THE VI WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES

MEXICO

THE FAMILY, TEACHER IN HUMAN AND CHRISTIAN VALUES

CENTRAL COORDINATING COMMITTEE

PRESENTATION
Every three years, all the families of the world are summoned by the Holy Father to gather and celebrate the great gift that is the family for the human beings. This is the sense of the World Meeting of Families: “to celebrate the blessed gift of what it is to be a Family and to gather them in order to pray, dialogue, learn, share and deepen on the comprehension about the role of being a Christian family as the domestic church and base unit of evangelization. (Pontifical Council for the Family)

The origin of this meeting of families started in 1994, when the Holy Father John Paul II convened to the Pontifical Council for the Family to organize at Roma the first World Meeting of Families. Since then, they have been held every three years, having as See different cities around the world: Río de Janeiro in 1997, later in Rome 2000, in the framework of the Jubilee in Manila 2003 and the last in Valencia 2006.

The Organization of each World Meeting of Families corresponds to the Pontifical Council for the Family, in collaboration with the diocese chosen as Venue; in this case, as His Holiness Benedict XVI to conclude the Meeting in Valencia, the Archdiocese of Mexico leaded by S.D.B. H. EM. Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera.

The World Meeting of Families has several main manifests:

• The Theological Pastoral Congress, which gathers the best exponents of the world in family subject.
• A festive celebration with testimonies given by families from different parts of the world alternated with performances and prayers.
• A Holy Mass, concelebrated by cardinals, bishops and priests together with thousands of families all over the world.

Following the legacy of H.H. John Paul II, His Holiness Benedict XVI has not stopped of pointing out the importance of the marriage covenant and family. In Valencia, he did it whit the following words: “the just relation between a man and a woman sinks its roots in the deepest essence of the human being and the answer can be found only from there. Therefore it is indispensable and urgent that all good will man makes an effort to save and promote the values and exigencies of the family (…). More than ever the Christian Family has an unavoidable and honest mission; that is to transmit the faith which implies devotion to a dead and risen Jesus Christ, and the insertion to the ecclesial community. The parents are the first on evangelizing their children, a precious gift from God; starting with the first prayers. Like that is how the moral universe is being built, attached to God’s will on which the kid grows under the human and Christian values that give full sense of life”

The family institution of the XXI Century experiments the embattles of contemporary ideologies as relativism, materialism, hedonism, and in a particular way the individualism that undermine from the root the community of life and love that is the family. Before all of this, it is necessary to propose again several challenges, among those who stand out are:

• The education in human and Christian values and virtues.
• The testimony of the parents to reach a better coexistence and communication
• The need to encourage a family perspective, meaning, the governmental laws and policies take as regarding the strength and protection of the family.

The formative subsidies have the purpose of supporting the parents and in general all those who have the interest on the well-being, the family indeed, in order to last in the heart and life of all homes the World VI Meeting of Families.

The Family of Nazaret is the Gospel’s model of the Family, it is the Good New that the modern family, like from all times, has to contemplate, in order to face with certainty the challenges that modernity purposes it. The fullness of family lies on developing the identity and the mission for what God established it: to make happy every member of the home unit and to have the security of having been delivered to the next generation, the necessary human and Christian values in order to make every family a meeting place with life, with brothers and with God.

FORMATIVE SUBSIDIES OF PREPARATION TO THE MEETING

INDEX

SUBJECT 01. Which are the values and their importance in the upbringing of the person: The education on values as forgers of mature personality. The Christianity changes the hierarchy of human values, taking them to the supernatural.

SUBJECT 02. The family, value and school of values by the word and the testimony of the parents.

SUBJECT 03. Love, source of values: Love, charity, respect, freedom in the truth, generosity, detachment of the children who will leave the family to form their own or to dedicate their life to a religious vocation.

SUBJECT 04. The value of life and the person: The respect to the non-born, the right of health, the care of sick and old people. The parents, collaborators of God on the transmission of the life to their children. The family as a place of personalization of the human being.

SUBJECT 05. The values of the spirit: faith, pray, spiritual life, holiness, state of grace. To be open minded with our sons and daughters vocations (marriage, religious life, priesthood).

SUBJECT 06. The values of self control: Strength, hope, self-control, tolerance, patience, prudence, work, hardworking, authority, order.

SUBJECT 07. The values of human corporeality: Sexuality Education, affections. The complement between man and woman. Fatherhood and motherhood.

SUBJECT 08. The values of human communication: trust, communication, unit, peace, happiness.

SUBJECT 09. The values of the rectitude inside human relations: honesty, truth, uprightness, sincerity, fidelity, loyalty, gratitude

SUBJECT 10. The value of suffering: Pain, forgiveness, reconciliation and sacrifice.

SUBJECT 11. The values of engagement with society: solidarity, justice, social and civic coexistence. Spirit of service, responsibility. The parents testimony in the fulfillment of civic obligations. The active collaboration towards State and Church.

SUBJECT 12. The values of the creation care: Respect to creation, Christian ecology.

SUBJECT 13. The Value of Public honesty, and Integrity against corruption.