Articles by Bishop László Bíró
Renewal in our values -restarting from Christ
Feb 4, 2010 / 00:00 amRenewal in our values – restarting from Christ
The renewal of Europe through the spiritual renewal of families
Nov 19, 2009 / 00:00 am1. Europe: reality and hopeWe all know the reality of today’s Europe. However, as the leader of a Vatican committee said at our ad limina visit to Rome last year, “If we keep talking about the crisis, we are the ones who make it worse.” Instead of complaining, we must speak about hope. The family is Gospel, “good news,” as Pope John Paul II says. We have come together to celebrate the family and to witness to each other that living in a family based on marriage is great and beautiful. The family is a value. In our age, which denies God and moral values, value is difficult to define – but it is still possible to live out. The vocation of European Christians today is similar to that of the early Church in the background of Hellenistic culture. The Hellenistic culture, just like today’s world, cherished possessive love, while Christians demonstrated unselfish love by being faithful in their marriage and taking care of the elderly. Through this, Christianity became a significant factor in society within 300 years. The thinking that ridicules marriage will not survive, but those who live in unselfish love will. This is our hope, despite today’s reality: that unselfish love is stronger than possessive love! Cardinal Antonelli said at the Mexico Family Congress in 2008, ”For us the family is not a dream but a reality.” The media often considers Christians as people chasing dreams. But Christian families do exist! There are problems, but the idea of Christian marriage and family is not just a dream but a reality to be announced. This reality and hope are based on two facts. First, the definitive love of God. In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict uses this expression, instead of saying God loves us very much or forever. The irrevocable love of God was manifested in the incarnation: it cannot be undone! For me the family is not just a dream, because it exists; because God’s love towards man is irrevocable. Second, the depth of the human heart. Despite the sad statistics, young people do want to become fathers and mothers. The desire for marriage and for giving life and love cannot be wiped off from human hearts. Also in Mexico, the President of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference used the expression, ”The family is world heritage.” World heritage is something to be defended, to be cared for. Also at the Mexico Congress, Raniero Cantalamessa said that the second description of the creation of man and woman in the Bible has a special message. In this passage woman is created later than man, after man has experienced how poor he is without the woman. In old times, when asking for the hands of the girl, the young man used to kneel with the gesture of a beggar. Marriage is a reality also because one without the other is as poor as a beggar.Cantalamessa pointed out: In the New Testament, the pharisees asked Jesus about marriage twice, and on both occasions Jesus referred to ”the beginning”, ”the creation”. Today’s liberals, like the pharisees, put questions in the narrow vision of concrete situations. Christians, however, consider ”the beginning”: the origin and purpose of being a man or a woman, or the basic purpose of sexuality. Cardinal Sin said at a Family Congress in the Philippines, ”We need not invent marriage; we need to rediscover it.” While today parliaments invent marriage, we try to be faithful to marriage as it was ”in the beginning”. In Europe there is a surface reality that may depress us. But there is another reality in the deep, which is our hope. Let us open ourselves to a thinking that arises from our faith. Let us see the beauty of the small brooks – the families in their separate parishes, villages, towns – gathering here like big river. This is our reality and our hope!*This text was originally given as a talk to the 6th European Congress of CFMHungary, July 20-24th 2009.