VATICAN - The Pope’s annual meeting with his priests of Rome diocese: “Marriage and the family cannot be considered simply a product of circumstances or a superstructure imposed on human love from outside … We must see our apostolate with families as a source of grace, a gift given to us by God”

Vatican City (Fides Service) - “To give the family a central place or, better still, to recognise the family’s centrality in God’s plan for mankind and hence in the life of the Church and society, is a task which cannot be renounced and it has animated these past 25 years of my pontificate, my previous ministry as priest and bishop and my work as a scholar and university docent.” Pope John Paul II said this morning in the Sala Clementina in the Vatican where, as the Bishop of Rome, he received the priests of his diocese for the annual meeting at the beginning of Lent.
Referring to the Diocesan Pastoral Plan focussed on the Family the Pope said: “For our service to families to be authentic and fruitful it must always start from the source, that is God who is love and who lives in himself a mystery of a personal communion of love. When out of love he created human beings in his own image, God inscribed in men and women the vocation and hence the ability of responsible love and communion. This vocation is realised in two specific states of life: matrimony and verginity.”
The Pope went on to say that marriage and the family “cannot be considered simply a product of circumstances or a superstructure imposed from outside on human love” and he urged the clergy of Rome diocese never “to tire of proposing, announcing and witnessing this great truth about Christian love and matrimony”. “ We must see our apostolate with families, first as a source of grace, a gift, given to us by God and only then as a precise pastoral duty. Therefore do not be afraid dedicate your time and energies, the spiritual talents you have recieved from God to families. Be for them loving and reliable friends, as well as priests and teachers. Accompany them and sustain them with prayer, without reserve or arbitrary intepretations, but with truth and love propose to them the Gospel of marriage and the family. Be close to them spiritually at the times of trial which life often brings, helping them to realise that the Church is always mother as well as teacher. Furthermore educate young people to understand and appreciate the real meaning of love and in this way to prepare to build authentic Christian families.”
Lastly the Pope urged his priests never to be discouraged: “Resist the temptation to lose courage, to give up” at the sight of mistaken if not aborhent behaviour propagated today because “there is no change in the plan of God who inscribed in men and women the vocation to love and to build a family. No less powerful today is the working of the Holy Spirit, gift of Christ who died and is risen. No mistake, or sin, or ideology or human fallacy can suppress the intimate structure of our being in need of love and able to give authentic love.” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 26/2/2004 - Righe 33; Parole 487)