WORLD
ASSEMBLY OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF CHRISTIAN FAMILY MOVEMENTS
(ICCFM)
Santa Clara University, San Francisco, USA
HERALDING THE FUTURE
*Mons. Charles G.
Vella
On the way
to this meeting from Milan, I stopped in New York. I could not just come to the U.S. without going to pray and
reflect on Ground Zero. I felt my heart
beat and tears came down as I tried to relive the infernal tragedy of the 11th
of September. At Ground Zero, I smelled
and sensed the feeling of “Thanatos” (death). Those innocent victims who were people of various nations,
colours and creeds are now in the home of the Father.
But for us who remain, one thing is certain. The world is not the same after 11 September. A series of events from the so-called “preventive
war” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the perpetual fighting in the Middle East (the
Holy Land) and the constant menace of international terrorism have generated a
world of fear. In all this, religion
has not given its dynamic force, for we have “a conflict of Civilizations” and
“a war of Religions.”
Instead of turning to God, God and the
Christian heritage of our civilization have not been taken into serious
consideration. The European
Constitution, contrary to the American Constitution and others, has, in the
words of Pope John Paul II, “denied our Christian roots”. Yet the Pope stressed, “We cannot renounce
our heritage.”
There are so many problems that beset us,
in the words of Gaudium et Spes, “the anxieties, grief and anguish of the men
and women of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any
way, are the joy and hope, the grief and the anguish of the followers of Christ
as well.” (Art.1).
This Confederation, with its history of
50 years, has always been an authentic ecumenical follower of Christ – our
“Way, Truth and Life”. As such, again
in the words of Vatican II, “Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an
echo in our hearts…united in Christ and guided by the Holy spirit, press
onwards towards the Kingdom of the Father and are bearers of a message of
salvation intended for all”. This is
the authentic identity and vision of our Confederation as a grassroots movement
of Christian
families, always open and listening to “the signs of the times”, to the joys,
the grief and the anguish of all people, especially of families who suffer and
struggle with difficulties from within and without.
As we take a glance at the world we live
in today, the life-style is to live for the present and to avoid undertaking
commitments for the future. This means
that many have lost the vision of hope for the future and are very short
sighted of their destiny. Besides, the
world is in the midst of hopelessness.
They do not live the project of God.
Still worse is the fact that many forces are at work to dismantle the
domestic Church, i.e. Family. What we
see are the wounded people, separated families, one-parent families and
suffering children.
At this juncture, the world is in need of
hope for a bright future and hopeful people who can herald and build up a
better future. This is how we should
look to the future and how we could be enlightened through the Holy Spirit to
find a way so as to herald the future as part of a pilgrim Church.
1. “Go, Teach and Heal”
Just as the Son of God became incarnate
into the world and assumed, we may say our DNA, so too our Confederation
like the Church must evangelize the world in which we live. We have to be the salt, the light and the
leaven of the world. We have, as Isaiah
says, “to announce the good news and denounce the bad news.”
The future lies with Christ Jesus, in
whom we have been baptized. Through the
Baptism, we experience the Church as a community and a sacrament. At Baptism, the child is “welcomed with
great joy. . .to receive the gift of new life from God who is Love.” We herald the future as baptized Christians,
whose mission is to evangelize by building the Kingdom of God on earth. This is why we have “to seek firstly the
Kingdom of God.” Furthermore, we
receive the spirit and through us the Spirit overshadows the world. We become evangelized and in turn we become
the instruments of evangelization.
Christ’s mandate is, “Go, teach and heal” which means we have to
outreach with love to the world, through our family to other families in a
network of relationships, friendships and labour in God’s vineyard.
The Pope in his two-day visit to
Switzerland in a simple message explained why he continues to travel despite
his frailty: “It is the duty of announcing the Gospel of Christ that pushes me
along the paths of the world, so I can offer it to the men and women of the
third millennium, especially the new generations.”
2. CFM = Small Christian
Communities:
This has been and should continue to be
the mission of all the small Christian communities – which I prefer to the word
groups – of the Christian Family Movement.
“Go, teach and heal” starting from your ‘oikos’ which means the family
closest to you in your neighbourhood and workplace to whom it is your duty to
announce the Gospel. We cannot be
closed communities, we have to be open and outreach towards other
families. Christ commands us “to cast
our nets deeper,” couples to couples, families to families in the parish which
is the “family of the families”. This
is how we herald the Gospel for the future, remembering the famous words of
Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer that Jesus is “the man for
others.”
Today lay movements have spread all over
the world. They are Christ-centered and
are preaching from the rooftops. I will give only one example whom I think this
Confederation should study and dialogue to see how we can renew our structure,
ideals, methods and above all our spirituality.
These are the so-called Parish cells,
no numbering 70 thousand. In Milan, at
Sant’Eustorgio, Don Pigi Pierini has over one hundred calls and an outstanding
example is Carcas, where Fr. Vincnet Mancino animates, one cell has multiplied
to 1,500 cells. All started in the 70’s
in Seoul, South Korea, within the Pentecostal Church of Pastor Paul Yonggi
Cho. From there, it spread to St.
Boniface in Pembroke Pines, Florida, through Fr. Michael Eivers.
I think it will help this Confederation
to open up and to adopt the Cell method for its growth. Our Christian Family Groups from the early
days were cell groups. The methodology
to Observe, judge and act initiated by Card. Cardijn, and the YCW is pedagogic
education towards evangelization.
Following are the 7 steps of the Cell
groups in the process of evangelization: 1) Prayer with a weekly meeting
of prayer in their own oikos, 2) Service or Ministry: “I
have come not to be served but to serve.”
3) Sharing experiences on the place Christ has in our lives, 4) Reflection
and response to difficulties and doubts in order to overcome obstacles,
5) Trust and Mandate to give one’s life to Christ and commitment for
him, 6) Entrance into a cell and to be welcomed by the members and the
pastor, 7) Admission into the community and role in the parish.
Card. Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Archbishop of
Westminster, writing on small communities, in his book “At the Heart of the
World” says, “what sort of small community we belong to, I am convinced that
such groups are the promise of the future. They will be a source of new inspiration, new hope and new
evangelization for
the Church. We need to experience
community as a locus of healing where we can rediscover our faith in the
humanizing experience of a group of people who share the same beliefs.”
This is what CFM and MFC have been since
their early days, even before Vatican II.
In this very country thousands convened for the annual meetings at Notre
Dame, but then (as with many other experiences) ‘the wind of change’ brought a
big drop in numbers. Many politicians,
administrative officials, teachers and lay apostles were nursed in CFM, but
then entered in new folds and groups.
The pain of separation and diaspora to those who remained has been
great. We may also ask what future has
ICCFM. Where will it be in the ten
years time? It is a question to think
about NOW and to prepare NOW for the future.
3. A Theology of Spirituality:
In my humble opinion, all will depend on
the theology of spirituality we give to the future of ICCFM. When the late Abbe Caffarel pioneered the
Notre Dame Foyer, he started the review “Annou d’Oor” and laid the theological
basis of marriage spirituality. Perhaps
the orientation in the past of ICCFM was more sociological and pragmatic. We now need to deepen our theological
orientation through family spirituality of all our communities by becoming more
Christ-centered. It is He who heralds
and guarantees the future of the family of ICCFM. We have to renew our Confederation through Christ, who is our
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (St. Paul).
We need to be committed in the daily life
of our couples to God’s Word, to prayer, the Eucharist and the Rosary. If these become our CFM concrete actions and
if we have them as our foundation, then we can definitely grow in Christ, and
say with Paul: “It is not I that lives,
but Christ lives in us (our marriage)” – Gal:2:20
4. Jesus Alive in Marriage:
The saddest reality is that people have
failed and continue to fail to encounter Christ in the sacrament of
matrimony. Our spirituality should
generate through the presence of Jesus in the marriage of every couple. It is Jesus who through his divine grace
nourishes, strengthens, heals and enriches the relationship of
husband-wife-children. Only if Jesus is
alive within the family, can the home become “a domestic Church.”
We find Jesus in the Eucharist, which is
why the Pope has dedicated next year as the year of the Eucharist. In hi encyclical, “The Church and the
Eucharist”, he
reminds us
of the reality of “the gift of excellence of Jesus as a Real Person”. In the Eucharist “not only do we receive
Christ but also Christ receives each one of us”.(22) Christ receives each one of us as we are and He embraces our
humanity, joys, failures, sins, feelings and hopes. He accompanies each family, and ICCFM, in our journey through
life by “becoming a living seed of hope in the daily dedication of each one to
live their mission” (20).
At this meeting I hope the Holy spirit
will enlighten our leaders to respond concretely to the Pope’s invitation for
the Year of the Eucharist. Only if we
anchor our Confederation to the Eucharist can we hope to herald the future.
Through the Eucharist we become One in
Christ. Christ’s words in John
17:21-23 go to the very heart of the meaning of marriage. It is the “oneness” in Christ with
the Father through the sacrament, which enriches marriage. “May they (in the sense of the spouses) all
be one, just as Father, you are in me
and I am in you, so that they also may be one in us, so that the world may
believe it is you who sent me.”.
This is how we could evangelize couples
before and after marriage, as it shows the depth of the unity in marriage,
which exceeds every legal interpretation or norm. Love is supreme for the Father, the Son and the Holy spirit and
Likewise it should be for every married couple for “God is Love” (Jn:4:7-8). The family has to be the school of love, of
relationships, values and mutual trust.
It has to be a seminarium. The
book of Sirach says in 25/1, “My soul takes pleasure in three things and they
are beautiful in the sight of the Lord and of men: agreement between
brothers, friendship between neighbors, and a wife and a husband who live in
harmony.”
5. Healing and Forgiveness:
One final consideration
is on God’s mercy and healing.
Repentance and forgiveness are the words which are becoming increasingly
unfamiliar to many in our society. Yet
we cannot lose sight of the fact of God’s unconditional love, forgiveness and
healing. We all need the touch of
Christ to heal us. So many families
need sustenance and healing, for they live their marriage admdst tensions and
difficulties.
The crisis has been abounding in
marriage; especially the broken marriages of those separated or divorced
couples who have remarried and the countless one parent families. There number in the Catholic Church are ever
increasing and one feels we are failing to deal with these couples. It is painful for us priests and for you
married couples to see so many families, who as time goes on drift away from
the Church. It is true that they are
still part of the Church, but do they feel and live in the Church? However, we must make them understand that
God’s mercy has no limits. That we
believe in the faithfulness of Christ to each one of us. He promised to be with us until the end of
time. Christ does not abandon anyone.
Remember the words during Mass when we
ask God “to look not upon our sins, but on the faith of your Church”. In this prayer, we are asking for courage
not to trust in ourselves, but in God and God alone. The Church, like Christ with His miracles, offers healing, mercy
and forgiveness to all those who because of their condition feel they are set
aside by the Church.
6. Authentic discipleship
demands Jesus-experience:
To bring the good news
into the world, the authentic discipleship demands being with Jesus, having
Jesus-experience in oneself. We could
witness this in the very life of Jesus, as being alone with the Father in
prayer and thus strengthened to overcome the difficulties in the way fulfilling
the Father’s will. Moreover the authentic
discipleship demands dedication, utmost commitment, an authentic life enshrined
with the Kingdom values – all these are to be supported by the true spiritual
life. The life of the disciple of Christ consists in not only comforting
the disturbed but also disturb the comfort – to show the world that it
bears counter-witness to Jesus.
YHWH – the God of the Old
Testament, when he saw the plight of the people and heard their groaning, said,
“Whom shall I send?” We have heard and
read by ourselves as Prophet Isaiah saying, “Here I am Lord”. And when our world faces misery and
tribulations, the same God asks, “Whom shall I send?” And he is happy to see
such enthusiastic, energetic, committed people in you who are ready to herald a
better future of the world and instill hope in the people of our times.
I wish to close with the striking
words of the Father Timothy Radcliff, O.P., in his book, “I
call you Friends”. If we wish to bring the good news,
“we have to be with
people,
enter their homes,
enjoy their friendship
We have to understand
How they see the world.
Learn what they have to
teach us,
See through their eyes,
Grow in mutual trust.
God’s friendship with
the human race
Is the very heart of the
gospel.”
H
San Raffaele
Via
Olgettina, 60 – 20132 Milano
Tel.
+39+2 2643.2476-2477
Fax
+39+2 2643.2576
E-mail:
vella.charles@hsr.it