 "He
lived our human condition in everything"
Pope John Paul II
Excerpt of General Audience
December 29, 1993
Almost
immediately after his birth, the gratuitous violence that threatened
the life of Jesus fell down on many other families too, provoking
the death of the Holy Innocents. By recalling this terrible episode
of the life of the Son of God, that involved also the life of other
children of his time, the Church is invited to pray for all the
families menaced from the inside and from the outside...The Holy
Family of Nazareth is a permanent challenge for us, that obliges us
to go further in the understanding of the mystery of the “domestic
church” and of each human family. It is for us an incentive to pray
for the families and with the families, and to share with them all
their joys and hopes, but also their preoccupations and fears.
Actually, the experience of the family is called to become a daily
offertory, as a holy offering to God, a gift of pleasing fragrance.
The Gospel of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple suggests us
this same idea. Jesus, the light of the world but also “a sign that
will be contradicted” (Lk 2,32.34), desires to receive this offering
of each family as he receives the bread and wine in the Eucharist.
He wants to join to the bread and wine destined to
transubstantiation these human hopes and joys, but also the
inevitable sufferings and preoccupations of each family, by
incorporating them to the mystery of his Body and his Blood. He then
in turn gives them back - the same Body and Blood - in the
communion, as a source of spiritual energy, not only for each single
person but also for each family.
May the Holy Family of Nazareth give us an always-deeper
understanding of the vocation of each family, that finds in Christ
the source of its dignity and of its holiness.
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
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