GENERAL AUDIENCE POPE
FRANCIS
Wednesday, 11 November 2015
Remarks
at the beginning of the General Audience:
In these days the Church of
Italy is celebrating its National Conference in Florence; cardinals, bishops,
consecrated men and women, lay people, all together. I invite you to pray to
Our Lady, to say a Hail Mary for them. [Hail Mary....]
CATECHESIS OF THE HOLY FATHER
Family
- 32. Conviviality
Dear
Brothers and Sisters, Good morning!
Today we will reflect upon a
distinctive quality of family life which is learned in the very first years of
life: conviviality, in other words the attitude of sharing life’s
goods and being happy to be able to do so. Sharing and knowing how to share is
a precious virtue! Its symbol, its “icon”, is the family gathered around the
dinner table. The sharing of meals — and thus, in addition to food, also of
affection, of stories, of events — is a common experience. When there is a
celebration, a birthday, an anniversary, we gather around the table. In some
cultures it is also customary to do so at times of bereavement, to be close to
those who are suffering the loss of a family member.
Conviviality is a sure
barometer for measuring the health of relationships: if in a family something
has gone awry, or there is some hidden wound, it is immediately understood at
the table. A family that hardly ever eats together, or that does not talk at
the table but watches television, or looks at a smartphone, is a “barely
familial” family. When children are engrossed with a computer at the table, or
a mobile phone, and do not talk to each other, this is not a family, it is like
a boarding house.
Christianity has a special
gift for conviviality, everyone knows this. The Lord Jesus gladly taught at the
table, and sometimes portrayed the Kingdom of God as a festive banquet. Jesus
also chose meal time to consign to his disciples his spiritual testament — he
did so at supper — embodied in the memorial gesture of his Sacrifice: the gift
of his Body and of his Blood as salvific Food and Drink, which nourish true and
lasting love.
In this perspective we can rightly
say that the family is “at home” at Mass, precisely because it brings to the
Eucharist its own experience of conviviality and opens it up to the grace of
universal conviviality, to God’s love for the world. By partaking of the
Eucharist, the family, purified of the temptation to close in on itself, is
strengthened in love and fidelity, and broadens the borders of its fraternity
in accordance with the heart of Christ.
In our time, marked by so much
closure and by too many walls, conviviality, created by the family and expanded
by the Eucharist, becomes crucial. The Eucharist and the families it nourishes
can overcome closure and build bridges of acceptance and charity. Yes, the
Eucharist of a Church of families, capable of restoring to the community the effective
leaven of conviviality and mutual hospitality, is a school of human inclusion
that does not fear confrontation! There are no little ones, orphans,
defenseless, wounded and disappointed, desperate and abandoned, whom the
eucharistic conviviality of the family cannot nourish, refresh, protect and
harbour.
Recalling family virtues helps
us to understand. We too have known and still know, what miracles can happen
when a mother fixes her gaze and attention, protection and care on the children
of others, in addition to her own. Until recently, one mother was enough for
all the children in the courtyard! Indeed, we are well aware what strength is
acquired by a people whose fathers are ready to go to protect everyone’s
children, because they consider children an undivided gift, that they are happy
and proud to protect.
Today many social contexts
create obstacles to familial conviviality. It’s true, today it is not easy. We
have to find a way to recover it. At the table we talk, at the table we listen.
No silence, that silence that is not the silence of monks, but the silence of
selfishness, where each one is focused on himself, or the television, or the
computer ... and does not talk. No, not silence. It is important to recover
that familial conviviality and adapt it to the times. Conviviality seems to
have become something that is bought and sold, but it is something else this
way. Food does not always represent a fair sharing of goods, that can reach
those who have neither bread nor affection. In wealthy countries we are
prompted to purchase an excess of food, and now we need to rectify that once
again. And this meaningless “business” diverts our attention from the true
hunger of the body and of the soul. When there is no conviviality there is
selfishness, each one thinks of him- or herself. All the more so because
advertising has channeled people to yearn for snacks and desire sweets.
Meanwhile so many, too many brothers and sisters do not have access to the
table. It is rather shameful!
Let us look to the mystery of
the Eucharistic Banquet. The Lord breaks his Body and pours out his Blood for
all. Truly no division can withstand this Sacrifice of communion; only the
attitude of falsehood, of complicity with the evil one can exclude one from it.
No other indefensible gap can withstand the power of this broken Bread and this
shed Blood, the Sacrament of the One Body of the Lord. The living and vital
covenant of Christian families, which precedes, supports and embraces in the
dynamism of its hospitality the toil and joy every day and cooperates with the
grace of the Eucharist, which is able to create communion ever anew with its
power which includes and saves.
Precisely in this way the
Christian family will show the breadth of its true horizon, which is the horizon
of the Church, Mother of all mankind, of all the abandoned and the excluded, in
all peoples. Let us pray that this familial conviviality may grow and mature in
the time of grace of the forthcoming Jubilee of Mercy.
Special greetings:
I greet the English-speaking
pilgrims and visitors taking part in today’s Audience, including those from the
United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ghana, Japan, Korea and the United
States of America. Upon you and your families I invoke the Lord’s blessings of
joy and peace. God bless you all!
I direct a greeting to young
people, to the sick and to newlyweds. May the
Lord help you, dear young people, to foster mercy and
reconciliation; may he support you, dear sick people, so as not to
lose trust, even in difficult moments of trial; and may he allow you, dear newlyweds,
to find in the Gospel the joy to welcome every human life, especially the weak
and helpless.
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