Vatican City, 21 October 2015 (VIS) –
This morning Pope Francis held his usual Wednesday general audience
in St. Peter's Square. In his catechesis, in which he revisited the
theme of the family, he reflected on faithfulness and the promise of
love between a man and a woman, on which the family is based, and
which implies the promise to welcome and educate children, to care
for elderly parents and the weakest members of the family, and to
help each other to develop their own qualities and to accept their
limitations.
“A family that closes up on itself is
a contradiction, a mortification of the promise that brought it to
life”, he said. “Never forget that the identity of the family is
always a promise that extends and expands to all the family, and also
to all humanity. … Love, like friendship, owes its strength and
beauty to the fact that it generates a bond without curbing freedom.
Love is free, the promise of the family is free, and this is its
beauty. Without freedom there is no friendship, without freedom there
is no love, without freedom there is no marriage. So, freedom and
fidelity are not opposed to each other; on the contrary, they support
each other, in terms of both interpersonal and social relationships.
Indeed, think of the damage caused, in the civilisation of global
communication, by the inflation of promises not kept, in various
fields, and the indulgence for infidelity to the word given and to
commitments made”.
“Being faithful to promises is a true
work of art by humanity”, added Pope Francis. “No relationship of
love – no friendship, no form of caring for another person, no joy
of the common good – reaches the height of our desire and our hope,
if it does not arrive at the point of inhabiting this miracle of the
soul. And I use the word 'miracle', because the strength and
persuasiveness of fidelity, in spite of everything, can only enchant
and surprise us. … No school can teach the truth of love, if the
family does not do so. No law can imposed the beauty or legacy of
this treasure of human dignity, if the personal bond between love and
generation does not inscribe it in our flesh”.
“Our fidelity to our promises is
always entrusted to the grace and mercy of God. Love for the human
family, in good times and bad, is a point of honour for the Church.
May God enable us always to be worthy of this promise”.
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