The Roman Catholic Church has just concluded the Extraordinary Synod on the Family (October 5-19,2014, Vatican City)...a timely and urgent discussion of issues besetting the families of the world. We are also celebrating this year, the UN-declared International Year of Family Farming...to highlight the fact that most of the farms in the world that feed its billions of people are tilled not only by the father but also by the wife and their children..and that many of them face tremendous challenges such as land tenure insecurity and land grabbing, low productivity, low price and less access to market, to finance, to technology, to government services. Almost no young person wants to be farmer precisely because farming is equated with misery especially in most agrarian societies such as the Philippines. Pope Francis alluded to the discussion as a journey... and here i remember our KM71 marchers now trekking the road of Eastern Visayas. Today, the Bishop of Borongan, Bp Varquez, has joined the marchers in their 19-km trek. Pope Francis described the discussion as a journey.. a description that could provide the marchers profound insights and thus, maybe good to reflect on them... And it has been “a journey” – and like every journey there were moments of running fast, as if wanting to conquer time and reach the goal as soon as possible; other moments of fatigue, as if wanting to say “enough”; other moments of enthusiasm and ardour. There were moments of profound consolation listening to the testimony of true pastors, who wisely carry in their hearts the joys and the tears of their faithful people. Moments of consolation and grace and comfort hearing the testimonies of the families who have participated in the Synod and have shared with us the beauty and the joy of their married life. A journey where the stronger feel compelled to help the less strong, where the more experienced are led to serve others, even through confrontations. And since it is a journey of human beings, with the consolations there were also moments of desolation, of tensions and temptations, of which a few possibilities could be mentioned: - One, a temptation to hostile inflexibility, that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word, (the letter) and not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises, (the spirit); within the law, within the certitude of what we know and not of what we still need to learn and to achieve. From the time of Christ, it is the temptation of the zealous, of the scrupulous, of the solicitous and of the so-called – today – “traditionalists” and also of the intellectuals. - The temptation to a destructive tendency to goodness [it. buonismo], that in the name of a deceptive mercy binds the wounds without first curing them and treating them; that treats the symptoms and not the causes and the roots. It is the temptation of the “do-gooders,” of the fearful, and also of the so-called “progressives and liberals.”...
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 23:57:28 +0000