Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Amoris Laetitia - Par. 318


318.  Family prayer is a special way of expressing and strengthening this paschal faith.376  A few minutes can be found each day to come together before the living God, to tell him our worries, to ask for the needs of our family, to pray for someone experiencing difficulty, to ask for help in showing love, to give thanks for life and for its blessings, and to ask Our Lady to protect us beneath her maternal mantle.  With a few simple words, this moment of prayer can do immense good for our families.  The various expressions of popular piety are a treasure of spirituality for many families. The family's communal journey of prayer culminates by sharing together in the Eucharist, especially in the context of the Sunday rest.  Jesus knocks on the door of families, to share with them the Eucharistic supper (cf. Rev 3:20).  There, spouses can always seal anew the paschal covenant which united them and which ought to reflect the covenant which God sealed with mankind in the cross.377 The Eucharist is the sacrament of the new covenant, where Christ's redemptive work is carried out (cf. Lk 22:20).  The close bond between married life and the Eucharist thus becomes all the more clear.378  For the food of the Eucharist offers the spouses the strength and incentive needed to live the marriage covenant each day as a "domestic church".379

376  Cf. Relatio Finalis 2015, 87.
377 Cf. John Paul, II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (22 November 19891), 57: AAS 74 (1982), 150.
378  Nor should we forget that God's covenant with his people is expressed as an espousal (cf. Ez 16:8, 60; Is 62:5; Hos 2:21-22), and that the new covenant is also presented as a betrothal (cf. Rev 19:7; 21:2; Eph 5:25).
379  Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 11.


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