by Marco Cavagnaro
The Seventh World Meeting of
Families will take place in Milan from 30 May to 3 June 2012 on the theme
"The Family: Work and Celebration". The event is intended as a public
testimony of the Christian family values, promoting – as the Cardinal of Milan
Angelo Scola said – a deep “anthropological awakening”. Milan is the economical
capital of northern Italy, and at the same time a true post-modern secularized
Center European city. Maybe this is the reason for which it has been chosen to
host this great event, as a sign of hope for the future.
About the theme, “Work and
celebration”, Pope Benedict said in his preparatory letter that “the
organisation of work, conceived of and implemented in terms of market
competition and the greatest profit, and the conception of a holiday as an
opportunity to escape and to consume commodities, contribute to dispersing the
family and the community and spreading an individualistic lifestyle.” This World Meeting of Families reconciles
these different aspects of human life, by putting back at their center the
family, “united and open to life, thoroughly integrated in society and in the
Church”, a family which celebrates together the Lord as its only source of
strength.
The city of Milan is busy preparing the way for the Pope: more than 33,000
families are going to host the pilgrim families from all parts of the world, and
thousands of youths offered themselves as volunteers. The organisation is
expecting more than one million people to attend the various events.
The Pope will arrive on Friday, address the city in the beautiful Duomo
square and assist at a concert in his honor in the prestigious La Scala opera house. On Saturday the 2nd
he will meet more than 50,000 youths preparing themselves to be confirmed; and
on that same evening he will preside over the “Feast of Testimonies”, together with families gathered from all
parts of the world. The meeting will culminate in a solemn Mass on the morning
of Sunday the 3rd.
South Africa will be represented in the meeting by a delegation formed
by Archbishop William Slattery of Pretoria and Bishop Dabula Anthony Mpako of
Queenstown. For Archbishop Slattery this celebration will be a chance “to
experience the communion of the universal Church, and to be enriched by the
testimony of families from all parts of the world”. The bishops will be accompanied
by two families of the Neocatechumenal Way: Dino and Roberta Furgione, responsibles
of the Neocatechumenal Way for Southern Africa, together with their six
children; and Michael and Natalie Eckard from Belhar, Cape Town, with their six
children.
Michael recalls that his last pilgrimage “overseas” was in Czestochowa,
for the 6th World Youth Day in 1991. “At the time I was an adolescent, and I would have never imagined that
God would have changed my life so radically. I am especially grateful to God
and to his Church for the call to be open to life. It has not been easy, but
today I am touched to see myself going back to the Pope together with my wife
and all of my children, as a thanksgiving for all the wonders that the Lord has
effected in my life”.
Dino Furgione declared: "The
Neocatechumenal Way supports the family through the Christian communities which
are on a path to rediscover faith.... The family responds to the gift of faith
which she received in the community by opening up to life with courage. In this
way the family saves today's Church and society...".
The Neocatechumenal Way, the result of the rediscovery of the
catechumenate by the Second Vatican Council, first opened the path in South
Africa in 1986, and today has more than 20 communities in 4 Dioceses
there. It was recognized by the Church
as "an itinerary of Catholic formation valid for our society and our
times" (Bl. John Paul II), and is a "form of diocesan implementation
of Christian initiation and permanent education in faith," as approved by
the Holy See in 2008.
On the afternoon of Sunday the 3rd, more than 100,000 members
of the Neocatechumenal Way will remain in Milan to attend a meeting with Kiko
Argüello and Carmen Hernandez, the initiators of the Way. The meeting will be
presided by Archbishop Scola. Kiko Arguello is going to put the words of the
Pope into practice by doing a vocational call to all families to follow the
Lord in the New Evangelisation. Currently there are already more than 1,000
families of the Neocatechumenal Way which have answered this call to abandon
the comforts of their everyday lives and go there where the church is in
need. They are now supporting the New
Evangelisation in more than 100 countries.
Dino underlines that "..the
presence of so many families coming from different countries of the World,
right here in the middle of an aging Europe which has lost its values, is a
sign of great hope. Christ is revealing to man the true and full meaning of his
life, and this is what moves these people to build a new society which looks
forward to the future with confidence. This is a contribution that the Way
gives to the New Evangelisation. The parishes that welcomed the Way without any
reductions or personal interpretations are discovering in it a valuable tool,
certainly not unique, but one which is reviving them and turning them into real
centers of faith and true sources of vocations...".
Since the Way “is a mode of Diocesan Christian initiation”, the Parish
rediscovers through the Way “the gift of God to his Church” (Benedict XVI) and
revives its mission. The communities are not simply one of the many groups in
the Parish. They are a precise answer to the secularisation process which is
taking place in the world today. Blessed John Paul II has said explicitly: “In
a secular society like ours, where religious indifference is rampant and many
people live as if God did not exist, many people are in need of a new discovery
of the baptism. This itinerary is one of the providential answers to this
urgent need”.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento