Continuing his Wednesday reflections on the family, Pope Francis began a series of audiences on August 12 devoted to “three facets of family life: celebration, work, and prayer”.
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“You now have this clash between Pope Francis’ vision of the world, and the world that the bishops who run the investments live in”, said Father Michael Crosby, a Capuchin friar in Milwaukee who advocates socially responsible investing in the church.
“It is a masterpiece of simplicity and is attractive precisely because it is not artificial, not fake”.
Pope Francis turned to the workplace, explaining that – without interrupting our work – celebrations can “infiltrate” the environment when we honor events such as a birthday, a marriage, a new baby, a farewell or a welcome. “It does us good”.
Francis said that true moments of celebration make humanity pause from work as a reminder that people “are made in the image and likeness of God, who is not a slave to work, but the Lord of work”.
Unfortunately, he said, even in the modern world there are women and children who have been reduced to slave-like conditions. Even when they celebrate, he said, they allow consumerism “to swallow” the party by thinking the more money they spend, the better the celebration will be.
“But is this why we work?” “Greed for consuming, which leads to waste, is a terrible virus that, among other things, leaves us more exhausted than we were before”. “I think the pope speaks to how we really have to go out of our way to make sure people don’t feel excluded”.
“Celebrations are a precious gift God has given the human family”.
A divorced and remarried person, the Colombian cardinal said, “is not excommunicated from the Church, rather, they continue to be part of the Church”.
The Filial Appeal on the Future of the Family, launched by a group describing itself as an alliance of lay Catholics and pro-Life organisations, has also secured the backing of more than 100 senior clerics, including many bishops from the developing world and American cardinal Raymond Burke, an arch-conservative who has been sidelined within the Vatican hierarchy since Francis was elected two years ago.
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“The Sunday Eucharist brings to our celebrations every grace of Jesus Christ: his presence, his love and his sacrifice; his forming us into a community, and his way of being with us”.
