NEW FAMILIES MOVEMENT CELEBRATES FORTY YEAR ANNIVERSARY

VATICAN CITY, NOV 3, 2007 (VIS). Today the Pope received members of the New Families Movement, established forty years ago within the Focolare Movement, who were participating in a gathering on the theme "A House Built upon Rock: The Lived Gospel, an Answer to the Problems of Today's Family".

  While highlighting that the movement forms a network of 800,000 families in 182 nations across five continents, the Holy Father recalled that its pastoral work is an outgrowth of "four pillars: spirituality, education, a social nature, and solidarity".

  "Your commitment of silent and profound evangelization gives witness that only familial unity, a gift of the God who is Love, makes the family a true abode for love, a house that welcomes life and a school of Christian values for its children," he said.
 
  Benedict XVI emphasized that "the secret is precisely in living the Gospel". This is why, during the tasks of the assembly in these days, he said that "besides illustrating the situation of today's family in diverse cultural contexts, you have had the foresight to study the Word of God in depth and to listen to the testimony that shows us how the Holy Spirit acts in our hearts and in family life as well as in complex and difficult situations". In this context, the Pope referred to the uncertainty of dating couples in the face of a definitive decision, to matrimonial crises, to separation and divorce, and to non-traditional unions.

  The Pope also asked that, owing to their commitment, "pastoral strategies might be found that respond to the growing needs of today's family and the multiple challenges it has to face so that its particular mission in the Church and in society might not be lessened".

  "According to the divine plan," he continued, "the family is a sacred and sanctifying place and the Church, always close to it, sustains it in its mission, above all today because there are many perils that threaten it from within and without. Divine assistance is needed that it not give in to discouragement and so every Christian family should look with confidence to the Holy Family, the original 'domestic Church'."

  The Holy Father made evident to the families the certainty that "the humble and holy Family of Nazareth, the icon and model of every human family, will not cease in sustaining you from heaven. It is indispensable, however," he concluded, "that you have constant recourse to prayer, to listen to the Word of God, and to an intense sacramental life together with the effort to always live Christ's commandment of love and forgiveness. Love does not seek its own interest, does not brood over injury, but rejoices with the truth."
AC/…/NEW FAMILIES                         VIS 20071105 (450)