6th. World Meeting of Families

I almost missed this but the 6th World Meeting of Families will take place in Mexico beginning January 13 and goes on till the 18th. Organised by the Pontifical Council for the Family, this year's meeting will center around the importance of the family, as the answer to the challenge of individualism. Zenit news agency expects more than a million people to attend.

The online newspaper AsiaNews, reporting from the Vatican quotes Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the council as saying: "The family today must confront, with creativity and a proactive spirit, the challenge of an individualist and mercantilist culture, based on production and consumption. Unfortunately, we have a mistaken concept of freedom, understood as an autonomy closed in on itself; other forms of cohabitation are privileged that obscure the value of the family, based on the marriage of one man and one woman."

"With this mistaken mentality," he continued, "very often laws are made - without widespread social consensus and under the impulse of small but active groups, strongly ideological and with extensive economic resources - that permit easy abortion, rapid divorce, and euthanasia. Responding to these challenges," he concluded, "is a difficult moral obligation."

The program includes a theological-pastoral congress and other initiatives like the "Mosaic" and the "Forest'" of families, and a competition on "A letter to my child," for unmarried and single mothers who want to send a letter to their children.

More information at the official website here.

Meanwhile, here's a reflection presumably from a mother to a child. Author unknown.

GIFTS and REFLECTIONS

We gave you life but we cannot live life for you.
We can give you directions, but cannot be there to lead you always.

We can share and tell you lofty goals but we cannot achieve them for you. We can teach you to share but we cannot make you unselfish.

We can teach you respect but we cannot coerce you to show honour. We can teach you right from wrong but we cannot decide for you.

We can teach you kindness but we cannot make you gracious. We can buy you beautiful things but we cannot make you beautiful inside.

We can give you love but we cannot force it upon you. We can advise you about friends but we cannot choose them for you.

We can advise you about sex but we cannot keep you pure. We can advise you about alcohol, drugs, injustice, dishonesty, and etc. But we cannot say NO for you.

We can offer you advise but we cannot accept it for you. We can take you to worship but we cannot make you believe. We can pray for you but we cannot make you walk with God. We can share and tell you how to live but we cannot give you eternal life.

Do not hurt anyone....just love!, and remember... We will surely love you with unconditional love all our lives..... And all that papa and I really want.... is that you be happy!

And, a prayer for families from the World Meeting of Families website:

Our God, indivisible Trinity,

you created the human being “in your image”

and You admirably formed him as male and female

that so together, united and in reciprocal collaboration with love,

they fulfilled Your project of “being fecund and dominate the Earth”;

We pray to You for all our families

that so, finding in You their initial inspiration and model,

that is fully expressed in the Holy Family of Nazareth,

can live the human and Christian values

that are necessary to consolidate and sustain the love experience

and to be the foundations of a more human

and Christian construction of our society.

We pray to You for the intercession of Mary, our Mother, and Saint Joseph.

For Jesus Christ our Lord.

AMEN.