How Families Can Win Back the World

Preacher Gives Families Strategy to Win Back World
Says Key Is Not Trying to Change Laws
MEXICO CITY, JAN. 14, 2009 (Zenit.org)

Christians should not focus all their energies on combating a secular concept of marriage. Rather they should rediscover its beauty for themselves and propose this ideal to the world, says the preacher of the Pontifical Household.

Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa affirmed this today at the 6th World Meeting of Families, inaugurated today in Mexico City by Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

Christians "need to rediscover the biblical ideal of marriage and family" so they can promote this ideal to the world, the preacher exhorted in his address titled "Family Relationships and Values in the Bible."

The Christian idea of matrimony and family does not just need "defending," he affirmed. The most important thing is the "task of Christians rediscovering it and living it in plenitude, such that they again propose it to the world with their actions, more than with their words."

The address was divided into three sections. First, the preacher considered God's original project for marriage and family, and how this was lived out in the history of the Chosen People. Then, he spoke of the renewal wrought by Christ, and how this was lived by the first communities of Christians. Finally, Father Cantalamessa had a look at what Revelation has to offer to the problems faced by marriages and the family today.

The preacher explained that for centuries, the spousal meaning of marriage, strongly present in the Bible, has been left to one side, in favor of a more institutional understanding.
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