FULL TEXT: Pope Francis' speech at the Encounter with the Families

Dear Families,

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

I am grateful for your presence here this evening and for the witness of  your love for Jesus and his Church.

 

I thank Bishop Reyes, chairman of the Bishops’ Commission on Family and  Life, for his words of welcome on your behalf.

 

And, in a special way, I thank those who have presented testimonies and have shared their life of faith with us.

 

The Church in the Philippines is blessed with the apostolate of many movements dedicated to the family and I thank them for their witness.

 

The Scriptures seldom speak of Saint Joseph, but when they do, we often find him resting, as an angel reveals God’s will to him in his dreams.

 

In the Gospel passage we have just heard, we find Joseph resting not once, but twice.

 

This evening I would like to rest in the Lord with all of you. I mean to rest in the Lord with the families as I remember my family.

 

My mother, my father. My grandfather, grandmother... Today, I rest with you and I would like to reflect with you on the gift of the family.

 

But first, I would like to say something about the dream, but my English is so poor.

 

If you'll allow me, I'll ask [inaudible] to translate, and I'll speak in Spanish.

 

I like this idea of dreaming in a family. Every mother and father dreams of  their son or daughter in the womb during nine months. Is it true or not? To dream how your daughter or son will be. It is not possible to have a family without such a dream.

 

When you lose this capacity to dream, you lose the capacity to love, and this energy to love is lost.

 

I recommend that at night, when you examine your consciences, ask yourself:  Today, did I dream about my sons and daughters? Did I dream about the love of my husband or my wife? Did I dream about my parents? My family?

 

It is so important to dream and to dream in the family. Please, don't lose this ability to dream in this way.

 

And how many solutions are found to family problems if we take time to reflect. If we think of our husband or wife, and we dream about the good qualities that they have.

 

Don't ever lose the illusion of when you were boyfriend and girlfriend.

 

Joseph’s rest revealed God’s will to him. In this moment of rest in the Lord, as we pause from our many daily obligations and activities, God is also speaking to us.

 

He speaks to us in the reading we have just heard, in our prayer and  witness, and in the quiet of our hearts.

 

Let us reflect on what the Lord is saying to us, especially in this evening’s Gospel. There are three aspects of this passage which I would ask you to consider: resting in the Lord, rising with Jesus and Mary, and being a prophetic voice.

 

Rest is so necessary for the health of our minds and bodies, and often so difficult to achieve due to the many demands placed on us. But rest is also essential for our spiritual health, so that we can hear God’s voice and understand what he asks of us.

 

Joseph was chosen by God to be the foster father of Jesus and the husband of Mary. As Christians, you too are called, like Joseph, to make a home for Jesus.

 

You make a home for him in your hearts, your families, your parishes and your communities.

 

To hear and accept God’s call, to make a home for Jesus, you must be able to rest in the Lord.

 

You must make time each day for prayer. Prayer is resting in God.

 

But you may say to me: Holy Father, I want to pray, but there is so much work to do! Yes. I must care for my children; I have chores in the home; I am too tired even to sleep well.

 

This may be true, but if we do not pray, we will not know the most important thing of all: God’s will for us.

 

And for all our activity, our busy-ness, without prayer we will accomplish very little.

 

Resting in prayer is especially important for families. It is in the family that we first learn how to pray. And don't forget: When the family prays together, [it] remains together. 

 

There we come to know God, to grow into men and women of faith, to see ourselves as members of God’s greater family, the Church.

 

In the family we learn how to love, how to forgive, how to be generous and open, not closed and selfish. We learn to move beyond our own needs, to encounter others and share our lives with them.

 

That is why it is so important to pray as a family! That is why families are so important in God’s plan for the Church!

 

Resting in the Lord through prayer. Pray together in the family. 

 

I would also like to say something very personal to you this evening. I like Saint Joseph very much. He was a strong man of silence. And on my desk, I have an image of Saint Joseph sleeping. Sleeping, he looks after the Church.

Yes. He can do it. We know.

 

When I have a problem or a difficulty, I write on a piece of paper and I put it underneath his statue. So that he can dream about it. This means "Please pray, Saint Joseph, for this problem."

 

The second aspect: Rising with Jesus and Mary. Those precious moments of repose, of resting with the Lord in prayer, are moments we might wish to prolong.

 

But like Saint Joseph, once we have heard God’s voice, we must rise from our slumber; we must get up and act. In the family, we must get up and act.

 

Faith does not remove us from the world, but draws us more deeply into it. It's very important. We must go deeply in the world, but with the force of prayer. Each of us, in fact, has a special role in preparing for the coming of God’s kingdom in our world.

 

Just as the gift of the Holy Family was entrusted to Saint Joseph, so the gift of the family and its place in God’s plan is entrusted to us.

 

The same with Saint Joseph. The gift of the Holy Family was given so it could be taken forward. I'm also a son of a family. And to you, all of you, we are given a plan of God to take forward.

 

The angel of the Lord revealed to Joseph the dangers which threatened Jesus and Mary, forcing them to flee to Egypt and then to settle in Nazareth.

 

So too, in our time, God calls upon us to recognize the dangers threatening our own families and to protect them from harm.

 

Be attentive. Be attentive with new ideological colonizations. There is a colonization, an ideological colonization that we have to be careful of...that tries to destroy the family.

 

It's not born of the dream that we have with God from prayer and the mission that God gives up. It comes from outside, and that's why I say it's colonization.

 

Let us not lose the freedom that the mission — to take that mission forward — that God has given us.

 

And just as our peoples were able to say 'no' to the period of colonization, as families we have to be very wise and very strong, with fortitude, to say 'no' to these initiatives of colonization that could destroy the family.

 

And to ask the intercession of Saint Joseph to know when to say 'yes', and when to say 'no'. 

 

The pressures on family life today are many. Here in the Philippines, countless families are still suffering from the effects of natural  disasters.

 

The economic situation has caused families to be separated by migration and the search for employment, and financial problems strain many households.

 

While all too many people live in dire poverty, others are caught up in materialism and lifestyles which are destructive of family life and the most basic demands of Christian morality. Those are the ideological colonizations.

 

The family is also threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.

 

I think of Blessed Paul VI in a moment on the challenge of that growth of populations, he had the strength to defend openness to life. 

 

He knew the difficulties that families experience, and that's why in his encyclical, he expressed compassion for particular cases. And he taught professors to be particularly compasisonate with particular cases.

 

But he went further. He went to the peoples beyond. He saw the lack and the problem it could cause families in the future.

 

Paul VI was courageous. He was a good pastor and he warned his sheep of the wolves that were approaching. And from the heavens, he blesses us today.

Our world needs good and strong families to overcome these threats! The  Philippines needs holy and loving families to protect the beauty and truth of the family in God’s plan and to be a support and example for other families.

 

Every threat to the family is a threat to society itself. The future of humanity, as Saint John Paul II often said, passes through the family. The future passes through the family.

 

So protect your families! Protect your families. See in them your country’s greatest treasure and nourish them always by prayer and the grace of the sacraments.

 

Families will always have their trials, but may you never add to them! 

 

Instead, be living examples of love, forgiveness, and care.

 

Be sanctuaries of respect for life, proclaiming the sacredness of every human life from conception to natural death.

 

What a gift this would be to society, if every Christian family lived fully its noble vocation! So rise with Jesus and Mary, and set out on the path the Lord traces for each of you.

 

Finally, the Gospel we have heard reminds us of our Christian duty to be prophetic voices in the midst of our communities. Joseph listened to the angel of the Lord and responded to God’s call to care for Jesus and Mary.

 

In this way, he played his part in God’s plan, and became a blessing not only for the Holy Family, but a blessing for all of humanity.

 

With Mary, Joseph served as a model for the boy Jesus as he grew in wisdom, age, and grace.

 

When families bring children into the world, train them in faith and sound 

 

values, and teach them to contribute to society, they become a blessing in our world.

 

Family can begin a blessing to the world.

 

God’s love becomes present and active by the way of love and by the good works that we do.

 

We extend Christ’s kingdom in this world. And in doing this, we prove faithful to the prophetic mission which we have received in baptism.

 

During this year which your bishops have set aside as the Year of the Poor, I would ask you, as families, to be especially mindful of our call to be missionary disciples of Jesus.

 

This means being ready to go beyond your homes and to care for our brothers and sisters who are most in need.

 

I ask you especially to show concern for those who do not have a family of their own. In particular, those who are elderly and children without parents. 

 

Never let them feel isolated, alone and abandoned, but help them to know that God has not forgotten them.

 

I was very moved after the mass today when I visited that shelter, that home for children who have no parents. How many people in the Church so that house is a home or family?

 

This is what it means to take forward prophetically the meaning of a family.

 

You may be poor yourselves in material ways, but you have an abundance of gifts to offer when you offer Christ and the community of his Church.

 

Do not hide your faith. Do not hide Jesus, but carry him into the world and offer the witness of your family life!

 

Dear friends in Christ, know that I pray for you always! I pray for you today, for the family.

 

I pray that the Lord may continue to deepen your love for him, and that this love may manifest itself in your love for one another and for the Church.

 

Don't forget Jesus, Philippines. Don't forget Joseph, Philippines. Jesus slept under the protection of Joseph. Don't forget prayer for the fmaily.

 

Pray often and take the fruits of your prayer into the world, that all may know Jesus Christ and his merciful love.

 

Please sleep also for me. Pray for me. Pray also for me, for I truly need your prayers and will depend on them always!

 

Thank you very much.