At 9:00am today, in the presence of the Holy Father, the eleventh General Congregation of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family began in the Synod Hall at the Vatican. The purpose of today's gathering was the presentation of the post-discussion report.
Following the established timetable from previous meetings last week, this morning's session began with the chanting of the liturgical Office of Terce. During the Mid-morning Prayer time, His Excellency, Salvador Piñeiro García-Calderón, Archbishop of Ayacucho (Perú), shared the following homily:
You shall be holy to me, for I, the Lord, am holy, and I have separated you from other people, so that you might be mine (Lv 20:26).
The Lord calls us to holiness, to live His Gospel amid a society that is used to lying and that breeds hatred and injustice. This is the task of the family: to proclaim the truth and to believe in love.
In this meditation, I want to bring the testimony of the first Saint of Christian America, who was born in my country, and is a laywoman who knew the hopes and endeavours of her family: Saint Rose of Lima.
She asked her father's permission to build a hermitage, with her brother Fernando, in the back of the house and to spend some time in prayer preparing the catecheses that she shared with her Dominican Tertiary friends. In n. 618 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church she is the model of the woman who knows how to pray, who taught that the only way to Heaven is the cross. And she also asked her father permission to turn one of the rooms of his home into a dispensary to take care of the sick and thus, in n. 2449 of the Catechism she is an example of charity, because in those suffering faces she saw Jesus.
She helped the family finances with her sewing. She prayed, loved her own and opened the doors of her home to give consolation and hope to the poor and the needy. And if she heard of a sick person who was far away and who was difficult to care for, she would run to her friend Martin of Porres to entrust this task to him.
May our blood relatives find us always to be priests who support the family pastoral plan with greater commitment and make the homes of those entrusted to us schools of the Gospel.
I want to thank my parents who taught me to love Jesus and to serve the Church. I had the immense peace and consolation of attending to them in their last hours and I wear the Bishop’s ring that speaks to us of our marriage to the Church, made with my parents’ rings , which my siblings gave me on the day of my Episcopal ordination.
Let us not forget that the love of spouses, the joy of the home and the daily sacrifices are sources of holiness.
Following the established timetable from previous meetings last week, this morning's session began with the chanting of the liturgical Office of Terce. During the Mid-morning Prayer time, His Excellency, Salvador Piñeiro García-Calderón, Archbishop of Ayacucho (Perú), shared the following homily:
Homily spoken by His Excellency, Salvador Piñeiro García-Calderón
Archbishop of Ayacucho (Perú)
You shall be holy to me, for I, the Lord, am holy, and I have separated you from other people, so that you might be mine (Lv 20:26).
The Lord calls us to holiness, to live His Gospel amid a society that is used to lying and that breeds hatred and injustice. This is the task of the family: to proclaim the truth and to believe in love.
In this meditation, I want to bring the testimony of the first Saint of Christian America, who was born in my country, and is a laywoman who knew the hopes and endeavours of her family: Saint Rose of Lima.
She asked her father's permission to build a hermitage, with her brother Fernando, in the back of the house and to spend some time in prayer preparing the catecheses that she shared with her Dominican Tertiary friends. In n. 618 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church she is the model of the woman who knows how to pray, who taught that the only way to Heaven is the cross. And she also asked her father permission to turn one of the rooms of his home into a dispensary to take care of the sick and thus, in n. 2449 of the Catechism she is an example of charity, because in those suffering faces she saw Jesus.
She helped the family finances with her sewing. She prayed, loved her own and opened the doors of her home to give consolation and hope to the poor and the needy. And if she heard of a sick person who was far away and who was difficult to care for, she would run to her friend Martin of Porres to entrust this task to him.
May our blood relatives find us always to be priests who support the family pastoral plan with greater commitment and make the homes of those entrusted to us schools of the Gospel.
I want to thank my parents who taught me to love Jesus and to serve the Church. I had the immense peace and consolation of attending to them in their last hours and I wear the Bishop’s ring that speaks to us of our marriage to the Church, made with my parents’ rings , which my siblings gave me on the day of my Episcopal ordination.
Let us not forget that the love of spouses, the joy of the home and the daily sacrifices are sources of holiness.
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