Vatican City, May 26, 2011 / 00:50 am
Vatican officials have released a book of preparatory teaching documents for next year’s Seventh World Meeting of Families. The catechesis series has as its theme “Family: Work and Celebration.”
“It is difficult in today's situations to live Sunday as a time of celebration ... modern humanity has invented free time but seems to have forgotten the celebration,” explained Bishop Franco Giulio Brambilla, auxiliary bishop of Milan.
He said the family needs to “engrave” in its lifestyle the sense of celebration.
Preparation for the World Meeting of Families aims to advance this cause. The meeting will take place in Milan from May 30 to June 3 in 2012. The Pontifical Council for the Family and the Archdiocese of Milan prepared the teaching documents for the event.
Bishop Brambrilla said that the teaching documents have three parts, with the first focused on the home.
The home, he explained, is a “space of acceptance” where “profound intimacy between the couple and between parents and children is safeguarded.”
The catechesis’ second part discusses work in daily life. Work cannot simply be a means of economic support, but it should be “the place of personal identity and social relationship.”
The third part focuses on how the family celebrates.
The documents consist of 10 biblical instructions accompanied by texts from the Church’s body of teachings. They are published in Italian, English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Polish.
Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said that the World Meeting of Families will feature a theological-pastoral convention in its first three days, followed by two days of celebration with Pope Benedict XVI in attendance.
The teaching documents will be “inestimably helpful” to prepare for the meeting, the cardinal said.
Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the Archbishop of Milan, hoped that the preparatory catechesis could serve as a guide for dioceses around the world.