“Amoris Laetitia Family Year”
On March 19, 2016, the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation «Amoris Laetitia» (The Joy of Love) on the family was signed. This document is a compendium of two synods on the family convened by Pope Francis in 2014, «The Family in the Context of Evangelization» and in 2015, «Vocation and Mission in the Family, in the Church and in the Contemporary World».
Amoris Laetitia marked the beginning of a path that prompted a new pastoral approach to the reality of the family.
Francis explains that the Exhortation «acquires a special meaning» for two reasons: «I understand it as a proposal for Christian families, which stimulates them to value the gifts of marriage and the family, and to sustain a strong love full of values such as generosity, commitment, fidelity and patience» and also «seeks to encourage everyone to be signs of mercy and closeness where family life is not perfectly realized or does not develop with peace and joy».
On the fifth anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Francis announced a year dedicated to families. This year was officially known as the «Amoris Laetitia Family Year» and invited Catholics to reflect on love in the family, enlightened by the Exhortation that captured the experience and challenges of today’s families and their vocation. This Amoris Laetitia Family Year began on March 19, 2021 and will conclude on June 26, 2022 with the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome.
The Capuchin Tertiary Sister in communion with the Church
For the Capuchin Tertiary Sisters, it represented a pastoral challenge that led them to place themselves in the context of a mission exercised from the confinement, which made germinate in the bosom of the families other pandemics: intra-family abuse, abandonment, divorces, depression, loneliness, vices, senselessness and relativism…
From within the Amigonian Charism springs the concern to motivate the pastoral reflection of this Exhortation and to participate from the creativity of each work and community in the planning and living of this year. Pope Francis has dedicated the Family Year Amoris Laetitia to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, patrons of the Congregation of the Capuchin Tertiary Sisters of the Holy Family and models close to our humanity, who in their availability to do the will of God, their obedience and listening continue illuminating and marking the way to build the domestic church.
St. Joseph, Custodian of the Year of the Family
To propose St. Joseph as the custodian of the Year of the Family is to affirm him as an example of paternal love and of the value and dignity of work. According to tradition, he worked as a humble carpenter in the town of Nazareth. Today, after three years marked by the pandemic (COVID 19), both paternal love and the dignity of work have become essential to the health and well-being of our families and communities. This paternal love given to Mary and Jesus gave them support and freedom; and today it teaches us to stop and let ourselves be accompanied by the spirituality of Nazareth, the spirituality of listening, dialogue and obedience.
In the action of listening, it is necessary to be silent and empty ourselves of words. In the Holy Family of Nazareth this silence was available and generous, capable of making God’s dream come true: «You will be the mother of Emmanuel … be it done unto me» (cf. Lk 1:26-38). «He took Mary and the child and fled to Egypt … he set out while it was still dark» (Mt 2:13-14), thus bringing to life the words that Jesus would later say: «Blessed are those who hear the word of God and put it into practice» (Lk 11:27-28). It is in the bosom of the home that Jesus as a child learned that He was blessed and happy. It is in the family that we learn to listen in order to follow instructions and obey.
Proposal
It is necessary that the culmination of the Year of the Family becomes a new propositional stage, where we can continue writing the post Amoris Laetitia pages and that the emerging and hidden realities within the bosom of the family be accompanied and enlightened by this Post-Synodal Letter.
Let us practice the life of silence to listen to God, to listen to ourselves and to each other, because only in this way can what is creative, what is new, what God wants to awaken within the Church, within our domestic church, emerge.
To walk in synodality is the proposal that moves the heart of the Church today and it will be from the commitment of each member of the family that welcomes and lives its role, where it will be possible to listen, discern and build the necessary dialogue to rescue life and love in the family.
May Mary, Mother of the Church and Queen of families, intercede for us.
SR. MARIULIS GREHAN, TC