SFO International Council - Weekly edition
Volume: 3 - N. 39 - 1997 - September - IV
From: CIOFS Bulletin, 1997, N. 3
Emerenziana Rossato
1997 is the year that the Church, on its way towards the Jubilee, has dedicated to Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world, yesterday, today and ever. For this, the first thing that is requested from us is an unconditioned reconciliation with Him.
It is a desire that comes from our heavenly Father "who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ" (2 Cor 5,18).
This reconciliation makes us free from sin, recomposes fractures, heals wounds and, in the spirit of the Beatitudes, creates conditions of peace and concord, develops healthier relationships, makes us ready to welcome everyone as a gift from God.
We are requested to react to indifference, to sluggishness, to resignation and to live, as we are reconciled with Christ, inside the history of our countries in order to share the anxieties and hopes of our contemporaries, our brothers.
We are requested to overcome a religiousness which is only habit and custom, so that we can go towards our Father with Christ, as grateful and obedient children who consider life a vocation.
We are requested to devote the necessary time to the improvement of the quality of life, avoiding the risk of giving too much power over our destiny to unimportant things.
Today's man says: "I have no time, I have too many things to do...".
Jesus says: "Martha, Martha thou art careful and troubled about many things..." (Lc 10,41).
The reconciliation in Christ asks us to recognize His voice when He calls us and His knock when He knocks at our door, because only if we answer and let Him in, He will take His abode in us. Only then poverty will be soothed, suffering will be conforted, enmity will be reconciled and nature will be pacified with men.
To reach this it is necessary for us as pilgrims to be vigilant in choosing our way, in recovering after pauses and obstacles, in fixing our inner sight on the aim which is not the year 2000 but Christ Himself. We meet Him in the flowing of our days, in our labors, in our trials, in the efforts to eliminate from us what cannot live with Him.
But we meet Him also in the joy we feel when we do good, when we are the Samaritans of our brothers, when we become a gift that reveals Him.
Going with Him towards the year 2000 forces us, as Franciscans, to honestly examine our conscience and to ask some revealing questions to ourselves:
Is Christ the inspiring source and the centre of my life with God and men?
Do I seek Him living and acting in my brothers?
Do I announce Him through my life and my words?
Do I conform my way of thinking and acting to Him?... (from the Rule)
Does that "Go, Francis, and repair my house..." make my testimony a credible one?
Rio de Janeiro, October 4-5, 1997
The Holy Father, John Paul II, at the Sunday Angelus on the Feast of the Holy Family on December 29, 1996, announced the Second World Meeting with Families with these words: " the Second World Meeting with Families is being prepared which will take place in Rio de Janeiro from October 4-5, 1997. It will be a great feast for the families of Latin America and the whole world which will renew the message launched at the First Meeting that took place here in Rome on the occasion of the International Year of the Family".
Preparation for such an important event will require involving families and workers in pastoral care of the family on the diocesan level, in parishes as well as in various family and pro-life groups, associations and movements for real and proper awareness building regarding the urgency of a new evangelization of the wonderful yet dramatic reality of the family.
All families are invited to take part in this preparation, including those who will not be able to go to Rio de Janeiro. This is also an important occasion for evangelizing families in the light of the great Jubilee of the Year 2000. The families who will go to Brazil will thus be the expression of their whole local Christian community which will join spiritually, and through the communications media, in the Rio celebrations.
We would also like to inform you that the Meeting will be broadcast via satellite in Worldvision.
The World Meeting will consist of two parts:
1. The Festive Meeting with the Holy Father with testimonies from families. This will take place in Maracana Stadium in the afternoon of Saturday, October 4, 1997. Families from the different continents and cultural contexts will present experiences of Christian life together with artistic performances.
2. The Eucharist Celebration on Sunday morning, October 5, 1997, in Aterro do Flamengo, presided by the Holy Father, with the participation of all the families convened in Rio, will constitute the central and culminating moment of the Meeting.
From October 1-3, 1997, an International Theological and Pastoral Congress will take place at the Rio Center, an important Convention Center where the United Nations World Conference on the Environment and Development took place in 1992. Married couples involved in pastoral care of the family who are delegated by the Episcopal Conferences and family and pro-life Associations and Movements are invited to the Congress. Some Bishops, priests, men and women religious, professors of moral theology and pastoral care, seminarians and persons working in areas connected with pastoral care of the family (doctors, lawyers, psychologists, etc.) will also participate.
In this regard, each Episcopal Conference is asked to designate a married couple to represent it as participants in the Congress. Family and pro-life Associations and Movements are requested to do the same. Only the delegates confirmed by the Pontifical Council for the Family will take part in the Congress. The number of participants should be approximately 1,800.
In an enthusiastic response to the Holy Father's invitation, it is very important for the Episcopal Conferences to promote the greatest participation possible by families in the World Meeting in Rio by organizing pilgrimages. In the Dioceses, Movements and Associations it would be desirable to form teams for promoting and organizing not only the voyage to Rio, but also the preparatory catechesis. Lastly, it would be good for the Churches to organize liturgical celebrations for reflection on the family for those who will not be able to take part in the Rio Meeting. These celebrations might take place in the cathedral, presided by the Bishop of the diocese, on the same days of the Rio de Janeiro meeting.