Gulf Pine Catholic

Gulf Pine Catholic • March 29, 2024 9 Family, community, are key to overcoming secularism, pope says BY JUSTIN MCLELLAN Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY ( CNS ) -- Faced with decades of rising secularism, the Catholic Church must invest in families and in strengthening other forms of community to transmit the faith, Pope Francis said. “The big issue before us is to understand how to overcome the rupture that has been established in the transmission of faith,” the pope told members of the Dicastery for Evangelization’s section for new evangelization March 15. “To that end there is an urgent need to recover an effective relationship with families and formation centers.” Developing faith in Christ “requires a meaning- ful experience lived in the family and in the Christian community as a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ in order to be transmitted,” he wrote in his message to members of the dicastery during their plenary assembly. “Without this real and existential encounter, one will always be subject to the temptation to make faith a theory and not a testi- mony of life.” As he has done at several meetings in past weeks, the pope had an aide, Msgr. Filippo Ciamanelli, read his speech to the group. In his message, the pope wrote that the secularism of recent decades “has created enormous difficulties” for the church, “from the loss of a sense of belonging to the Christian community to the indifference regarding the faith and its contents.” As a result, he wrote, it is time for the church to “understand what effective response we are called to give to young generations so that they may recover the meaning of life.” He noted that lure of personal autonomy, “promoted as one of the pretenses of secularism, cannot be thought of as independence from God, because it is God him- self who grants the personal freedom to act.” And while technological advances offer many ways for humanity to progress, including through devel- opments in medicine and methods of protecting the environment, they also can create a “problematic” vision of humanity that fails to satisfy “the need for truth that dwells in every person,” he wrote. Pope Francis urged members of the dicastery to develop a “spirituality of mercy” as the foundation of their work in evangelization. People are more receptive to evangelization when done with a “style of mercy,” he wrote. By communicating mercy, he added, “the heart opens more readily to conver- sion.” The pope thanked the dicastery for its work in developing resources for catechists, referencing the latest “Directory for Catechesis” published by the dicastery in 2020, and praised the support they have given to those who serve as catechists. “I hope that bishops will know how to nurture and accompany vocations to this ministry especially among young people,” he wrote, “so that the gap between generations and may be reduced and the transmission of the faith may not appear to be a task entrusted only to older people.” The pope also discussed plans for the Holy Year 2025, which he has asked the dicastery to organize. The theme for the holy year is “Pilgrims of Hope.” “This theological virtue has been seen poetically as the ‘little sister’ of the other two, faith and charity, but without it these two do not move forward, they do not express the best of themselves,” he wrote. “The holy people of God has such a great need” for hope. BY JUSTIN MCLELLAN Catholic News Service VATICAN CITY ( CNS ) -- Though the global situa- tion risks plunging people into pessimism, Christians are called to pursue their vocation of becoming “men and women of hope,” Pope Francis said. “As individuals and as communities, amid the vari- ety of charisms and ministries, all of us are called to embody and communicate the Gospel message of hope in a world marked by epochal challenges,” the pope wrote in his message for World Day of Prayer for Vocations April 21. Global challenges such as war, migration, rising poverty rates and climate change, in addition to per- sonal difficulties encountered daily, “risk plunging us into resignation or defeatism,” the pope wrote in the message released March 19. He encouraged Christians to instead “cultivate a gaze full of hope and work fruit- fully in response to the vocation we have received, in service to God's kingdom of love, justice and peace.” To be “pilgrims of hope and builders of peace” means “to base our lives on the rock of Christ’s resur- rection, knowing that every effort made in the vocation that we have embraced and seek to live out will never be in vain,” the pope wrote. Pursuing a vocation, he explained, is not an imposed duty but rather “the surest way for us to fulfill our deep- est desire for happiness.” “Our life finds fulfillment when we discover who we are, what our gifts are, where we can make them bear fruit, and what path we can follow in order to become signs and instruments of love, generous accep- tance, beauty and peace wherever we find ourselves,” he wrote. The pope expressed his gratitude for the “hidden efforts” of those who consistently respond to their calls in life, namely parents, workers, consecrated men and women and priests, and he urged young people to make room for Jesus in their lives in order to discover their vocation. “Let Jesus draw you to Himself; bring Him your important questions by reading the Gospels; let Him challenge you by His presence, which always provokes in us a healthy crisis,” he told young people. The pope also highlighted the “synodal character” of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, noting how “amid the variety of our charisms, we are called to lis- ten to one another and to journey together in order to acknowledge them and to discern where the Spirit is leading us for the benefit of all.” Pope Francis encouraged people to prepare for the Holy Year 2025 by engaging in the current year of prayer, in which “all of us are called to rediscover the inestimable blessing of our ability to enter into heartfelt dialogue with the Lord and thus become pilgrims of hope.” Prayer, he added, “is more about listening to God than about talking to Him.” The pope called on Christians to “open the doors of the prison in which we so often enclose ourselves, so that each of us can discover his or her proper vocation in the Church and in the world.” “Let us be passionate about life and commit our- selves to caring lovingly for those around us in every place where we live,” he wrote. In a hostile world, the vocation of Christians is to hope, pope says Pope Francis greets a member of the Dicastery for Evangelization’s section for new evangelization during a meeting for their plenary assembly at the Vatican March 15. CNS photo/Vatican Media