Recovering the true
meaning of celebration, which today risks being obliterated by excesses
in the organisation of a work bent on profit and market competition
which promotes a consumistic lifestyle that ends up tearing families
apart.
This is Benedict XVI's exhortation in a letter written for the
launching of the VII World Meeting of Families to be held in Italy, in
Milan from May 30 to June 3, 2012.
Referring to the theme of " The
Family: Work and Rest”, the Pope highlighted how they "are intimately
connected with the lives of families: they influence choices, affect
relations between spouses and between parents and children, affect the
relationship between the family and society and the Church. Sacred
Scripture (cf. Gen 1-2) tells us that family, work and holidays are
gifts and blessings of God to help us live a fully human life. Daily
experience attests that authentic development of the person includes the
individual dimension, family and community, both activities and functional relationships, as well as openness to hope and that Good which is limitless".
“Nowadays, unfortunately, the organisation of work,
which is planned and implemented as a function of market competition and
maximising profit, and the concept of rest as a time for evasion and
consumption, contribute to the break-up of families and communities, and
to the spread of an individualistic lifestyle. It is therefore
necessary to reflect and commit ourselves to reconciling the demands and
requirements of work with those of the family, and to recover the true
significance of rest, especially on Sundays, the weekly Easter, the day
of the Lord and the day of man, the day of the family, of the community
and of solidarity”.
Consequently, in the letter addressed to the President
of the Pontifical Council for the Family Card. Ennio Antonelli,
Benedict XVI writes that "the next World Meeting of Families is an
excellent opportunity to rethink work and rest in
view of a family united and open to life, well integrated into society
and the Church, attentive to the quality of relationships as well as the
economy of the same family household.
The event, in order to achieve
real success, however, should not remain isolated, but be preceded by an
appropriate course of ecclesial and cultural preparation. I therefore
hope that already in the year 2011, the XXX anniversary of the Apostolic
Exhortation Familiaris consortio, the "Magna Carta" of family ministry,
a valid path with initiatives at the parish, diocesan and national
levels can be taken, aimed at highlighting experiences of work and rest
in their real and positive aspects, in particular their effect on the
concrete experiences of families.
Christian families and church
communities around the world should therefore feel called upon and
involved so as to promptly begin preparations for "Milan 2012"".
An appointment which on 2 and 3 June 2012 – as
he writes in his letter - will see the Pope preside at the " 'Feast of
Witness' " on Saturday evening and Mass to conclude the meeting Sunday
morning.
SIC: AN/EU