The working sessions of the World Meeting of Families in the Vatican have started this Thursday highlighting the family role in Evangelization. The first speakers of the day, Gregory and Lisa Popcak, executive directors of the Peyton Institute, have explained their pastoral program on the life of the domestic churches. An intervention that has set the tone and spirit of what is sought these days.
The Popcak couple focuses their proposal on the need for families to be aware of their leading role, that they have a spirituality of its own to value and promote. The basis for the Christian growth of each family, in different cultures and social situations, is found in two elements, “sharing sacramental life and living love based on the model of the Trinity.”
domestic church
From these two central elements, the Popcak ensure that there is «a liturgy proper to the Domestic Church, to each Domestic Church». It is a liturgy that establishes priority for the times of family events, such as meals or gathering hours and conversation, as well as a particular affectivity that reaffirms each member of the family.
Within the liturgy of the Domestic Church, Gregory and Lisa Popcak assert that there is a whole ritual dimension of openness to others, of relationships with people in need or with other families. It is something that starts from the care of each member of the family and that is also specified in generosity and kindness with neighbors and relatives..
Keep and pass on the faith
In the opinion of the Popcak couple, these “liturgical” elements of the Christian family pose a challenge to all families, “so that discover their courage and their ability to revive not only their own family but the whole Church». For this reason, they encourage each parish to cultivate the formation of many domestic churches, which should be an engine of evangelization in their environment.
The great objective of this married couple from Massachusetts, like that of the more than 2,000 participants in this meeting in Rome, is how to keep the faith and pass it on to children in a cultural environment that is not very christian. Along with this, they consider how to make their testimony reach other families with freshness and authenticity.
Marriage and evangelization
In the sessions of this first day of the World Meeting of Families, which takes place in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, there was also a discussion today how to manage the relationship of priests with families. There have been examples of good practices from Burundi, Latvia and Italy, among other countries, in which the need to promote the role of married couples in evangelization is appreciated, without the need to be supervised by a clergyman. «The role of marriage in the parish is not that of marginal assistance to priests», remarked a couple from Latvia.
The role of grandparents, both from a material and spiritual point of view, has also occupied space in the seminars this Thursday. In a western world where most parents need to have a job, the work they do in the formation of the little ones is essential for Christian growth.
The Vatican puts families at the center of the evangelization of the Church