Pope Benedict has given an emotional plea for all people to recognize
the beauty, joy and witness of Christian marriage and family life, and
to reject secularism, artificial contraception and co-habitation because
they are opposed to true love.
“Everyone knows that the
Christian family is a special sign of the presence and love of Christ
and that it is called to give a specific and irreplaceable contribution
to evangelization,” the Pope told over 400,000 pilgrims at Croatia’s
first annual family day in the nation’s capital of Zagreb, on June 5.
“In today’s society the presence of exemplary Christian families is more necessary and urgent than ever,” he said.
The
gathering at the city’s Hippodrome racetrack was the highlight of the
Pope’s two-day visit to Croatia.
In his homily he extolled both the
virtues of Catholic family life and flatly rejected many of the modern
attacks upon it.
Because of the “difficulties and threats” that
Christian families face, Pope Benedict said that they have a “special
need of evangelization and support.”
He praised them as a decisive
resource for education in the faith, for the way families build up the
communion of the Church and the ways they contribute to the Church’s
missionary presence “in the most diverse situations in life.”
Pope Benedict then turned to those things that destroy family life and happiness-- the first being extreme secularism.
“Freedom
without commitment to the truth is made into an absolute, and
individual well-being through the consumption of material goods and
transient experiences is cultivated as an ideal, obscuring the quality
of interpersonal relations and deeper human values; love is reduced to
sentimental emotion and to the gratification of instinctive impulses,
without a commitment to build lasting bonds of reciprocal belonging and
without openness to life,” he observed.
“We are called to oppose such a mentality!”
In
particular, he urged the young people in the vast congregation to
reject co-habitation and artificial contraception. Both, he suggested,
undermine true love.
“Do not give in to that secularized
mentality which proposes living together as a preparation, or even a
substitute for marriage! Show by the witness of your lives that it is
possible, like Christ, to love without reserve, and do not be afraid to
make a commitment to another person!”
“Dear families, rejoice in
fatherhood and motherhood! Openness to life is a sign of openness to the
future, confidence in the future, just as respect for the natural moral
law frees people, rather than demeaning them!”
He then gave parents practical advice on how to live out the radical Christian ideal he was proposing to them.
“Dear
parents, commit yourselves always to teach your children to pray, and
pray with them; draw them close to the Sacraments, especially to the
Eucharist.”
“Introduce them to the life of the Church; in the
intimacy of the home do not be afraid to read the sacred Scriptures,
illuminating family life with the light of faith and praising God as
Father.”
The Pope said that while human effort and ingenuity are
commendable, it is prayer and openness to the Holy Spirit which are
primarily required if a Christian family is to survive and prosper.
“Sometimes
it is thought that missionary efficacy depends primarily upon careful
planning and its intelligent implementation by means of specific action.
Certainly, the Lord asks for our cooperation, but his initiative has to
come first, before any response from us: his Spirit is the true
protagonist of the Church, to be invoked and welcomed.”
Ending his
homily on that note, Pope Benedict concluded with a prayer. “Let us
pray to the Lord, that families may come more and more to be small
churches and that ecclesial communities may take on more and more the
quality of a family!”