Catholic Family – Become What You Are – Introduction
INTRODUCTION
This document is being written with the hope of providing everyone in the Archdiocese with some kind of focus and direction in respect to the theme ‘Catholic Family: Become what you are’. Given the volume of information available to almost everyone on evangelization and family life and the sheer complexity of life issues on every level in the world today we believe it necessary to produce a written document that keeps us all grounded in this theme for 2010. This paper does not pretend to provide all the information or insights necessary to explore such a theme nor is it exhaustive in its efforts to provide theological insight on the matter. Our hope is that individuals, groups and parishes would use this document as a means of reflection and discussion, as well as inspiration for research and greater learning. We hope that this would enable the theme ‘Catholic Family: Become what you are’ to come alive in the Church of P.O.S this year. This paper will be presented as follows:
– A few words on the theme title itself.
– Evangelization and its meaning and method in the history of the Church.
– The New Evangelization and its relationship to Catholic family life.
– Love: the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.
– The Sacrament of Marriage
– The Catholic Family – becoming what you are as a means of evangelizing the world.
– A process for families to answer the call in 2010
– Conclusion
Whenever possible the reader will be advised where other resources may be accessed for more information and greater insight.
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE THEME ITSELF
The theme statement “Catholic Family: Become what you are” is taken essentially from the encyclical ‘Familiaris Consortio’ written by Pope John Paul II in 1981. Part three of that document is headed Christian Family, Become What You Are (F.C.#17) but because our focus here is on Catholics in the Archdiocese of P.O.S we changed it to “Catholic Family: Become what you are”. The question being asked in some circles is why the words ‘become what you are’. According to Familiaris Consortio it cannot be stated any other way because, as we shall see in the main body of this reflection, the family is the result of God’s creative act of love which requires that in marriage the man and woman ‘are no longer two but one flesh” and are called by this fact to grow continually in their communion through the promise of mutual self-giving. The family is therefore founded on and given life by love which is the foundation of its existence and as a communion of persons its very purpose. In other words the very fact of the existence of a family says what it already is, “an intimate community of life and love and its mission is to become more and more everyday that which it already is, that is to say, a community of life and love, in an effort that will find fulfillment, as will everything else created and redeemed, in the Kingdom of God.” (F.C.#17)
The family finds in the plan of God the Creator and Redeemer not only its identity, what it is, but also its mission, what it can and should do. The role that God calls the family to perform in history derives from what the family is; its role represents the dynamic and existential development of what it is. Each family finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its dignity and its responsibility: family, become what you are. (F.C. #17).
In the final analysis the essence and role of the family is specified by love. The consequence of this, as we shall see shortly, is that the extent to which the Catholic family accepts the Gospel, matures in faith, and lives its vocation to love, it becomes an evangelizing community.
