Family, good news: Commentary Fr. Jorge Miró

Father Jorge Miró shares with Exaudi readers his commentary on today’s Gospel, Sunday, December 31, 2023, titled “Family, good news”

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Today we celebrate the feast of the Sacred Family. God wanted to be born and grow up in a human family. Thus, he consecrated it as the first and ordinary path of his encounter with humanity.

Marriage and family are not a human invention resulting from particular cultural and historical situations. The sacrament of marriage is not a social convention, an empty rite or the mere external sign of a commitment. The sacrament is a gift for the sanctification and salvation of spouses, because “their mutual belonging is a real representation, through the sacramental sign, of the same relationship of Christ with the Church. The spouses are therefore the permanent memory for the Church of what happened on the cross; They are for each other and for their children, witnesses of salvation, of which the sacrament makes them participants. Marriage is a vocation, in that it is a response to the specific call to live conjugal love as an imperfect sign of the love between Christ and the Church (Francis, AL 71).

God has a plan for marriage and family, this is what Jesus tells us: “the Creator in the beginning created them male and female, and said: For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother, and will be united to his wife.” and the two will be one flesh; What God has joined together, let no man separate.

Pope Francis says that today there is a world war to destroy marriage. Today there are ideological colonizations that destroy, but not with weapons, but with ideas. Therefore, it is necessary to defend oneself against ideological colonizations (Francis, Tbilisi 2016).

Christians cannot give up proposing marriage in order not to contradict current sensibilities, to be fashionable (…). We would be depriving the world of the values that we can and should contribute (…). We must make a more responsible and generous effort, which consists of presenting the reasons and motivations for choosing marriage and family, so that people are better disposed to respond to the grace that God offers them (Francis, AL 35). .

On the other hand, it is true that there are cases where separation is inevitable. Sometimes it can even become morally necessary, when precisely it is about protecting the weaker spouse, or the small children, from the most serious wounds caused by arrogance and violence, discouragement and exploitation, alienation and indifference. (AL 241).

We must not judge or condemn people, but rather accompany them in their suffering, help them discern the will of God, heal wounds instead of widening them, and realizing the truth in charity, help them grow in faith and live it in the Church (cf. AL 243).

Present your family to the Lord and ask him for the gift of the Holy Spirit, so that he may renew it and grant you communion.

Also pray for all families, especially those who are suffering and going through difficulties.