Family Saves the World –Teaching of Pope Francis – continuation
His Own Roots
Pope Francis spoke of his family with gratitude every time: about the close bond between his father Mario and his mother Regina, about the warm relationships uniting five siblings: the firstborn Jorge Mario, Oscar Adrián, Marta Regina, Alberto Horacio and Maria Elena, and finally on the significant presence of his Grandmother Rosa. The Bergoglio family had a tremendous influence on the thinking and character of the future pope. His agricultural background gave him a sense of concreteness and common sense, respect for the spirit of self-sacrifice and sacrifice for others. The experience of emigration - Father Mario left the Italian Piedmont in 1929 to look for a future for himself in Argentina, where the future Pope was born seven years later - helps Francis better understand what it means for the family to abandon his homeland and confront new, unknown realities. Grandma Rosa enriched his family memories with the gift of intergenerational closeness.
The involvement of grandmother and father in the Church activities of the Catholic Action gave the family atmosphere a natural religious character. Mario, before he left for Argentina, where he was to find not only a job, but also a future wife, he was remembered by his peers as an admirer of Achille Ratti, known to the world as Pope Pius XI. Certainly, this Italian refugee never thought that one of his sons, born on the Rio de la Plata, would one day succeed his beloved Papa Ratti on the Chair of Peter. “I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family where faith was lived in a simple and concrete way - Francis confessed to the young people on the Pentecost Vigil on May 18, 2013 - but the one that had the greatest influence on shaping my faith was my grandmother Rosa, my father's mother. This was the woman from whom we heard about Jesus and who taught us the catechism. " On Good Friday, she led her grandchildren "to the candlelight procession", and in front of the Holy Sepulcher, she whispered in their ear: "Look, he is dead, but he will be resurrected tomorrow." The Pope never ceased to express his gratitude for the family: “This is something beautiful! The first annunciation in the family. This makes me think about the love of so many mothers and grandmothers, and the role they play in transmitting the faith. They transmit the faith.”
During the morning mass at St. Marta, on November 19, 2013, Francis told the known story of grandfather in a family. Well, the father of the family, clearly disgusted with the way his elderly father behaved at the table, who, due to indolence, got dirty while eating, decided to make a separate table for him so that he would eat alone at it. One evening he comes home from work and notices that his own little son is tinkering with pieces of slats. "What are you doing?" “I'm making a table for you, Dad. It will come in handy when you too grow old like my grandfather." Young and efficient repairers of this world do not even know how quickly they will reach such a state where the world of the healthy and the strong will show them the painful logic of the culture of exclusion. For Francis, "a culture of exclusion" means "a rejected child and an old man pushed to the margins of life."
Family and Love
Aware of the situation, the Pope does not hesitate to expose the forces attacking the family based on a permanent relationship between a man and a woman. "The family today is battered and scorned," he said in the consistory of cardinals on February 20, 2014. Nevertheless, Francis' method is rather to show the positive side of the issue, hence the appeal to everyone, especially pastors, to “recognize how beautiful, good and true it is to start a family, to be a family today. It is indispensable for the survival of the world and the future of mankind." And he added: "They ask us to show God's luminous plan for the family and to support the spouses in making it happen with joy, accompanying them in various difficulties, offering an intelligent, courageous and loving pastoral care."
When speaking of marriage and family, Francis never misses what he used to call "the periphery of life". On September 16, 2013, he spoke to Roman priests about the need to accept "in truth" couples living without marriage. At the same time, this truth "is not exhausted in dogmatic statements." It must be applied "in the love and fullness of God." When it comes to divorced people living in new relationships, the problem, according to Pope Francis, cannot be reduced to the question of giving them communion or not. Whoever limits the conversation to just that "doesn't understand what the real problem is." Of course, the Pope does not offer ready-made solutions, but his practical approach to the so-called "pastoral mercy" made him undertake the trouble of simplifying the procedures of Church annulment. Moreover, he encourages priests to be "creative", which does not mean "inventing something new", but "seeking opportunities to preach the Gospel to these people". In this regard, the Pope asks priests to be more available in the confessional, and to propose preparations for the sacraments at times more adapted to the order of the day of those who work.
Mercy in pastoral ministry
What does mercy mean for Francis in his pastoral ministry? It is about the shepherd's feeling of closeness to the sheep. Anyone who has been hurt by life should find help and support in the people of the church. A certain "pastoral pain, which is a form of mercy," is needed in this respect. It means being able to suffer for and with individuals. Like the father and mother, they suffer from their child's misfortune. On another occasion, explaining to parish priests the art of confessing penitents, Pope Francis emphasized that the attitude of the rigorous and the careless laxist were burdened with the same error: They are not interested in the confessing person. “The rigorist proposes a medicine that ultimately kills the patient, while the laxist persuades the patient that he is healthy, so he does not offer him anything that in fact allows the disease to continue to develop and invisibly kill a person from the inside. The rigorist leaves the sick person alone before the law, the laxist alone with his sins. In both cases, none of them "dirty themselves" with the direct touch of other people's problems, his life, his sins or diseases.
Today, however, especially with regard to the problems that affect families, the church should respond with compassion in the literal sense of the term, which is: before judging, it should suffer together, empathize and bend over the wound. That is why Francis compared the church to a field hospital. Within it, the family constitutes a special therapeutic ward, full of patients interested in treatment.
I tried to introduce in a few sentences the words spread by Pope Francis before he opened the two above-mentioned synods on the family and delivered the presented catechesis. They contain the mature and synthetic thought of the present Successor of St. Peter about the family. The beauty of Francis' teaching lies in its simplicity and deeply inspired. These are the texts of someone who lives under the constant inspiration of the Holy Spirit and who, at the same time, never loses his contact with reality. One can listen to the words of Francis as to the teaching of the Pope, and at the same time recognize in it the voice of a kind and friendly pastor from family parish. He is a simple shepherd addressing the spouses seating before him, and at the same time to all the spouses of the world: "I wish you all a beautiful path,” - said Francis on September 14, 2014, a few months before the beginning of the catechesis cycle - a fertile path on which your love will be to grow up. Good luck to you, even though crosses will appear. Oh, they will appear. But the Lord is there to help you. God bless you.”
Until Tomorrow
fr. george