The last general audience of 2011 dedicated to the Holy Family
During his general audience on December 28, 2011, Benedict XVI dedicated his weekly catechesis to the theme of the Holy Family in Nazareth. The pope recalled the importance of praying together in the family, after the example of the family made up of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, “icon of the domestic Church”.
“The family is… the first school of prayer [where] children, from the most tender age, can learn to perceive the meaning of God, thanks to the teaching and example of their parents.” The Holy Father invited families to be “the place in which to rediscover the beauty of prayer in common”. Precisely through prayer we become “capable of approaching God in an intimate, profound way,” he said.
The prayer of the Rosary takes Mary as its model, because it consists in contemplating the mysteries of Christ in spiritual union with the Mother of our Lord. “Mary’s ability to live by God’s gaze, is so to speak, contagious.”
The pope also accentuated one of the main things taught by the family of Nazareth—silence—and underscored the importance of a spiritual discipline that can be understood “at the school of the Holy Family”. “Whereas we are deafened by the din, the noise and discordant voices in the frenetic, turbulent life of our time,” Benedict XVI said [quoting his predecessor Paul VI], the silence of the Holy Family can teach us “to be steadfast in good thoughts, attentive to our inner life, ready to hear God’s hidden inspiration clearly and the exhortations of true teachers”.
Two days later, on December 30, Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, granted an interview to L’Osservatore Romano concerning the results of the 20th plenary assembly of the Council that was held at the Vatican from November 29 to December 1, 2011.
The crisis of the traditional family is “undeniable”, he said. “Almost everywhere in the world, the same phenomena are noted: a decrease in marriages, which are being celebrated at a later age, an increase in divorces, cohabitation, people remaining single, homosexual relations, fewer births and [more] births outside of marriage and artificial procreation.”
This situation is explained by the widespread availability of contraceptives, the search for self-fulfillment through work and the pursuit of a career, in the subjectivist mentality and relativism, in the secularism that excludes God from everyday life, and in the ideology of gender.
And so the Roman prelate asked for the protection of: the right to conscientious objection by members of healthcare professions with regard to abortion and euthanasia, the right to freedom of opinion on one’s ethical evaluation of homosexual behavior, the right of children to a family founded on marriage between one man and one woman, the right of that family not to be lumped together with other forms of cohabitation, the right of parents to freedom of education and consequently the freedom to choose a school and a curriculum, and financial fairness for families with children.
To the members of the plenary assembly of the Council for the Family, Benedict XVI had declared: “Just as the eclipse of God and the crisis of the family are connected, so too the new evangelization is inseparable from the Christian family.” In a secular society like ours and faced with consumerist individualism, the witness of the Christian family is the most effective and credible means of teaching the faith, Cardinal Antonelli declared in L’Osservatore Romano. Furthermore he announced that the next World Meeting of Families in Milan from May 30 to June 3, 2012, will be the priority in the new year for his dicastery. (Sources : apic/imedia/vatican.va/Osservatore Romano/VIS – DICI no. 248 dated January 13, 2012)
You can also read :
Fr. Patrick Troadec on His Book “The Catholic Family” (Clovis)
