Vatican City, 16 January 2015 (VIS) –
At 5 p.m. local time the Pope proceeded to the Mall of Asia Arena to
meet with families, the third scheduled event in his visit to the
Filipino capital. He made the six-kilometre journey in the Popemobile
so as to be able to greet the multitude of faithful who lined the
streets. The Mall of Asia Arena is an indoor sports stadium, opened
in 2012 and able to hold twenty thousand people, and belongs to the
SM chain of shopping centres which broadcast the meeting with the
Pope live to all its cinemas. The songs, testimonies, readings and
floral tributes to the Holy Father were the culminating moments of
the event, during which he addressed a discourse to those present.
“Dear families, dear friends in
Christ, I am grateful for your presence here this evening and for the
witness of your love for Jesus and his Church. I thank Bishop Reyes,
chairman of the Bishops’ Commission on Family and Life, for his
words of welcome on your behalf. And, in a special way, I thank those
who have presented testimonies and have shared their life of faith
with us.
“The Scriptures seldom speak of St.
Joseph, but when they do, we often find him resting, as an angel
reveals God’s will to him in his dreams. In the Gospel passage we
have just heard, we find Joseph resting not once, but twice. This
evening I would like to rest in the Lord with all of you, and to
reflect with you on the gift of the family.
“Joseph’s rest revealed God’s
will to him. In this moment of rest in the Lord, as we pause from our
many daily obligations and activities, God is also speaking to us. He
speaks to us in the reading we have just heard, in our prayer and
witness, and in the quiet of our hearts. Let us reflect on what the
Lord is saying to us, especially in this evening’s Gospel. There
are three aspects of this passage which I would ask you to consider:
resting in the Lord, rising with Jesus and Mary, and being a
prophetic voice.
“Resting in the Lord. Rest is so
necessary for the health of our minds and bodies, and often so
difficult to achieve due to the many demands placed on us. But rest
is also essential for our spiritual health, so that we can hear God’s
voice and understand what he asks of us. Joseph was chosen by God to
be the foster father of Jesus and the husband of Mary. As Christians,
you too are called, like Joseph, to make a home for Jesus. You make a
home for him in your hearts, your families, your parishes and your
communities.
“To hear and accept God’s call, to
make a home for Jesus, you must be able to rest in the Lord. You must
make time each day for prayer. But you may say to me: Holy Father, I
want to pray, but there is so much work to do! I must care for my
children; I have chores in the home; I am too tired even to sleep
well. This may be true, but if we do not pray, we will not know the
most important thing of all: God’s will for us. And for all our
activity, our busy-ness, without prayer we will accomplish very
little.
“Resting in prayer is especially
important for families. It is in the family that we first learn how
to pray. There we come to know God, to grow into men and women of
faith, to see ourselves as members of God’s greater family, the
Church. In the family we learn how to love, to forgive, to be
generous and open, not closed and selfish. We learn to move beyond
our own needs, to encounter others and share our lives with them.
That is why it is so important to pray as a family! That is why
families are so important in God’s plan for the Church!
“Next, rising with Jesus and Mary.
Those precious moments of repose, of resting with the Lord in prayer,
are moments we might wish to prolong. But like St. Joseph, once we
have heard God’s voice, we must rise from our slumber; we must get
up and act. Faith does not remove us from the world, but draws us
more deeply into it. Each of us, in fact, has a special role in
preparing for the coming of God’s kingdom in our world.
“Just as the gift of the Holy Family
was entrusted to Saint Joseph, so the gift of the family and its
place in God’s plan is entrusted to us. The angel of the Lord
revealed to Joseph the dangers which threatened Jesus and Mary,
forcing them to flee to Egypt and then to settle in Nazareth. So too,
in our time, God calls upon us to recognize the dangers threatening
our own families and to protect them from harm.
“The pressures on family life today
are many. Here in the Philippines, countless families are still
suffering from the effects of natural disasters. The economic
situation has caused families to be separated by migration and the
search for employment, and financial problems strain many households.
While all too many people live in dire poverty, others are caught up
in materialism and lifestyles which are destructive of family life
and the most basic demands of Christian morality. The family is also
threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the
very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the
ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.
“Our world needs good and strong
families to overcome these threats! The Philippines need holy and
loving families to protect the beauty and truth of the family in
God’s plan and to be a support and example for other families.
Every threat to the family is a threat to society itself. The future
of humanity, as St. John Paul II often said, passes through the
family. So protect your families! See in them your country’s
greatest treasure and nourish them always by prayer and the grace of
the sacraments. Families will always have their trials, but may you
never add to them! Instead, be living examples of love, forgiveness
and care. Be sanctuaries of respect for life, proclaiming the
sacredness of every human life from conception to natural death. What
a gift this would be to society, if every Christian family lived
fully its noble vocation! So rise with Jesus and Mary, and set out on
the path the Lord traces for each of you.
“Finally, the Gospel we have heard
reminds us of our Christian duty to be prophetic voices in the midst
of our communities. Joseph listened to the angel of the Lord and
responded to God’s call to care for Jesus and Mary. In this way he
played his part in God’s plan, and became a blessing not only for
the Holy Family, but a blessing for all of humanity. With Mary,
Joseph served as a model for the boy Jesus as he grew in wisdom, age
and grace. When families bring children into the world, train them
in faith and sound values, and teach them to contribute to society,
they become a blessing in our world. God’s love becomes present and
active by the way we love and by the good works that we do. We extend
Christ’s kingdom in this world. And in doing this, we prove
faithful to the prophetic mission which we have received in baptism.
“During this year which your bishops
have set aside as the Year of the Poor, I would ask you, as families,
to be especially mindful of our call to be missionary disciples of
Jesus. This means being ready to go beyond your homes and to care
for our brothers and sisters who are most in need. I ask you
especially to show concern for those who do not have a family of
their own, in particular those who are elderly and children without
parents. Never let them feel isolated, alone and abandoned, but help
them to know that God has not forgotten them. You may be poor
yourselves in material ways, but you have an abundance of gifts to
offer when you offer Christ and the community of his Church. Do not
hide your faith, do not hide Jesus, but carry him into the world and
offer the witness of your family life!
“Dear friends in Christ, know that I
pray for you always! I pray that the Lord may continue to deepen your
love for him, and that this love may manifest itself in your love for
one another and for the Church. Pray often and take the fruits of
your prayer into the world, that all may know Jesus Christ and his
merciful love. Please pray also for me, for I truly need your prayers
and will depend on them always”.
Following the meeting, the Pope retired
to the apostolic nunciature, where he dined privately and spent his
second night in the Philippines.
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