The Family is a “Path to Holiness and First Line of Evangelization,” says the founder of the Sodalitium

Read the full text of the speech of L.F. Figari at the Fifth World Meeting of the Families (PDF Format)

Valencia, 5 (NE - eclesiales.org). The Family is a “Path to Holiness and First Line of Evangelization.” Thus affirmed today D. Luis Fernando Figari, Founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, in his intervention in the International Theological-Pastoral Congress that is taking place in Valencia as part of the activities of the Fifth World Encounter of Families with Pope Benedict XVI. Highlighting the importance that the evangelization of families has for the Sodalit Family, the founder of several ecclesial associations offered some reflections as well as practical propositions with regards to the family and its development in society.

During his intervention he also remembered some of the problems that currently affect families. In this respect, he mentioned that “for some time now the family has been suffering a crisis of grave negative incidence,” also affirming that “a systematic siege seeks to dissociate conjugal and familial love from the life of the spouses and the family.”

The Sodalit Family, he continued, “holds a clear position on the very high value of conjugal and family life and on its decisive importance in the construction of a better world. It also offers an education for cooperation with marriages and for cooperation among marriages in their path to holiness as members of the Church. This path is not only expressed in reflection and theoretical positions but also in what could be called a practical program for those called to live the vocation to marriage. It is expressed, succinctly, in five points, like the fingers of a hand, which, moreover, symbolizes action.”

As for a starting point, he highlighted that the first step to be accepted by “a person blessed with a call to marital life is personal holiness.” In this sense he indicated that the husband and the wife “do not dissolve but go towards the encounter of one another as persons. Thus the first logical and fundamental step is to live the Christian dynamism in one’s own self” and emphasized the importance of working “to integrate the Lord Jesus in your own life.”

His second point was a reflection on the “beautiful and exciting horizon of integration as a couple. It is a joint effort, evidently founded in the search for and answer to the Lord Jesus of each one of the spouses (…) The love of the husband for the wife and of the wife for the husband must be a love which is nourished by the love of Jesus.” With respect to this he mentioned that matrimony demands “an ascetic personal discipline, a renunciation of personal egoism in favor of the other, a constant and renewed building in the vital ideal of conjugal love,” and that the “perseverance and fidelity in marriage despite the blizzards and the problems is a manifestation of having taken seriously the path of sacramental marriage as a road to the fullness of existence and to holiness.”

“Next comes the third step,” he continued, “the step of the formative love of children, the process of building the family which has been received as a gift and as a task, in respect for the dignity of each of its members. When there are children, the couple has to understand that they are the expression of their love, and that God has given them the responsibility to love and educate them as free human persons, invited to the full encounter in the communion of God. To fail to understand that children are first of all of God is to start off on the wrong foot. They are persons entrusted to the education, love, tenderness, and care of the parents.”

As for the fourth point the founder of the Sodalit Family made a reflection on work. “Christian marriage is a consecration to fidelity. It is out of this frame that the personalizing action that forges the human sphere develops. Each member of a marriage should enter this fundamental dimension of human existence committed to never allowing professional aptitudes or achievements, the necessary work for the sustenance of a home, to become obstacles to the fulfillment of the first three of these five steps.” He emphasized that this is a “tough challenge” in today’s world, marked by materialism, economicist visions, unemployment, underemployment, excess competition pressured by an ideology of having over being. He also said that “a correct theological vision of personal realization and of work is necessary.”

Apostolate was the fifth point mentioned by L.F. Figari during his intervention, affirming that “From conjugal and family love, from a life transformed in prayer, into a constant liturgy which seeks always to give glory to God (…) Christian life must radiate and must do so intensely. Married Christians should turn to apostolate towards others, not as a routine, but with the same enthusiasm that they should have in knowing and loving each other.” “From the heart of the family the Christian life should unfold in a proclamation of the Lord Jesus and in sharing his love with the most needy, as well as in the evangelization of culture and the transformation of the world,” he said.

“In light of the awareness of all this,” he mentioned before ending, "I would like to propose a demystification of the magnitude of the enterprise of personal holiness, of conjugal and family holiness. The initiative of the vocation to marriage is from God who gives the grace. One must collaborate with it and take the means following a process which helps endure challenges and nourish itself from love, enthusiasm, and affection.” “Families are the first line of the Church. Their task is enormous and exciting. These are the 'domestic churches' whose mere mention, due to their greatness and their mission, is already overwhelming. That’s why it is good that families, in order to be what they should be, always look to the Family of Nazareth, pray to those who form it, let themselves be impacted by its peace, beauty, and harmony, and, before this great school of faith, discover the extremely beautiful mission of Christian homes that, ardent in love, faith and hope are called to witness to what it is to live in the light and warmth of the tenderness of God to a world which finds itself submerged in the darkness of the culture of death and shivering with cold because it’s slipping away from the shelter of the Church of the Lord, Ecclesia sua,” he concluded while receiving an intense applause from over 5500 participants of this fundamental theological pastoral event.