication for children and teenagers, who sometimes have become apathetic, disconnected from the real world. This “technological autism” exposes them more easily to the manipulation of those who seek to enter their intimacy with selfish interests.
279 . It is also not good that parents become omnipotent beings for their children, who may have only trust in them, because that prevent an adequate process of socialization and emotional maturity. To make effective the extension of fatherhood and motherhood towards a wider reality, “all Christian communities are called to offer support to the educational mission of the family”, [297] in particular through the initiation catechesis. To promote holistic education we need to “rekindle the alliance between the families and the Christian community.” [298] The Synod wished to highlight the importance of Catholic schools, which “play a vital role in helping parents in their duty to educate their children. […] Catholic schools should be encouraged in their mission to help the pupils to grow as mature adults who can see the world through the eyes of love of Jesus and who understand life as a call to serve God. ” [299] In thus, “are firmly established the Church’s freedom to teach its doctrine and the right of conscientious objection on the part of educators.” [300]
280 . The Second Vatican Council envisaged the need for “a positive and prudent sex education” that would reach children and adolescents “as it grows their age” and “taking account of advances in psychology, pedagogy and teaching.” [301] We should ask ourselves if our educational institutions have taken on this challenge. It is hard to think of sex education at a time when we tend to trivialize and impoverish sexuality. You could understand it only as part of an education in love, reciprocal self-giving.Thus the language of sexuality is not seen sadly depleted, but enlightened. The sexual impulse can be grown in a journey of self-knowledge and the development of a capacity to dominate him, they can help to develop valuable skills of joy and loving encounter.
281 . Sex education offers information, but without forgetting that children and young people have not reached full maturity.The information must arrive at the appropriate time and in a way suitable to the stage living. No need to fill data without the development of a critical sense ahead of a proposed invasion, before the pornography out of control and overload of stimuli that can maim sexuality. Young people must be able to realize that they are bombarded with messages that do not seek their good and their maturity. It must help them recognize and seek positive influences, in the same time in which distance themselves from anything that distorts their ability to love. Equally, we have to accept that “the need for a new and more appropriate language is first of all presents in time to introduce children and adolescents to the topic of sexuality.” [302]
282 . Sexual education that guard a healthy modesty is of immense value, even if today some people believe that it is a thing of the past. It’s a natural defense of the person who protects his inner self and avoids becoming a mere object. Without modesty, we can reduce the affection and sexuality in obsessions that we focus only on the genitalia, on morbidity that distort our ability to love and to different forms of sexual violence that lead us to be treated inhumanely or harm others .
283 . Often sex education focuses on the invitation to “protect themselves”, looking for a “safe sex.” These expressions convey a negative attitude towards the natural procreative purpose of sexuality, as if any child was an enemy from whom having to protect. Thus it promotes narcissistic aggression instead of reception. It is irresponsible to each invitation to teens playing with their bodies and their desires, as if they had the maturity, values, mutual commitment and objectives of marriage. So it encourages them cheerfully to use the other person as an object of experience to compensate for deficiencies and great limitations. It ‘important is teaching a course on the different expressions of love, mutual care, the tenderness respectful, on the way rich communication. All this, in fact, preparing for an upright and generous self-giving which will be expressed, after a public commitment, in the offer of the bodies. Sexual union in marriage will appear as a sign of an all-encompassing commitment, enriched by the previous path.
284 . Young people must not be fooled leading them to confuse the plans: the attraction “creates, at the time, an illusion of unity, yet without love this” union “leaves two strangers and divided beings as before.” [303] The language body requires the patient apprenticeship that allows you to interpret and educate their desires to really give himself. When one attempts to give everything at once you may not gifts nothing. One thing is to understand the fragility of age or his confusion, another to encourage teenagers to prolong the immaturity of their way to love. But who today talk about these things? Who can take seriously young people? Who helps them prepare seriously for a great and generous love? It takes too lightly sex education.
285 . Sex education should also include the respect and esteem of the difference, showing everyone the opportunity to overcome the closure within your limits to open acceptance of others. Beyond the understandable difficulties which everyone can live, you need help to accept your body as it was created, because “a logic of domination over his own body turns into a sometimes subtle logic of dominion over creation […] Even appreciate their bodies in her femininity or masculinity is necessary to recognize oneself in the encounter with the other than itself. In this way you can accept joyfully the specific gift of the other or the other, the work of God the Creator, and enrich each other. ” [304] Only by abandoning the fear of the difference you can come to rid the immanence of his being and the charm for themselves. Sex education must help to accept their bodies, so that the person does not claim to “erase sexual difference because it can no longer deal with it.” [305]
286 . Nor can it be ignored that in the configuration of their way of being, male or female, do not flow only biological or genetic factors, but also many elements related to the temperament, the family history, the culture, the experiences, the training received , the influence of friends, family and people admired, and other concrete circumstances that require an adaptation effort. It is true that we can not separate what is male and female opera created by God, which is prior to all of our decisions and experiences and where there are biological factors that is impossible to ignore. But it is also true that the male and female are not something rigid. So you can, for example, that the way to be masculine husband can adapt flexibly to the employment status of the wife. Take charge of domestic tasks or certain aspects of raising children does not make it less male nor signify a failure, a failure or a shame. We must help children to accept as normal these healthy “exchanges” that does not take away any dignity to the father figure. The rigidity becomes an exaggeration of male or female, and fail to educate children and young people to reciprocity embodied in the real conditions of marriage. This rigidity, in turn, can prevent the development of the capacity of each, up to the point of considering how little men devote themselves to art or dance and unfeminine complete them driving. This, thank God, has changed, but in some places certain inadequate conceptions continue to affect the legitimate freedom and mutilating the real concrete identity development of children and their potential.
287 . The education of children must be characterized by a path of transmission of the faith, which is made difficult by the current lifestyle, the working hours, by the complexity of today’s world, in which many, to survive, claim rhythms frantic. [306]Nevertheless, the family must continue to be the place where teaching to grasp the reasons and the beauty of the faith, to pray and to serve others. This begins with Baptism, in which, as St. Augustine said, the mothers who bring their children to “work together for the holy birth.” [307] Then begins the journey of the growth of that new life. Faith is a gift of God, received in Baptism, and is not the result of human action, but parents are the instrument of God for its maturation and development.Therefore, “it is nice when the mothers teach their young children to send a kiss to Jesus or the Virgin. How much tenderness there is in that gesture! At that moment the children turns into a prayer space. “The heart [308] The transmission of faith presupposes that parents live the real experience to have confidence in God, to seek him, to need it, because only in this way” a generation shall laud thy works, announces new business “( Ps 144,4) and” the father shall make known to the children your faithfulness “( Is 38,19). This requires that we invoke the action of God in our hearts, where we can reach. The mustard seed, seed so small, it becomes a large shrub (cf. Mt 13,31-32), and so we recognize the disproportion between the action and its effect. Then we know that we are not masters of the gift but his thoughtful administrators. However our creative efforts is a contribution that allows us to collaborate with the initiative of God. Therefore, “take care to enhance couples, mothers and fathers, as active agents of catechesis […]. It is of great family catechesis help, as an effective method to train the young parents and to make them aware of their mission as evangelizers of their own family. ” [309]
288 . Education in the faith knows how to adapt to each child, because the tools have already learned or recipes sometimes do not work. Children need of symbols, gestures, stories. Teenagers usually come into crisis with the authorities and with the rules, why should stimulate their personal experiences of faith and offer them bright evidences that are imposed by their very beauty. Parents who want to accompany the faith of their children are attentive to their changes, because they know that the spiritual experience is not imposed but proposed to their freedom. It is vital that children see in a concrete way that their parents prayer is really important. This is why the moments of family prayer and expressions of popular piety can be more evangelizing force of all catechesis and all the talk. I wish in a special way to express my gratitude to all mothers who pray unceasingly, as did St. Monica, for children who are estranged from Christ.
289 . The exercise to transmit the faith to their children, so as to facilitate its expression and its growth, allows the family to become evangelizing, and spontaneously begin to be circulated to all who draw near, even outside the the same family environment. Children who grow up in missionary families often become missionaries, if parents know how to live this task so that others feel them close and friendly, and so that children grow up in this style of relationship with the world, without renouncing their faith and with their own convictions. We remember that Jesus Himself ate and drank with sinners (cf. Mk 2:16;Mt 11:19), he could stay in conversation with the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4.7 to 26), and receiving Nicodemus at night (cf. Jn3, 1-21), he is left to anoint the feet of a woman prostitute (cf. Lk 7,36-50), and did not hesitate to touch the sick (cf. Mk 1,40-45; 7,33). So did his apostles, who were not contemptuous of other people, inmates in small groups of elected, isolated from people’s lives. While the authorities were persecuting them, they enjoyed the sympathy of all the people (cf. Acts 2:47; 4,21.33; 5.13).
290 . “The family constitutes itself as the subject of pastoral action through the explicit proclamation of the Gospel and the legacy of multiple forms of evidence: solidarity towards the poor, the opening to the diversity of persons, the protection of creation, the moral and material solidarity with other families especially to those most in need, commitment to the promotion of the common good, even through the transformation of unjust social structures, from the territory in which it lives, practicing the spiritual and corporal works of mercy “. [310] This should be placed in the context of the most precious belief of Christians: the Father’s love that sustains us and makes us grow, expressed in the total gift of Jesus, alive among us, which enables us to stand united all storms and all stages of life. Even in the heart of every family must resonate the Kerygma , in season and out of season, because they illuminate the path. We should all be able to say, from living in our families: “We believe the love God has for us” ( 1 Jn 4:16). Only from this experience, family ministry may obtain that families are both house churches and evangelizing leaven in society.
ACCOMPANY, DISCERN AND INTEGRATE THE FRAGILITY
291 . The Synod Fathers stated that although the Church considers that any failure of the marriage bond “is against the will of God, is also aware of the fragility of many of his children.” [311] Enlightened by the gaze of Christ, “the Church turns with love to those who participate in its life in unfinished so, recognizing that the grace of God also works in their lives by giving them the courage to do good, to take care with love for each other and be at the service the community in which they live and work. “[312] on the other hand, this attitude is reinforced in the context of a Jubilee Year dedicated to mercy. Although always offer perfection and calls for a fuller response to God, “the Church must accompany with attention and care its most fragile children, marked by love hurt and bewildered, restoring trust and hope, as the beacon light of a port or a torch carried in the midst of people to enlighten those who have lost their route or are in the midst of the storm. ” [313] Let us not forget that often the Church’s work resembles that of a field hospital.
292 . Christian marriage, a reflection of the union between Christ and his Church, is fully realized in the union between a man and a woman, who give themselves to each other in an exclusive love and fidelity in freedom, they belong to the death and open to the transmission of life, consecrated by the sacrament that gives them the grace to establish itself as a domestic Church and a leaven of new life to the company. Other forms of union radically contradict this ideal, while some perform it at least in a partial and analogous way. The Synod Fathers stated that the Church does not fail to highlight the constructive elements in those situations that do not even match or do not piùal his teaching on marriage. [314]
293 . The Fathers also considered the particular situation of a merely civil marriage, or, subject to the differences, even a simple coexistence in which, “when the union reached a remarkable stability through a public bond, is characterized by deep affection, from liability in respect of the offspring, from the ability to pass the tests, can be seen as an opportunity to accompany the development towards the sacrament of marriage. ” [315] on the other hand it is worrying that many young people today do not have confidence in marriage and they coexist indefinitely postponing the marital commitment, while others put an end to the commitment assumed and immediately will establish a new one. Those “who are part of the Church need attention pastoral compassionate and encouraging.” [316] Indeed, the Pastors competes not only the promotion of Christian marriage, but also “the pastoral discernment of the many situations that no longer live this reality “, to” enter into pastoral dialogue with these people in order to highlight the elements of their lives that can lead to a greater openness to the Gospel of marriage in its fullness “. [317] in the pastoral discernment should” identify elements that can favor evangelization and the human and spiritual growth “. [318]
294 . “The choice of civil marriage or, in several cases, the mere coexistence, very often it is not motivated by prejudice or resistance against sacramental union, but by cultural situations or contingent.” [319] In these situations may be valued those signs of love that somehow reflect the love of God. [320] We know that “is growing the number of those who, after living together for a long time, ask the celebration of marriage in church. Simple cohabitation is often chosen because of the general mentality contrary to the institutions and definitive commitments, but also to the expectation of an existential security (job and fixed salary). In other countries, finally, de facto unions are very numerous, not only for the rejection of family values and marriage, but also to the fact that getting married is perceived as a luxury, and social conditions, so that the material poverty pushes to live facto unions. ” [321] However,” all these situations need to be addressed in a constructive way, trying to turn them into opportunities journey towards the fullness of marriage and the family in the light of the Gospel. It is welcome them and accompany them with patience and sensitivity. ” [322] This is what Jesus did with the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4.1 to 26): answer a word to his desire for true love, to free it from all that She darkened her life and guide her to the full joy of the Gospel.
295 . In this line, St. John Paul II proposed the so-called “law of gradualness”, in the awareness that the human being “knows, loves, and realizes the moral good by stages of growth.” [323] It is not a “gradualness of law “but a gradual exercise of prudential free acts in people who are not able to understand, appreciate or fully practice the objective requirements of the law.Because even the law is God’s gift that shows the way, a gift for all without exception that you can live with the power of grace, even though every human being ‘advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God and the demands of his love final and absolute in the entire personal and social life of man. ” [324]
The discernment of those situations “irregular” [325]
296 . The Synod has referred to various situations of fragility or imperfections. In this regard, I wish to recall what I wanted to envisage clearly the whole Church because we understood not a wrong turn, “two logics run through the whole history of the Church: to marginalize and reintegrate […]. The way of the Church, the Council of Jerusalem on, is always that of Jesus: of mercy and integration […]. The way of the Church is not to eternally condemn anybody; to pour out the mercy of God to all people who ask with a sincere heart […]. Because true love is always undeserved, unconditional and free. ” [326] Therefore,” they are to avoid judgments that do not take into account the complexity of the different situations, and you must be attentive to the way in which people live and suffer on account of their condition. ” [327]
297 . It is the integration of all, you have to help everyone to find their own way to participate in the ecclesial community, because he feels the subject of mercy “undeserved, unconditional and free”. No one may be condemned for ever, because this is not the logic of the Gospel! I refer not only to divorced and living a new union, but to all, in whatever situation they are.Obviously, if someone flaunts an objective sin as if it were part of the Christian ideal, or wants to impose something different from what the Church teaches, you can not expect to do catechesis and preaching, and in this sense there is something that separates from the community (cf. Mt 18,17). He needs to re-listen to the announcement of the Gospel and the call to conversion. But even for this individual may be some way to participate in the life of the community in social commitments, prayer meetings, or according to what his personal initiative, along with the discernment of the Shepherd, may suggest. About how to treat these different situations “irregular”, the Synod Fathers have reached a general consensus, I advocate: “In order for a pastoral approach to people who have contracted civil marriage, who are divorced and remarried, or simply coexist, compete to the Church to reveal to them the divine pedagogy of grace in their lives and help them reach the fullness of God’s plan for them “, [328] always possible with the Holy Spirit.
298 . The divorced and living a new union, for example, may find themselves in very different situations, which should not be cataloged or locked into too rigid statements leaving no room for a proper personal discernment and pastoral. One thing is a second consolidated union over time, with new children, with proven loyalty, selfless dedication, Christian commitment, the irregularity awareness of their situation and very difficult to go back without feeling in conscience that it would fall into new faults. The Church recognizes situations where “man and woman, for serious motives – such as, for example, the education of children – can not satisfy the obligation to separate.” [329] There is also the case of those have made great efforts to save their first marriage and have been unjustly abandoned, or that of “those who have contracted a second union for the sake of the children, and who are sometimes subjectively certain in conscience that their previous marriage, irreparably destroyed had never been valid. ” [330] Another thing however is a new union that comes from a recent divorce, with all the consequences of suffering and confusion that affect children and families, or the situation of someone who repeatedly missed to his family commitments. It must be clear that this is not ideal that the Gospel proposes for marriage and family. The Synod Fathers stated that the discernment of Pastors must always be ‘adequate separation’, [331] with a look that he may discern situations well. [332] We know that there are no “simple recipes.” [333]
299 . I welcome the considerations of many Synod Fathers, who wanted to say that “the baptized who are divorced and civilly remarried need to be more integrated in Christian communities in various ways, avoiding every occasion of scandal. The integration logic is the key to their pastoral care, because not only know that they belong to the Body of Christ which is the Church, but they can have a joyous and fruitful experience. Are baptized, they are brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit pours into their gifts and charisms for the good of all. Their participation can be expressed in different ecclesial services: you must therefore discern which of the various forms of exclusion is currently practiced in the liturgy, pastoral, educational and institutional can be overcome. They not only should not feel excommunicated, but they can live and grow as living members of the Church, feeling like a mother who welcomes them always, he takes care of them with affection and encourages them in the path of life and of the Gospel. This integration is also necessary for the care and Christian education of their children, who must be considered the most important. ” [334]
300 . Taking into account dell’innumerevole variety of concrete situations, such as those we have mentioned above, it is understandable that you would not expect from this Synod Exhortation or a new general type of canon law, applicable to all cases. E ‘can only be a new encouragement to a Personal discernment and pastoral care of special cases, which should be recognized that, since “the degree of responsibility is not the same in all cases”, [335] the consequences or effects of a standard does not necessarily have to be always the same. [336] priests have the task of “accompany the people concerned on the path of discernment according to the teaching of the Church and the Bishop’s guidance. This process will be useful to make an examination of conscience, by means of reflection and repentance moments. The divorced and remarried should ask themselves how they have behaved towards their children when the conjugal union has entered into crisis; if there have been attempts at reconciliation; as is the situation of the partners abandoned; What consequences does the new relationship on the rest of the family and the community of the faithful; as an example it offers to young people who are preparing for marriage. A sincere reflection can strengthen trust in the mercy of God, which is not denied to anyone. ” [337] It is a flanking route and discernment that” directs these faithful to an awareness of their situation before God. The interview the priest, in the internal forum, contributes to the formation of a correct judgment about what hinders the possibility of a fuller participation in the life of the Church and the steps that can foster it and make it grow. Given that the same law there is no gradual (cf. Familiaris Consortio , 34), this discernment will never be separated from the demands of truth and charity of the Gospel proposed by the Church. For this to happen, are guaranteed the necessary conditions of humility, confidence, love for the Church and her teaching, in the sincere search for God’s will and the desire to achieve a more perfect answer to it. ” [338] These attitudes are fundamental to avoid the serious risk of wrong messages, such as the idea that a priest can grant quick “exceptions”, or that there are people they can get sacramental privileges in exchange for favors. When you find a responsible and decent person, who does not claim to put their own desires above the common good of the Church, with Pastor who knows how to recognize the seriousness of the matter who is negotiating, you avoid the risk that a particular lead to discernment think of the Church to support a double standard.
The mitigating circumstances in the pastoral discernment
301 . There is an issue which must always be taken into account, so that you never think that you claim to reduce the needs of To adequately understand why it is possible and necessary to a special discernment in some of these “irregular” situations, Gospel. The Church has a solid reflection on the conditioning and the mitigating circumstances. For this is no longer possible to say that all those who are in some situation so-called “irregular” they live in a state of mortal sin, deprived of sanctifying grace. The limits do not just depend on a possible ignorance of the rule. A subject, knowing well the norm, can have great difficulty in understanding “values inherent in the moral standard ‘ [339] , or can be found in the concrete conditions that allow him to act differently and make other decisions without a new fault. As you are well expressed the Synod Fathers, “there may be factors that limit the ability of decision.” [340] As Saint Thomas Aquinas recognized that someone may have the grace and charity, but without benefiting from any of the good virtues, [341] so that even possessing all the moral virtues infused, does not show clearly the existence of any of them, because the external act of this virtue is difficult: “it is said that some saints have certain virtues, given the difficulty proving the acts of them, […] although they have the habit of all the virtues. ” [342]
302 . With respect to these constraints the Catechism of the Catholic Church is expressed in a decisive way: “The imputabilityand responsibility for an action can be diminished or nullified by ignorance, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors. ” [343] in another paragraph refers back to the circumstances that mitigate moral responsibility, and mentions, with large amplitude, the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, the state anxiety or other psychological or social factors. [344] For this reason, a negative judgment of an objective situation does not imply a judgment on apportionment or on the guilt of the person involved. [345] in the context of these convictions, I consider very appropriate to who wanted to support many Synod Fathers: “in certain circumstances people find it very difficult to act differently. […] The pastoral discernment, while taking account of correctly formed conscience of the people, must take responsibility for these situations. The consequences of acts carried out are not necessarily the same in all cases. ” [346]
303 . Starting from the recognition of the weight of concrete constraints, we can add that the consciousness of the people must be better involved in the Church’s practice in some situations that are not objectively realize our conception of marriage.Of course we must encourage the maturation of an enlightened conscience, trained and accompanied by a responsible and serious discernment of the Shepherd, and propose an ever greater trust in grace. But this consciousness can recognize not only that such a situation does not respond objectively to the general proposal of the Gospel; It can also recognize sincerely and honestly what for the moment is the generous response that can be offered to God, and discover with a certain moral certainty that this is the gift that God is calling in the middle of the concrete complexity of limits, although not it is still fully the objective ideal. In any case, remember that this discernment is dynamic and must always remain open to new stages of growth and to new decisions in order to realize the ideal in the fullest way.
304 . It is petty pausing to consider just whether the act of a person respond or not to a law or a general standard, because this is not enough to discern and to ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete existence of a human being. I strongly pray that we always remember what he teaches St. Thomas Aquinas and that we learn to assimilate the pastoral discernment: “Although in general things there is a certain necessity, the more you go down to the particular things, the more is uncertainty. […] In the practical field it is not the same for all the truth or standard practice with respect to the particular, but only with respect to what is general; and even among those who accept in special cases the same standard practice, this is not equally known by all. […] And the more the indefiniteness grows the more one descends in particular. ” [347] It is true that the general rules are good that you should never disregard or neglect, but in their formulation may not embrace absolutely all situations details. At the same time it must be said that, precisely for this reason, that is part of a practical discernment front to a particular situation can not be elevated to the level of a standard. This would not only give rise to an unbearable casuistry, but would threaten the values that must be safeguarded with special attention. [348]
305 . Therefore, a pastor can not be satisfied only by applying moral laws to those who live in “irregular situations”, as if they were stones that are launched against the life of the people. This is the case of closed hearts, that often lurk behind even the teachings of the Church “to sit on the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and shallowness, the difficult cases and families wounds.” [349] In this same line It ruled the International Theological Commission: “the natural law can not therefore be presented as an already established set of rules that impose themselves a priori on the moral subject, but it is a source of objective inspiration for his process, eminently personal, of making decision ‘. [350] because of the conditioning or mitigating factors, it is possible that, within an objective situation of sin – that is not subjectively guilty or that it is not so full – we can live in God’s grace, you He can love, and it can also grow in the life of grace and charity, receiving for this purpose the help of the Church. [351] the discernment must help find possible ways of response to God and growth through the limits.Believing that everything is black or white, sometimes we close the way of grace and of growth and discourage sanctification paths that give glory to God. We recall that “a small step in the midst of great human limitations, may be more pleasing to God of life correct outwardly of who spends his days without facing major difficulties “. [352] the actual pastoral ministers and communities can not fail to make their own this reality.
306 . In all circumstances, in front of those who have difficulties to fully experience the divine law, must resound the invitation to walk the street Caritatis . Fraternal charity is the first law of Christians (cf. Jn 15:12; Gal 5:14). Do not forget the promise of Scripture: “Especially preserved a fervent charity among yourselves, because love covers a multitude of sins” ( 1 Pt 4,8);”Affected your sins with alms, and thy iniquities with acts of mercy to the poor” ( Dn 4:24); “Water puts out fire blazing up, almsgiving atones for sin” ( Sir 3:30). It is also what Saint Augustine teaches: “How then if we were in danger for a fire would run first in search of water, with which to put out the fire, […] equally, if some sinful flame has unleashed hay of our passions and therefore we are shaken, let us rejoice that we are given the opportunity to do a work of true mercy, as if there were offered the fountain from which fetch water to put out the fire that was lit » . [353]
307 . To avoid any deviant interpretation, remember that in no way should the Church not to bring the full ideal of marriage, God’s plan in all its grandeur: “Young people baptized should be encouraged not to hesitate before the wealth to their projects of love procures the sacrament of marriage, the strong support they receive from the grace of Christ and the opportunity to participate fully in the life of the Church. ” [354] the lukewarm, any form of relativism, or excessive than at the time of proposing , would be a lack of fidelity to the Gospel, and also a lack of love of the Church for the young people themselves. Understand the exceptional situations does not imply never hide the light of the ideal fuller nor propose less than what Jesus offers to the human being. Today, more important than a pastoral failures it is the pastoral effort to strengthen marriages and so prevent breakage.
308 . However, from our awareness of the weight of the mitigating factors – psychological, historical and even biological – it follows that “without diminishing the evangelical ideal value, we must accompany with mercy and patience possible stages of growth of the people who are building day by day, “leaving room for the” mercy of the Lord who inspires us to do good as possible. ” [355] I understand those who prefer a more rigid pastoral that does not give rise to any confusion. But I sincerely believe that Jesus wants a Church attentive to the good that the Spirit spreads in the middle of fragility: a Mother who, at the very moment in which he clearly expresses its objective teaching, “does not give the greatest good, although running the risk of getting dirty with the mud of the road. ” [356] Pastors offering to the faithful the ideal full of the Gospel and the Church’s teaching must also help them to take the logic of compassion for the vulnerable people and to avoid persecution or judgments too harsh and impatient. The Gospel itself requires us not to judge and not to condemn (cf. Mt 7.1; Lk 6.37). Jesus’ expected to give up look for those personal and community shelters that allow us to keep us at a distance from the node of the human drama, so really we accept to make contact with the concrete existence of the other and we know the strength of tenderness.When we do, the life you always wonderfully complicated. ” [357]
309 . It is providential that these reflections are developed in the context of a Jubilee Year dedicated to mercy, because even before the different situations that affect the family, “the Church has the mission of proclaiming God’s mercy, the heart of the Gospel button, which through him he has to reach the heart and mind of every person. The Bride of Christ is the Son of God on his behavior that out to everyone without exception. ” [358] He knows that Jesus presents himself as Pastor of a hundred sheep, not the ninety-nine. He wants them all. From this awareness, it will be possible for “everyone, believers and far, can reach the balm of mercy as a sign of the Kingdom of God already present among us.” [359]
310 . We can not forget that “mercy is not just the act of the Father, but it is the criteria to figure out who are his true children. In short, we are called to live in mercy, because we first received mercy. ” [360] It is not a romantic proposal or a weak response to the love of God, who always wants to encourage people, for” l ‘ lintel that supports the life of the Church is mercy. All of his pastoral action should be wrapped by the tenderness with which you address to the believers; nothing of his message and his testimony to the world can be devoid of mercy. ” [361] It is true that sometimes” we act as controllers of grace and not as facilitators. But the Church is not a customs house, is the father’s house where there is room for everyone with his hard life. “[362]
311 . The teaching of moral theology should not fail to make their own these considerations, because although it is true that we must take care of the integrity of the Church’s moral teaching, you should always pay special attention in the highlight and encourage the highest values and center of the Gospel, [363] especially the primacy of charity as a free response to the initiative of God’s love. sometimes it costs us a lot to give space in the pastoral love of God’s unconditional love. [364] Let us so many conditions to the mercy that we empty the concrete meaning and real significance, and this is the worst way to water down the Gospel. It is true, for example, that mercy does not exclude justice and truth, but first of all we have to say that mercy is the fullness of justice and the brightest manifestation of God’s truth. Therefore, you should always consider “all theological notions that ultimately call into question the very omnipotence of God, and especially his mercy. ” [365]
312 . This provides us with a framework and a climate that prevents us from developing a desk cold morality in dealing with the most sensitive issues, and puts us instead in the context of a pastoral discernment full of merciful love, which always has to understand, to forgive , to accompany, to hope, and above all to integrate. This is the logic that must prevail in the Church, to “make the experience to open our hearts to those who live in the most diverse existential peripheries.” [366] I invite the faithful who are experiencing complex situations to approach with confidence to an interview with their pastors or lay people who live devoted to the Lord. They do not always find in them a confirmation of their own ideas and desires, but it will definitely receive a light that will allow them to better understand what is happening and be able to discover a personal growth journey. And I invite the pastors to listen with affection and serenity, with the sincere desire to get into the heart of the drama of the people and understand their point of view, to help them live better and to recognize their place in the Church.
SPIRITUALITY MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
313 . The charity takes on different nuances, depending on the state of life to which each was called. Already some decades ago, the Second Vatican Council, by the way of the lay apostolate, emphasized the spirituality that comes from family life. He claimed that the spirituality of the laity “must assume its own particular features,” also from the “state of marriage and the family” [367] and that family concerns should not be something foreign to their way of spiritual life. [368] Therefore it worth stopping briefly to describe some key features of this specific spirituality that develops in the dynamism of the family life relations.
Spirituality of communion about
314 . We have always talked about the indwelling of God in the heart of the person who lives in his grace. Today we can also say that the Trinity is present in the temple of communion bed. As well as lives in the praises of His people (cf. Ps 22,4), living intimately in conjugal love that gives glory.
315 . The presence of the Lord lives in real and concrete family, with all its suffering, struggles, joys and everyday purposes.When you live in the family, there is hard to pretend and lie, we can not show a mask. If love animates this authenticity, the Lord reigns there with his joy and his peace. The family love spirituality is one of thousands of real and concrete gestures. In this variety of gifts and meetings maturing communion, God has his residence. This dedication combines “human and divine values,” [369] because it is full of the love of God. Ultimately, spirituality is a spirituality of the double bond inhabited by divine love.
316 . A family communion lived well is a real way to holiness in ordinary life and mystical growth, a means of intimate union with God. In fact, fraternal and community needs of family life is always an opportunity to open more hearts , and this makes possible an encounter with the Lord more and more full. God’s Word says that “he who hates his brother walks in the darkness” ( 1 Jn 2:11), “remains in death” ( 1 Jn 3:14) and “did not know God” ( 1 Jn 4,8) . My predecessor Benedict XVI said that “close our eyes to our neighbor also blinds us to God”, [370] and that love is ultimately the only light that “enlightens again and again a dark world” . [371] Only “if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” ( 1 Jn 4:12). Given that “the human person has an inherent social dimension and structural” [372] and “the first and basic expression of the social dimension of the person is the couple and the family” [373] spirituality is embodied in the family communion. Therefore, those who have deep spiritual desires are not to feel that the family move them away from the growth in the life of the Spirit, but it is a path that the Lord uses to bring them to the mystical union leaders.
United in prayer in the light of Easter
317 . If the family is unable to focus in Christ, He unifies and illuminates the whole family life. The pains and problems are being experienced in communion with the Cross of the Lord, and the embrace with Him can withstand the worst moments. In the bitter days of the family there is a union with Jesus forsaken who can avoid a rupture. The families go little by little, “by the grace of the Holy Spirit, their holiness through married life, even participating in the mystery of the cross of Christ, which transforms the difficulties and sufferings in an offering of love.” [374] on the other hand, the moments of joy, pleasure, or the party, and even sexuality, are experienced as a participation in the full life of the resurrection. Spouses shape with various everyday actions to this “theological space in which to experience the hidden presence of the Risen Lord.” [375]
318 . The family prayer is a privileged means to express and reinforce this Easter faith. [376] You may find a few minutes each day to stand together in front of the living Lord, tell him the things you care about, pray for the family needs, pray for someone who is having a hard time asking for help to love, give thanks for the life and the good things, ask the Virgin to protect us with her maternal mantle. With simple words, this moment of prayer can do much good for your family. The different expressions of popular piety are a treasure of spirituality for many families. Community prayer journey reaches its climax in the common participation in the Eucharist, especially in the context of Sunday rest. Jesus knocks at the family’s door to share with it the Eucharistic Supper (cf. Rev 3:20). There, the couple can always seal the Easter alliance that united them and reflecting the Covenant which God sealed with humanity on the cross. [377] The Eucharist is the sacrament of the New Covenant in which it actualizes the ‘ redemptive action of Christ (cf. Lk 22:20). So you notice the deep bonds between the married life and the Eucharist. [378] The Eucharist is nurturing the strength and inspiration to live each day the marriage covenant as a “domestic church.” [379]
exclusive and free love spirituality
319 . In marriage also lives a sense of belonging entirely to one person. The spouses take on the challenge and the desire to grow old and wear out together and so reflect the faithfulness of God. This firm decision, which marks a lifestyle, it is an “inner need of the covenant of married life”, [380] because “he who does not decide to love forever, is unlikely to truly love one day.”[381] But this would not have spiritual significance if it was just a law lived with resignation. It ‘a belonging of the heart, where only God sees (cf. Mt 5:28). Every morning when you get up, renews before God this decision loyalty, no matter what happens during the day. And each, when he goes to sleep, waiting to get up to continue this adventure, trusting in the Lord. Thus, each spouse is the other sign and instrument of the nearness of the Lord, that does not leave us alone: ”I am with you always, to the close of the age” ( Mt 28:20).
320 . There is a point in which the couple’s love reaches the maximum liberation and become a healthy autonomy space: when each discovers that the other is not his, but has a much more important owner, his only Lord. No one can claim to possess the most personal and intimate secret of the beloved and only He can occupy the center of his life. At the same time, the principle of spiritual realism means that the spouse does not claim that the other entirely satisfy its needs. And ‘necessary that the spiritual journey of each – as well indicated Dietrich Bonhoeffer – help him “disillusioned” of the other, [382] to stop waiting for that person what belongs only to God’s love. This requires a interior spoliation. The exclusive space that each of the spouses subject to his personal relationship with God, not only allows you to heal the wounds of living together, but also to find in God the meaning of his existence. We need to rely on each day the Spirit because this inner freedom is possible.
Spirituality of care, of consolation and stimulus
321 . “Christian spouses are cooperators in grace and witnesses of faith for each other, to their children and all the other family members.” [383] God invites you to create and care. That’s why the family “has always been the closest” hospital “.” [384] Let us take care, and stimoliamoci us support each other, and we live everything as part of our family spirituality. The couple’s life is a participation in the fruitful work of God, and each is for the other a permanent provocation of the Spirit. The love of God is expressed “through the living and concrete word whereby a man and a woman express their conjugal love.” [385] So the two are mutually reflections of divine love that comforts with the word, the look, the help, the caress, the embrace. Thus, “want to form a family is having the courage to be part of God’s dream, dare to dream with him, the courage to build with Him, the courage to play with him this story, to build a world where no one is alone. ” [386]
322 . The whole life of the family is a “pasture” merciful. Everyone, with care, paints and writes in the other’s life: “The You are our letter, written in our hearts […] not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God” ( 2 Cor 3,2- 3). Everyone is a “fisher of men” (Lk 5:10) that in the name of Jesus casts the nets (cf. Lk 5,5) to the other, or a farmer working in the fresh earth that are his loved ones, stimulating the best of them. The double fertility involves the promotion, because “love a person is expected of it something indefinable, unpredictable; is at the same time offer them in some way the means to meet this expectation. ” [387]This is a service to God, because He has sown many good things in the other in the hope that we grow.
323 . It ‘a deep spiritual experience contemplate every loved one with the eyes of God and recognize Christ in her. This requires a free availability that allows to appreciate its dignity. You can be fully present before the other if one gives without a reason, forgetting everything that’s around. So your loved one deserves all the attention. Jesus was a model, because when someone approached to speak with him, fixed his eyes, looked at her with love (cf. Mk 10:21). No one felt overlooked in his presence, because his words and his actions were an expression of this question: “What do you want me to do for you?” ( Mk 10:51) .This is lived in daily life of the family. In it we remember that the person who lives with us deserves, because it has an infinite dignity, being the subject of the immense love of the Father. So flourishes tenderness, able to “stir in the other the joy of feeling loved. It is expressed in particular in turn with exquisite attention to the other’s limits, especially when they emerge in a clear manner. “[388]
324 . Under the impulse of the Spirit, the family does not only accepts life creating it in her womb, but it opens up, goes out of himself to pour his own good on others, to care for and seek their happiness. This openness is expressed particularly in the hospitality [389] , encouraged by the Word of God in a marvelous way: “Do not forget to entertain strangers; , for thereby some have entertained angels without knowing it “( Heb 13.2). When the family receives, and goes out to meet others, especially the poor and abandoned, is “a symbol, witness and participant of the motherhood of the Church.” [390] The love social reflection of the Trinity, is actually what unifies spiritual sense of family and his mission outside of itself, because it makes present thekerygma with all its community needs. The family lives his particular spirituality being, at the same time, a domestic Church and a vital cell to transform the world. [391]
***
325 . The words of the Master (cf. Mt 22:30), and those of St. Paul (cf. 1 Cor 7.29 to 31) on marriage, are inserted – not coincidentally – in the last dimension and ultimately of our existence, we need to recover. In this way the couple will recognize the meaning of the journey we are walking. In fact, as we have mentioned several times in this Exhortation, no family is perfect reality and packaged once and for all, but requires a gradual development of their capacity to love. There is a constant call which comes from the full communion of the Trinity, the union between Christ and his beautiful church, from that beautiful community which is the family of Nazareth and the brotherhood that exists without spot among the saints in heaven. And yet, behold the fullness that we have not reached also allows us to relativize the historical journey that we’re doing as a family, to stop claiming from interpersonal relationships perfection, purity of intentions and a consistency that we find only in the definitive Kingdom. It also prevents us to judge harshly those who live in very fragile condition. We are all called to keep alive the tension towards something beyond ourselves and our limits, and every family has to live in this constant stimulus. We walk, families, keep walking! What is promised us is always more. We do not lose hope because of our limitations, but even give up looking for the fullness of love and communion that we have been promised.
Prayer to the Holy Family
Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
in you we contemplate
the splendor of true love,
to you, confident, we rely. Holy Family of Nazareth, also make our families places of communion and prayer circles, authentic gospel schools and small domestic Churches. Holy Family of Nazareth, and never will be in families episodes of violence, closure and division; that anyone who has been hurt or offended is readily comforted and healed. Holy Family of Nazareth, is’ that all we become aware of the sacred character and inviolable family, of her beauty in the plan of God. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, listen to us and accept our prayer. Amen.
Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, in the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, March 19, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, in the year 2016, the fourth of my Pontificate.
Francis
[1] III Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Relatio Synodi , October 18, 2014, 2.
[2] XIV General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Final Report , October 24, 2015, 3.
[3] Speech at the end of the XIV General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (24 October 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , 26 to 27 October 2015, p. 13; cf. Pontifical Biblical Commission, Faith and Culture in the light of the Bible. Proceedings of the 1979 Plenary Session of the Pontifical Biblical Commission , Torino 1981; Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Gaudium et Spes , 44; John Paul II, Enc. Lett. Redemptoris Missio (7 December 1990), 52: AAS 83 (1991), 300; Urged. ap. Evangelii gaudium (24 November 2013), 69 117: AAS 105 (2013), 1049.1068-1069.
[4] Address to the families in Santiago de Cuba (22 September 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , Sept. 24, 2015, p. 7.
[5] Jorge Luis Borges, “Calle desconocida”, en Fervor de Buenos Aires , Buenos Aires 2011, 23 (trans. Trans .: Fervor of Buenos Aires , Milan 2010, 29).
[6] Homily at Mass in Puebla de los Ángeles (28 January 1979) , 2: AAS 71 (1979), 184.
[7] Cf. ibid .
[8] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 4: AAS 74 (1982), 84.
[9] Relatio Synodi 2014, 5.
[10] Spanish Episcopal Conference, Marriage y familia (6 July 1979), 3:16:23.
[11] Final Report 2015 5.
[12] Relatio Synodi 2014, 5.
[13] Final Report 2015, 8.
[14] Speech to the Congress of the United States of America (24 September 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , Sept. 26, 2015, p. 7.
[15] Final Report 2015, 29.
[16] Relatio Synodi 2014, 10.
[17] III Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Message , October 18, 2014 .
[18] Relatio Synodi 2014, 10.
[19] Final Report 2015 7.
[20] Ibid. , 63.
[21] Conference of Catholic Bishops of Korea, Towards a culture of life! (15 March 2007).
[22] Relatio Synodi 2014, 6.
[23] Pontifical Council for the Family, Charter of Rights of the Family (22 October 1983), 11.
[24] See Final Report 2015, 11-12.
[25] Pontifical Council for the Family, Charter of Rights of the Family (22 October 1983), Intr.
[26] Ibid. , 9.
[27] Final Report 2015, 14.
[28] Relatio Synodi 2014, 8.
[29] See Final Report 2015, 78.
[30] Relatio Synodi 2014, 8.
[31] Final Report 2015, 23; cf. Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees 2016 (12 September 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , October 2, 2015, p. 8.
[32] Final Report 2015, 24.
[33] Ibid. , 21.
[34] Ibid. , 17.
[35] Ibid. , 20.
[36] Cf. ibid. , 15.
[37] Closing speech of the XIV General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (24 October 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , 26 to 27 October 2015, p. 13.
[38] Episcopal Conference of Argentina, Navega Tues adentro (31 May 2003), 42.
[39] Mexican Episcopal Conference, Que en Cristo Nuestra Paz México takes vida digna (15 February 2009), 67.
[40] Final Report 2015, 25.
[41] Ibid. , 10.
[42] Catechesis (22 April 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , April 23, 2015, p. 7.
[43] Catechesis (29 April 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , April 30, 2015, p. 8.
[44] Final Report 2015, 28.
[45] Ibid. , 8.
[46] Ibid. , 58.
[47] Ibid. , 33.
[48] Relatio Synodi 2014, 11.
[49] Colombian Episcopal Conference, A tiempos difíciles, colombianos nuevos (13 February 2003), 3.
[50] Apostolic. ap. Evangelii gaudium (24 November 2013), 35: AAS 105 (2013), 1034.
[51] Ibid. , 164: AAS 105 (2013), 1088.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Ibid. , 165: AAS 105 (2013), 1089.
[54] Relatio Synodi 2014, 12.
[55] Ibid. , 14.
[56] Ibid. , 16.
[57] Final Report 2015, 41.
[58] Ibid. , 38.
[59] Relatio Synodi 2014, 17.
[60] Final Report 2015, 43.
[61] Relatio Synodi 2014, 18.
[62] Ibid. , 19.
[63] Final Report 2015, 38.
[64] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 13: AAS 74 (1982), 94.
[65] Relatio Synodi 2014, 21.
[66] Catechism of the Catholic Church , 1642.
[67] Ibid.
[68] Catechesis (6 May 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano (May 7, 2015), p. 8.
[69] Leo the Great, Epistle Rustico Narbonian episcopo , inquisitor. IV: PL 54, 1205A; see Hincmar, Ep. 22: PL 126, 142.
[70] Cf. Pius XII, Enc. Lett. Mystical Body Christi (June 29, 1943) : AAS 35 (1943), 202: ” Marriage enim quo coniuges sibi sunt invicem ministers gratiae “.
[71] Cf. Code of Canon Law , cc. 1116; 1161-1165; Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches , 832; 848-852.
[72] Code of Canon Law , c. 1055 § 2.
[73] Relatio Synodi 2014, 23.
[74] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 9: AAS 74 (1982), 90.
[75] Final Report 2015, 47.
[76] Ibid.
[77] Homily at the closing Mass of the eighth World Meeting of Families , Philadelphia (27 September 2015) : Osservatore Romano , 28 to 29 September 2015, p. 7.
[78] Final Report 2015, 53-54.
[79] Ibid. , 51.
[80] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 48.
[81] Cf. Code of Canon Law , c. 1055 § 1: ” For good of the spouses atque to prolis generationem et educationem ordinatum “.
[82] Catechism of the Catholic Church , 2360.
[83] Ibid. , 1654.
[84] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 48.
[85] Catechism of the Catholic Church , 2366.
[86] Cf. Paul VI, Enc. Lett. Humanae Vitae (25 July 1968), 11-12: AAS 60 (1968), 488-489.
[87] Catechism of the Catholic Church , 2378.
[88] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction. Donum vitae (February 22, 1987), II, 8: AAS 80 (1988), 97.
[89] Final Report 2015, 63.
[90] Relatio Synodi 2014, 57.
[91] Ibid., 58 .
[92] Ibid ., 57.
[93] Final Report 2015, 64.
[94] Relatio Synodi 2014, 60.
[95] Ibid. , 61.
[96] Code of Canon Law , c. 1136; cf. Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches , 627.
[97] Pontifical Council for the Family, Human Sexuality: Truth and Meaning (8 December 1995), 23.
[98] Catechesis (20 May 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , May 21, 2015, p. 8.
[99] Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 38: AAS 74 (1982), 129.
[100] Cf. Address to the Diocese of Rome (June 14, 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , June 15-16, 2015, p. 8.
[101] Relatio Synodi 2014, 23.
[102] Final Report 2015, 52.
[103] Ibid. , 49-50.
[104] Catechism of the Catholic Church , 1641.
[105] Cf. Benedict XVI, Enc. Lett. Deus Caritas Est (25 December 2005), 2: AAS 98 (2006), 218.
[106] Spiritual Exercises , Contemplation to attain love, 230.
[107] Octavio Paz, La llama doble , Barcelona 1993 35.
[108] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, q. 114, a. 2, to 1.
[109] Catechesis (13 May 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , May 14, 2015, p. 8.
[110] Summa Theologica II-II, q. 27, a. 1 to 2.
[111] Ibid. , A. 1.
[112] Catechesis (13 May 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , May 14, 2015, p. 8.
[113] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 21: AAS 74 (1982), 106.
[114] Sermon held in the Baptist Church of Dexter Avenue , Montgomery, Alabama, November 17, 1957.
[115] St. Thomas Aquinas intends to love as ” vis unitive ” ( Summa Theologica I, q. 20, a. 1, ad 3), recovering an expression of Dionysius Ps.-Areopagite ( De divinis nominibus , IV , 12: PG 3, 709).
[116] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, q. 27, a. 2.
[117] Lett. enc. Casti connubii (31 December 1930): AAS 22 (1930), 547-548.
[118] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 13: AAS 74 (1982), 94.
[119] Catechesis (2 April 2014) : L’Osservatore Romano , April 3, 2014, p. 8.
[120] Ibid.
[121] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 9: AAS 74 (1982), 90.
[122] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles , III, 123; cf. Aristotle, Ethics Nic. , 8, 12 (ed. Bywater, Oxford 1984, 174).
[123] Lett. enc. Lumen fidei (29 June 2013), 52: AAS 105 (2013), 590.
[124] De sacrament matrimonii , I, 2: Id. Disputationes , III, 5, 3 (ed. Giuliano, Naples, 1858, 778).
[125] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 50.
[126] Ibid. , 49.
[127] Cf. Summa Theologica I-II, q. 31, a. 3 to 3.
[128] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 48.
[129] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II, q. 26, a. 3.
[130] Ibid. , Q. 110, a. 1.
[131] Confessions , VIII, 3, 7: PL 32, 752.
[132] Address to the families of the world on the occasion of their pilgrimage to Rome in the Year of the Faith (26 October 2013) :AAS 105 (2013), 980.
[133] Angelus (29 December 2013) : L’Osservatore Romano, 30-31 December 2013, p. 7.
[134] Address to the families of the world on the occasion of their pilgrimage to Rome in the Year of the Faith (26 October 2013) :AAS 105 (2013), 978.
[135] Summa Theologica II-II, q. 24, a. 7.
[136] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 48.
[137] Episcopal Conference of Chile, La vida y la familia: regalos de Dios para cada uno de nosotros (21 July 2014).
[138] Cost. past. Gaudium et Spes , 49.
[139] A. Sertillanges, The chrétien amour , Paris 1920, 174.
[140] Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II, q. 24, a. 1.
[141] Cf. ibid. , Q. 59, a. 5.
[142] Lett. Enc. Deus Caritas Est (25 December 2005), 3: AAS 98 (2006), 219-220.
[143] Ibid. , 4: AAS 98 (2006), 220.
[144] Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II, q. 32, a. 7.
[145] Cf. ibid. , II-II, q. 153, a. 2, ad 2: ” Abundantia delectationis quae est in actu venereum secundum rationem ordered, not contrariatur average virtutis “.
[146] John Paul II, Catechesis (22 October 1980) , 5: Insegnamenti III, 2 (1980), 951.
[147] Ibid. , 3.
[148] Id., Catechesis (24 September 1980) , 4: Insegnamenti III, 2 (1980), 719.
[149] Catechesis (12 November 1980) , 2: Insegnamenti III, 2 (1980), 1133.
[150] Ibid. , 4.
[151] Ibid. , 5.
[152] Ibid. , 1: 1132.
[153] Catechesis (16 January 1980) , 1: Insegnamenti III, 1 (1980), 151.
[154] Josef Pieper, Über die Liebe , Munich 2014, 174.
[155] John Paul II, Enc. Lett. Evangelium Vitae (25 March 1995), 23: AAS 87 (1995), 427.
[156] Paul VI, Enc. Lett. Humanae Vitae (25 July 1968), 13: AAS 60 (1968), 489.
[157] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 49.
[158] Catechesis (18 June 1980) , 5: Teachings III, 1 (1980), 1778.
[159] Ibid. , 6.
[160] Cf. Catechism (30 July 1980) , 1: Insegnamenti III, 2 (1980), 311.
[161] Catechesis (April 8, 1981) , 3: Insegnamenti IV, 1 (1981), 904.
[162] Catechesis (11 August 1982) , 4: Insegnamenti V, 3 (1982), 205-206.
[163] Lett. Enc. Deus Caritas Est (25 December 2005), 5: AAS 98 (2006), 221.
[164] Ibid. , 7.
[165] Final Report 2015, 22.
[166] Catechesis (14 April 1982) , 1: Insegnamenti V, 1 (1982), 1176.
[167] gloss in quatuor libros sententiarum Petri Lombardi , IV, XXVI, 2 (Quaracchi 1957, 446).
[168] John Paul II, Catechesis (7 April 1982) , 2: Insegnamenti V, 1 (1982), 1127.
[169] Id., Catechesis (14 April 1982) , 3: Insegnamenti V, 1 (1982), 1177.
[170] Ibid.
[171] Id., Enc. Lett. Redemptor hominis (4 March 1979), 10: AAS 71 (1979), 274.
[172] Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, q. 27, a. 1.
[173] Pontifical Council for the Family, Family, Marriage and “de facto unions” (July 26, 2000), 40.
[174] John Paul II, Catechesis (31 October 1984) , 6: Insegnamenti VII, 2 (1984), 1072.
[175] Benedict XVI, Enc. Lett. Deus Caritas Est (25 December 2005), 8: AAS 98 (2006), 224.
[176] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 14: AAS 74 (1982), 96.
[177] Catechesis (11 February 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , Feb. 12, 2015, p. 8.
[178] Ibid.
[179] Catechesis (8 April 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , April 9, 2015, p. 8.
[180] Ibid.
[181] Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 51: “We all know that human life and the task of transmitting it are not limited to the horizons of this world and not found there nor their full size, nor their full sense, but concern the eternal destiny of men. “
[182] Letter to the General Secretary of the International Conference of the United Nations on Population and Development (18 March 1994) : Teachings XVII, 1 (1994), 750-751.
[183] John Paul II, Catechesis (12 March 1980) , 3: Insegnamenti III, 1 (1980), 543.
[184] Ibid.
[185] Address to the families in Manila (January 16, 2015) : AAS 107 (2015), 176.
[186] Catechesis (11 February 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , Feb. 12, 2015, p. 8.
[187] Catechesis (14 October 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , 15 October 2015, p. 8.
[188] Conference of Catholic Bishops of Australia, Lett. Past. Do not Mess with Marriage (24 November 2015), 11.
[189] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 50.
[190] John Paul II, Catechesis (12 March 1980) , 2: Insegnamenti III, 1 (1980), 542.
[191] See Id. Lett. Ap. Mulieris Dignitatem (15 August 1988), 30-31: AAS 80 (1988), 1727-1729.
[192] Catechesis (7 January 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , 7 to 8 January 2015, p. 8.
[193] Ibid.
[194] Catechesis (28 January 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano, January 29, 2015, p. 8.
[195] Ibid.
[196] Cf. Final Report 2015, 28.
[197] Catechesis (4 February 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , Feb. 5, 2015, p. 8.
[198] Ibid.
[199] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 50.
[200] Fifth General Conference of Latin American and the Caribbean in Aparecida Document (June 29, 2007), 457.
[201] Final Report 2015, 65.
[202] Ibid.
[203] Speech at the meeting with the families in Manila (January 16, 2015) : AAS 107 (2015), 178.
[204] Mario Benedetti, “Te quiero”, in Poemas de otros, Buenos Aires 1993 316.
[205] Cf. Catechism (16 September 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , Sept. 17, 2015, p. 8.
[206] Catechesis (7 October 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , October 8, 2015, p. 8.
[207] Benedict XVI, Enc. Lett. Deus Caritas Est (25 December 2005), 14: AAS 98 (2006), 228.
[208] Cf. Final Report 2015, 11.
[209] Catechesis (18 March 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , March 19, 2015, p. 8.
[210] Catechesis (11 February 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , Feb. 12, 2015, p. 8.
[211] Cf. Final Report 2015, 17-18.
[212] Catechesis (4 March 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , March 5, 2015, p. 8.
[213] Catechesis (11 March 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , March 12, 2015, p. 8.
[214] Apostolic Exhortation. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 27: AAS 74 (1982), 113.
[215] John Paul II, Address to participants in the International Forum on active aging (5 September 1980), 5: Insegnamenti III, 2 (1980), 539.
[216] Final Report 2015, 18.
[217] Catechesis (4 March 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , March 5, 2015), p. 8.
[218] Ibid.
[219] Speech in the Meeting with the elderly (28 September 2014) : L’Osservatore Romano , 29 to 30 September 2014, p. 7.
[220] Catechesis (18 February 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , Feb. 19, 2015, p. 8.
[221] Ibid.
[222] Ibid.
[223] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 18: AAS 74 (1982), 101.
[224] Catechesis (7 October 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , October 8, 2015, p. 8.
[225] Relatio Synodi 2014, 30.
[226] Ibid. , 31.
[227] Final Report 2015, 56.
[228] Ibid. , 89.
[229] Relatio Synodi 2014, 32.
[230] Ibid. , 33.
[231] Ibid. , 38.
[232] Final Report 2015, 77.
[233] Ibid. , 61.
[234] Ibid.
[235] Ibid.
[236] Ibid.
[237] Cf. Relatio Synodi 2014, 26.
[238] Ibid. , 39.
[239] Italian Episcopal Conference. Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, Pastoral Guidelines on preparation for marriage and family (22 October 2012), 1.
[240] Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises , record 2.
[241] Ibid. , Note 5.
[242] John Paul II, Catechesis (27 June 1984) , 4: Insegnamenti VII, 1 (1984), 1941.
[243] Catechesis (21 October 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , 22 October 2015, p. 12.
[244] Episcopal Conference of Kenya, Lenten Message (February 18, 2015).
[245] Cf. Pius XI, Enc. Lett. Casti connubii (31 December 1930): AAS 22 (1930), 583.
[246] John Paul II, Catechesis (4 July 1984) , 3.6: Lessons VII, 2 (1984), 9.10.
[247] Final Report 2015, 59.
[248] Ibid. , 63.
[249] Cost. past. Gaudium et Spes , 50.
[250] Final Report 2015, 63.
[251] Relatio Synodi 2014, 40.
[252] Ibid. , 34.
[253] Spiritual Canticle B, XXV, 11.
[254] Relatio Synodi 2014, 44.
[255] Final Report 2015, 81.
[256] Ibid. , 78.
[257] Catechesis (24 June 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano, June 25, 2015, p. 8.
[258] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 83: AAS 74 (1982), 184.
[259] Relatio Synodi 2014, 47.
[260] Ibid. , 50.
[261] Cf. Catechism (August 5, 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , August 6, 2015, p. 7.
[262] Relatio Synodi 2014, 51; cf. Final Report 2015, 84.
[263] Relatio Synodi 2014, 48.
[264] Cf. Motu proprio Mitis iudex Dominus Iesus (August 15, 2015): L’Osservatore Romano , September 9, 2015, pp. 3-4; Motu proprio Mitis et Misericors Iesus (August 15, 2015): L’Osservatore Romano , September 9, 2015, pp. 5-6.
[265] Motu proprio Mitis iudex Dominus Iesus (August 15, 2015), preamble, III: L’Osservatore Romano , September 9, 2015, p. 3.
[266] Final Report 2015, 82.
[267] Relatio Synodi 2014, 47.
[268] Catechesis (20 May 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , May 21, 2015, p. 8.
[269] Catechesis (24 June 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano, June 25, 2015, p. 8.
[270] Catechesis (August 5, 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano, August 6, 2015, p. 7.
[271] Final Report 2015, 72.
[272] Ibid. , 73.
[273] Ibid. , 74.
[274] Ibid. , 75.
[275] Cf. Bull Misericordiae Voltes , 12: AAS 107 (2015), 409.
[276] Catechism of the Catholic Church , 2358; cf. Final Report 2015, 76.
[277] Cf. ibid .
[278] Final Report 2015, 76; cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons (3 June 2003), 4.
[279] Final Report 2015, 80.
[280] Cf. ibid. , 20.
[281] Catechesis (17 June 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , June 18, 2015, p. 8.
[282] Final Report 2015, 19.
[283] Catechesis (17 June 2015): L’Osservatore Romano , June 18, 2015, p. 8.
[284] Ibid.
[285] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church , 958.
[286] Ibid.
[287] See Latest talks, “Yellow exercise book” Mother Agnes, 17 July 1897: Complete Works , the Vatican City – Rome 1997, 1028. In this regard it is significant to the testimony of the sisters about the Santa Teresa promise that his departure this world would be “like a shower of roses” ( ibid. , June 9, 991).
[288] Jordan of Saxony, Libellus de principiis Praedicatorum Ordinis , 93: Monumenta Historica Our Sancti Patris Dominici , XVI, Rome 1935, 69.
[289] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church , 957.
[290] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Dogmatic Constitution. Lumen Gentium , 49.
[291] Apostolic Exhortation. ap. Evangelii gaudium (24 November 2013), 222: AAS 105 (2013), 1111.
[292] Catechesis (20 May 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano, May 21, 2015, p. 8.
[293] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 17.
[294] Catechesis (30 September 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , October 1, 2015, p. 8.
[295] Catechesis (10 June 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , June 11, 2015, p. 8.
[296] Cf. Final Report 2015, 67.
[297] Catechesis (20 May 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano, May 21, 2015, p. 8.
[298] Catechesis (September 9, 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , Sept. 10, 2015, p. 8.
[299] Final Report 2015, 68.
[300] Ibid. , 58.
[301] Decl. Gravissimum educationis , 1.
[302] Final Report 2015, 56.
[303] Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving , New York 1956, p. 54 (trans. Trans .: The Art of Loving , Milano 1978, 72-73).
[304] Lett. enc. Praised si’ (24 May 2015), 155.
[305] Catechesis (15 April 2015) : Osservatore Romano , April 16, 2015, p. 8.
[306] Cf. Final Report 2015, 13-14.
[307] De sancta virginitate , 7, 7: PL 40, 400.
[308] Catechesis (26 August 2015) : Osservatore Romano , August 27, 2015, p. 8.
[309] Final Report 2015, 89.
[310] Ibid. , 93.
[311] Relatio Synodi 2014, 24.
[312] Ibid. , 25.
[313] Ibid. , 28.
[314] Cf. ibid. , 41.43; Final Report 2015, 70.
[315] Relatio Synodi 2014, 27.
[316] Ibid. , 26.
[317] Ibid. , 41.
[318] Ibid.
[319] Final Report 2015, 71.
[320] Cf. ibid.
[321] Relatio Synodi 2014, 42.
[322] Ibid. , 43.
[323] Apostolic Exhortation. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 34: AAS 74 (1982), 123.
[324] Ibid. , 9: 90.
[325] Cf. Catechism (24 June 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , June 25, 2015, p. 8.
[326] Homily during Mass celebrated with the new Cardinals (February 15, 2015) : AAS 107 (2015), 257.
[327] Final Report 2015, 51.
[328] Relatio Synodi 2014, 25.
[329] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 84: AAS 74 (1982), 186. In these situations, many, knowing and accepting the possibility of living together “like brother and sister,” that the Church offers them, point out that, if missing some expressions of intimacy, “it is not uncommon that fidelity is endangered and may be compromised the good of the children” (Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. past. Gaudium et spes , 51).
[330] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 84: AAS 74 (1982), 186.
[331] Relatio Synodi 2014, 26.
[332] Cf. ibid. , 45.
[333] Benedict XVI, Address to the Seventh World Meeting of Families, Milan (2 June 2012) , Answer 5: Teachings VIII, 1 (2012), 691.
[334] Final Report 2015, 84.
[335] Ibid. , 51.
[336] it Not even as regards the sacramental discipline, since the discernment can recognize that in a particular situation there is no serious fault. Here applies what I said in another document: cf. Apost. ap. Evangelii gaudium (24 November 2013), 44.47:AAS 105 (2013), 1038-1040.
[337] Final Report 2015, 85.
[338] Ibid. , 86.
[339] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 33: AAS 74 (1982), 121.
[340] Final Report 2015, 51.
[341] Cf. Summa Theologica I-II, q. 65, a. 3, ad 2; De malo , q. 2, a. 2.
[342] Ibid. , At 3.
[343] No 1735.
[344] See ibid. , 2352; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration. Iura et bona Euthanasia (May 5, 1980), II: AAS 72 (1980), 546. John Paul II, criticizing the category of “fundamental option,” acknowledged that “no doubt you can make very complex and obscure situations in the psychological aspect, which influence the sinner’s subjective culpability “(ibid., n.Reconciliatio and paenitentia [2 December 1984], 17: AAS 77 [1985], 223).
[345] Cf. Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, on the admissibility of the statement to the divorced and remarried Communion(June 24, 2000), 2.
[346] Final Report 2015, 85.
[347] Summa Theologica I-II, q. 94, art. 4.
[348] Referring to the general knowledge of the standard and the special knowledge of the practical discernment, St. Thomas even says that “if there is only one of the two types of knowledge, it is preferable that it be knowledge of the particular reality, which is the closest to action “( Sententia books Ethicorum, VI, 6 [ed. Leonina, t. XLVII, 354]).
[349] Speech at the end of the XIV General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (24 October 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano, 26 to 27 October 2015, p. 13.
[350] Looking for a Universal Ethics: A New Look at Natural Law (2009) , 59.
[351] In some cases, it might also be the help of the sacraments. For this reason, “to remember that the priests confessional should not a torture chamber but the place of the mercy of the Lord” (ibid., N. Evangelii gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS105 [2013], 1038). Also point out that the Eucharist “is not a reward for perfect, but a generous remedy and a food for the weak” ( ibid. , 47: 1039).
[352] Apostolic Exhortation. ap. Evangelii gaudium (24 November 2013), 44: AAS 105 (2013), 1038-1039.
[353] De catechizandis rudibus , I, 14, 22: PL 40, 327; cf. Apost. ap. Evangelii gaudium (24 November 2013), 193: AAS 105 (2013), 1101.
[354] Relatio Synodi 2014, 26.
[355] Apostolic Exhortation. ap. Evangelii gaudium (24 November 2013), 44: AAS 105 (2013), 1038.
[356] Ibid. , 45: AAS 105 (2013), 1039.
[357] Ibid. , 270: AAS 105 (2013), 1128.
[358] Bull Misericordiae Vultus (11 April 2015), 12: AAS 107 (2015), 407.
[359] Ibid. , 5: 402.
[360] Ibid. , 9: 405.
[361] Ibid. , 10: 406.
[362] Apostolic Exhortation. ap. Evangelii gaudium (24 November 2013), 47: AAS 105 (2013), 1040.
[363] Cf. ibid ., 36-37: AAS 105 (2013), 1035.
[364] Perhaps scruples, hidden behind a great desire to be faithful to the truth, some priests from penitents require a way of repentance without any shadow, so the mercy fades in the search for a hypothetically pure justice. Why it pays to remember the teaching of St. John Paul II, who said that the predictability of a new fall “does not affect the authenticity of the way” ( Letter to Card. William W. Baum at the course on hole internal organized by the Apostolic Penitentiary [22 March 1996] , 5: Teachings XIX, 1 [1996], 589).
[365] International Theological Commission, The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised (April 19, 2007), 2.
[366] Bull Misericordiae Vultus (11 April 2015), 15: AAS 107 (2015), 409.
[367] Decree. Apostolicam Actuositatem , 4.
[368] Cf. ibid.
[369] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Past. Gaudium et Spes , 49.
[370] Lett. Enc. Deus Caritas Est (25 December 2005), 16: AAS 98 (2006), 230.
[371] Ibid. , 39: AAS 98 (2006), 250.
[372] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. postsin. Christifideles laici (30 December 1988), 40: AAS 81 (1989), 468.
[373] Ibid.
[374] Final Report 2015, 87.
[375] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. postsin. Consecrated Life (25 March 1996), 42: AAS 88 (1996), 416.
[376] Cf. Final Report 2015, 87.
[377] Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 57: AAS 74 (1982), 150.
[378] Do not forget that God’s covenant with his people is expressed as a betrothal (cf. Ez 16,8.60; Is 62.5; Os 2.21 to 22), and the new Alliance is also presented as a wedding (cf. Rev 19.7; 21.2; Eph 5:25).
[379] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Const. Dogmatic Constitution. Lumen Gentium , 11.
[380] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 11: AAS 74 (1982), 93.
[381] Id., Homily at Holy Mass for families in Córdoba – Argentina (April 8, 1987) , 4: Insegnamenti X, 1 (1987), 1161-1162.
[382] See Gemeinsames Leben , Munich 1973, 18 (trans. Trans .: The common life , Brescia 1973, 46).
[383] Conc. Vatican Ecumenical Council. Vat. II, Decree. Apostolicam Actuositatem , 11.
[384] Catechesis (10 June 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano , (June 11, 2015), p. 8.
[385] John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 12: AAS 74 (1982), 93.
[386] Address to the Festival of Families and prayer vigil , Philadelphia (26 September 2015) : L’Osservatore Romano, 28-29 September 2015, p. 6.
[387] Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator. Prolégomènes à une métaphysique de L’Esperance , Paris, 1944, 63.
[388] Final Report 2015, 88.
[389] Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic. ap. Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), 44: AAS 74 (1982), 136.
[390] Ibid. , 49: AAS 74 (1982), 141.
[391] On the social aspects of the family, cf. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church , 248-254.