Month: January 2021

In celebration of the 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines, the Healing Rosary for the World is brought to us by the LIGHT OF FAITH featuring the world’s largest solar rosary by the A Liter of Light (Isang Litrong Liwanag). As one nation, let us come together and pray the rosary for healing, and bring the light of faith, 500 years and beyond! The Manila Cathedral, January 6, 2021, 9:00 PM.

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54th World Day Of Peace
Homily Of His Holiness Pope Francis

Vatican Basilica
Friday, 1st January 2021

In the readings of today’s Mass, three verbs find their fulfilment in the Mother of God: to bless, to be born and to find.

To bless.  In the Book of Numbers, the Lord tells his sacred ministers to bless his people: “Thus you shall bless the Israelites: You shall say to them, ‘The Lord bless you’” (6:23-24).  This is no pious exhortation; it is a specific request.  And it is important that, today too, priests constantly bless the People of God and that the faithful themselves be bearers of blessing; that they bless.  The Lord knows how much we need to be blessed.  The first thing he did after creating the world was to say that everything was good (bene-dicere) and to say of us that that we were very good.  Now, however, with the Son of God we receive not only words of blessing, but the blessing itself: Jesus is himself the blessing of the Father.  In him, Saint Paul tells us, the Father blesses us “with every blessing” (Eph 1:3).  Every time we open our hearts to Jesus, God’s blessing enters our lives.

Today we celebrate the Son of God, who is “blessed” by nature, who comes to us through his Mother, “blessed” by grace.  In this way, Mary brings us God’s blessing.  Wherever she is, Jesus comes to us.  Therefore, we should welcome her like Saint Elizabeth who, immediately recognizing the blessing, cried out: “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Lk 1:42).  We repeat those words every time we recite the Hail Mary.  In welcoming Mary, we receive a blessing, but we also learn to bless.  Our Lady teaches us that blessings are received in order to be given.  She, who was blessed, became a blessing for all those whom she met: for Elizabeth, for the newlyweds at Cana, for the Apostles in the Upper Room…  We too are called to bless, to “speak well” in God’s name.  Our world is gravely polluted by the way we “speak” and think “badly” of others, of society, of ourselves.  Speaking badly corrupts and decays, whereas blessing restores life and gives the strength needed to begin anew each day.  Let us ask the Mother of God for the grace to be joyful bearers of God’s blessing to others, as she is to us.

The second verb is to be born.  Saint Paul points out that the Son of God was “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4).  In these few words, he tells us something amazing: that the Lord was born like us.  He did not appear on the scene as an adult, but as a child.  He came into the world not on his own, but from a woman, after nine months in the womb of his Mother, from whom he allowed his humanity to be shaped.  The heart of the Lord began to beat within Mary; the God of life drew oxygen from her.  Ever since then, Mary has united us to God because in her God bound himself to our flesh, and he has never left it.  Saint Francis loved to say that Mary “made the Lord of Majesty our brother” (SAINT BONAVENTURE, Legenda Maior, 9, 3).  She is not only the bridge joining us to God; she is more.  She is the road that God travelled in order to reach us, and the road that we must travel in order to reach him.  Through Mary, we encounter God the way he wants us to: in tender love, in intimacy, in the flesh.  For Jesus is not an abstract idea; he is real and incarnate; he was “born of a woman”, and quietly grew.  Women know about this kind of quiet growth.  We men tend to be abstract and want things right away.  Women are concrete and know how to weave life’s threads with quiet patience.  How many women, how many mothers, thus give birth and rebirth to life, offering the world a future!

We are in this world not to die, but to give life.  The holy Mother of God teaches us that the first step in giving life to those around us is to cherish it within ourselves.  Today’s Gospel tells us that Mary “kept all these things in her heart” (cf. Lk 2:19).  And goodness comes from the heart.  How important it is to keep our hearts pure, to cultivate our interior life and to persevere in our prayer!  How important it is to educate our hearts to care, to cherish the persons and things around us.  Everything starts from this: from cherishing others, the world and creation.  What good is it to know many persons and things if we fail to cherish them?  This year, while we hope for new beginnings and new cures, let us not neglect care.  Together with a vaccine for our bodies, we need a vaccine for our hearts.  That vaccine is care.  This will be a good year if we take care of others, as Our Lady does with us.

The third verb is to find.  The Gospel tells us that the shepherds “found Mary and Joseph and the child” (v. 16).  They did not find miraculous and spectacular signs, but a simple family.  Yet there they truly found God, who is grandeur in littleness, strength in tenderness.  But how were the shepherds able to find this inconspicuous sign?  They were called by an angel.  We too would not have found God if we had not been called by grace.  We could never have imagined such a God, born of a woman, who revolutionizes history with tender love.  Yet by grace we did find him.  And we discovered that his forgiveness brings new birth, his consolation enkindles hope, his presence bestows irrepressible joy.  We found him but we must not lose sight of him.  Indeed, the Lord is never found once and for all: each day he has to be found anew.  The Gospel thus describes the shepherds as constantly on the lookout, constantly on the move: “they went with haste, they found, they made known, they returned, glorifying and praising God” (vv. 16-17.20).  They were not passive, because to receive grace we have to be active.

What about ourselves?  What are we called to find at the beginning of this year?  It would be good to find time for someone.  Time is a treasure that all of us possess, yet we guard it jealously, since we want to use it only for ourselves.  Let us ask for the grace to find time for God and for our neighbour – for those who are alone or suffering, for those who need someone to listen and show concern for them.  If we can find time to give, we will be amazed and filled with joy, like the shepherds.  May Our Lady, who brought God into the world of time, help us to be generous with our time.  Holy Mother of God, to you we consecrate this New Year.  You, who know how to cherish things in your heart, care for us, bless our time, and teach us to find time for God and for others.  With joy and confidence, we acclaim you: Holy Mother of God!  Amen.

© Copyright – Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Explanations of the Organizing Dicastery

December 28, 2020 Anita Bourdin

The “Amoris Laetitia Family” Year (March 19, 2021- June 26, 2022) has five objectives, pointed out the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life on December 27, 2020. “To spread the Document’s content,” “to proclaim that the Sacrament of Marriage is a gift,” to render families actors of the family pastoral,” “to make young people conscious of the importance of formation to the truth of love and of the gift of oneself,” “to broaden the gaze and action of the family pastoral . . . so as to include spouses, children, young people, the elderly and situations of family fragility.”

Among the “initiatives” already planned, is a “day for grandparents and elderly people,” but also a Forum in June 2021, and ten videos of Pope Francis on the Document, testimonies of handicapped people, pastoral proposals, preparatory catecheses for Rome’s 10th World Meeting of Families in June 2022.

The Dicastery quotes first of all the Post-Synodal Document: “The Christian proclamation concerning the family is truly good news” (Amoris Laetitia, 1).

Opening and Closing

Pope Francis will open the “Amoris Laetitia Family” Year on March 19, 2021. On that day the Church will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia “on the beauty and the joy of family love.” He will close it on June 26, 2022, on the occasion of the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome.

This is how the organizing Dicastery explains the “project.” The “Amoris Laetitia” Year is an initiative of Pope Francis, which intends to touch the world’s families through different proposals of a spiritual, pastoral and cultural nature, able to be implemented in parishes, dioceses, Universities, Ecclesial Movements, and family Associations.”

“The pandemic experience has made evident the central role of the family as domestic Church and the importance of community links between families, which make the Church a “family of families” (AL 87),” underscores the Dicastery.

This is why the family “merits a year of celebrations because it is placed at the center of the engagement and care of the whole pastoral and ecclesial reality.”

There are five objectives:

1. To spread the content of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia,” to have people experience that the Gospel of the family is a joy that fills the heart and our whole life” (AL 200). A family that discovers and experiences the joy of having a gift and of being a gift to the Church and the society, “can become a light in the darkness of the world” (AL 66). And today the world is in need of that light!
2. To proclaim that the Sacrament of Marriage is a gift and that it has in itself a transforming power of human love. To this end, it is necessary that Pastors and families walk together in pastoral co-responsibility and complementarity between the different vocations in the Church (cf. AL 203).
3. To make families protagonists in the Family Pastoral. To this end, “an effort of evangelization and of catechesis directed to the heart of the family” (AL 200) is necessary because a disciple family also becomes a missionary family.
4. To sensitize young people to the importance of being formed in the truth of love and in the gift of oneself with initiatives dedicated to them.
5. To broaden the gaze and action of the family pastoral so that it becomes transversal to the family, to include the spouses, the children, the young people, the elderly and situations of family fragility.”

Initiatives and Resources

1. Forum “Where are we with Amoris Laetitia? Strategies for the implementation of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation,” from June 9 to 12, 2021, with leaders of the family pastoral of Episcopal Conferences, and international family Movements and Associations.
2. Project “10 Amoris Laetitia Videos”: The Holy Father will recount the chapters of the Apostolic Exhortation, with families that will give witness of certain aspects of their daily life. Every month a video will be diffused to awaken the pastoral interest of the family in the dioceses and parishes of the whole world.
3. #IamChurch: diffusion of some video testimonies on ecclesial leadership and the faith of handicapped people.
4. To walk as a family”: 12 concrete pastoral proposals to walk as a family inspired by Amoris Laetitia.
5. In view of the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome in 2022, the dioceses and families of the whole world are invited to spread and reflect further on the catecheses that will be made available by the diocese of Rome and to engage in ad hoc pastoral initiatives.
6. Celebration of a day for grandparents and elderly people.

“Tools of family spirituality, of formation and pastoral action in preparation for marriage, education to affection of young people, on the sanctity of spouses and families that live the grace of the Sacrament in their daily life, will be diffused,” adds the same source.

In addition, the Dicastery announces that international “University symposiums will be organized to explore the content and the implications of the Apostolic Exhortation in relation to the topical questions that affect families of the whole world”

The 2022 World Meeting in Rome

“Family love: vocation and way of holiness” is the theme chosen by Pope Francis for the next World Meeting of Families, which will be held in Rome in June 2022.