Apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis on love in the family. amoris laetitia

1. The joy of love that is experienced in families is also the joy of the Church. As the Synod Fathers have indicated, despite the many signs of a crisis in marriage, the desire for family remains alive, especially among young people, and this motivates the Church. In response to this longing, the Christian proclamation regarding the family is truly good news.
2. The synodal journey made it possible to put on the table the situation of families in today’s world, broaden our perspective and revive our awareness of the importance of marriage and the family. At the same time, the complexity of the issues raised showed us the need to continue delving freely into some doctrinal, moral, spiritual and pastoral questions. The reflection of pastors and theologians, if it is faithful to the Church, honest, realistic and creative, will help us find greater clarity. The debates that take place in the media or in publications, and even among ministers of the Church, range from an unbridled desire to change everything without sufficient reflection or foundation, to the attitude of trying to solve everything by applying general regulations or drawing excessive conclusions. of some theological reflections.
3. Remembering that time is superior to space, I want to reaffirm that not all doctrinal, moral or pastoral discussions should be resolved with magisterial interventions. Naturally, in the Church a unity of doctrine and praxis is necessary, but this does not prevent the subsistence of different ways of interpreting some aspects of the doctrine or some consequences that derive from it. This will happen until the Spirit leads us to the complete truth (cf. Jn 16:13), that is, when he introduces us perfectly into the mystery of Christ and we can see everything with his gaze. In addition, in each country or region, more inculturated solutions can be sought, attentive to local traditions and challenges, because cultures are very different from one another and every general principle needs to be inculturated if it wants to be observed and applied.
4. In any case, I must say that the synodal journey has contained great beauty and has shed much light. I appreciate so many contributions that have helped me to contemplate the problems of families in the world in all their breadth. The set of interventions by the Fathers, which I listened to with constant attention, seemed to me a precious polyhedron, made up of many legitimate concerns and honest and sincere questions. For this reason, I considered it appropriate to draft a post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation that includes the contributions of the two recent Synods on the family, adding other considerations that can guide reflection, dialogue or pastoral praxis and, at the same time, offer encouragement, encouragement and help to families in their dedication and in their difficulties.
5. This Exhortation acquires a special meaning in the context of this Jubilee Year of Mercy. In the first place, because I understand it as a proposal for Christian families, which encourages them to value the gifts of marriage and family, and to sustain a strong love full of values ​​such as generosity, commitment, fidelity or patience. . Secondly, because it seeks to encourage everyone to be signs of mercy and closeness where family life is not carried out perfectly or does not develop with peace and joy.
6. In the development of the text, begin with an opening inspired by the Holy Scriptures, which provides a suitable tone. From there, consider the current situation of the families in order to keep their feet on the ground. Afterwards, I will recall some elementary issues of the Church’s teaching on marriage and the family, thus giving rise to the two central chapters, dedicated to love. Below I will highlight some pastoral paths that guide us to build solid and fruitful homes according to God’s plan, and dedicate a chapter to the education of children. Then I will stop at an invitation to mercy and pastoral discernment in situations that do not fully respond to what the Lord proposes to us, and finally I will propose brief lines of family spirituality.
7. Due to the richness of the two years of reflection that the synodal path contributed, this Exhortation addresses, with different styles, many and varied themes. That explains its inevitable extension. That is why I do not recommend a hasty general reading. It can be better used, both by families and by family pastoral agents, if they patiently deepen it part by part or if they search for what they may need in each specific circumstance. It is probable, for example, that married couples identify more with the fourth and fifth chapters, that pastoral agents have a special interest in the sixth chapter, and that everyone is greatly challenged by the eighth chapter. I hope that each one, through reading, feels called to take care of the lives of families with love, because they are not a problem, they are mainly an opportunity.
first chapter
IN THE LIGHT OF THE WORD
8. The Bible is full of families, generations, love stories and family crises, from the first page, where the family of Adam and Eve enters the scene with its weight of violence but also with the force of life that continues (cf. Gn 4), until the last page where the wedding of the Bride and the Lamb appear (cf. Ap 21,2.9). The two houses that Jesus describes, built on rock or on sand (cf. Mt 7,24-27), are a symbolic expression of so many family situations, created by the liberties of its members, because, as the poet wrote, every house is a chandelier. Let us now enter one of those houses, guided by the Psalmist, through a song that is still proclaimed today both in the Jewish and Christian wedding liturgy:
Blessed is he who fears the Lord,
and follow his ways!
Of the work of your hands you will eat,
you will be happy, you will do well.
Your wife, like a fruitful vine,
in the middle of your house;
your children like olive shoots,
around your table.
This is the blessing of man
who fears the Lord
May the Lord bless you from Zion,
May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,
all the days of your life;
That you see the children of your children.
Peace to Israel! (Ps 128,1-6).
you and your wife
9. Let us then cross the threshold of this serene house, with your family seated around the festive table. In the center we find the couple of the father and the mother with all their love story. In them is carried out that primordial design that Christ himself evokes with intensity: Have you not read that in the beginning the Creator created them male and female? (Mt 19,4). And the Genesis mandate is resumed: Therefore, a man abandons his father and his mother, unites with his wife, and the two will be one flesh (2,24).
10. The first two great chapters of Genesis offer us the representation of the human couple in its fundamental reality. In that initial text of the Bible some decisive affirmations shine. The first, quoted synthetically by Jesus, declares: God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them (1,27). Surprisingly, the image of God has as an explanatory parallel precisely the man and woman couple. Does this mean that God himself is sexual or that there is a divine partner with him, as some ancient religions believed? Obviously not, because we know how clearly the Bible rejected as idolatrous these beliefs spread among the Canaanites in the Holy Land. The transcendence of God is preserved, but since he is at the same time the Creator, the fecundity of the human couple is a living and effective image, a visible sign of the creative act.
11. The couple that loves and generates life is the true living sculpture —not that of stone or gold that the Decalogue prohibits—, capable of manifesting the creator and savior God. For this reason, fruitful love becomes the symbol of the intimate realities of God (cf. Gn 1,28; 9,7; 17,2-5.16; 28,3; 35,11; 48,3-4). This is why the Genesis narration, following the so-called priestly tradition, is traversed by several genealogical sequences (cf. 4,17-22.25-26; 5; 10; 11,10-32; 25,1-4.12- 17.19-26; 36), because the generating capacity of the human couple is the path by which the history of salvation unfolds. Under this light, the fruitful relationship of the couple becomes an image to discover and describe the mystery of God, fundamental in the Christian vision of the Trinity that contemplates in God the Father, the Son and the Spirit of love. The Triune God is a communion of love, and the family is the living reflection of him. We are enlightened by the words of Saint John Paul II: Our God, in his most intimate mystery, is not a loneliness, but a family, since he bears in himself paternity, filiation and the essence of the family which is love. . This love, in the divine family, is the Holy Spirit. The family is therefore not something foreign to the same divine essence. This trinitarian aspect of the couple has a new representation in Pauline theology when the Apostle relates it to the mystery of the union between Christ and the Church (cf. Eph 5,21-33).
12. But Jesus, in his reflection on marriage, refers us to another page of Genesis, chapter 2, where an admirable portrait of the couple appears in luminous details. Let’s pick just two. The first is the restlessness of the man who seeks reciprocal help (vv. 18.20), capable of solving that loneliness that disturbs him and that is not appeased by the proximity of animals and everything created. The original Hebrew expression refers us to a direct, almost frontal relationship —eyes in eyes— in an also unspoken dialogue, because in love silences tend to be more eloquent than words. It is the encounter with a face, with a tea that reflects divine love and is the beginning of fortune, a help similar to that and a column of support (Si 36,24), as a biblical sage says. Or, like the woman in the Song of Songs exclaiming in a stupendous profession of love and reciprocal donation: My beloved is mine and I am his I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me (2,16; 6, 3).
13. From this encounter, which heals loneliness, the generation and the family arise. This is the second detail that we can highlight: Adam, who is also the man of all times and of all regions of our planet, together with his wife, gives rise to a new family, as Jesus repeats, citing Genesis: his wife, and the two will be one flesh (Mt 19,5; cf. Gn 2,24). The verb to unite in the original Hebrew indicates a close harmony, a physical and interior adherence, to the point that it is used to describe the union with God: My soul is united to you (Ps 63,9), sings the praying person. Thus the marriage union is evoked not only in its sexual and corporeal dimension but also in its voluntary donation of love. The fruit of this union is to be one flesh, be it in the physical embrace, be it in the union of hearts and lives and, perhaps, in the son that will be born of the two, which they will carry in themselves, uniting them not only genetically but also spiritually, the two meats.
Your children like olive shoots
14. Let us resume the song of the Psalmist. There they appear, inside the house where the man and his wife are sitting at the table, the children who accompany them like olive shoots (Ps 128,3), that is, full of energy and vitality. If parents are like the foundations of…