A family’s love grounded in Christ is sign of peace for world, Pope says

Families are the cradle of the future of humanity, Pope Leo XIV said during a Mass concluding the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly. Later, writing to 40 theologians and pastoral ministers participating in a seminar on evangelising with families, he said the Church must find new ways to reach out to and welcome families who are distant from the Church and have no understanding of how much God loves them.

‘Today’s world needs the marriage covenant in order to know and accept God’s love and to defeat, thanks to its unifying and reconciling power, the forces that break down relationships and societies,’ he said in his homily at the Mass celebrated on 1 June in St Peter’s Square.

The day also marked World Communications Day, and in remarks after the Mass, Pope Leo thanked all ‘media workers who, by taking care of the ethical quality of messages, help families in their role as educators’.

In the family, he said in his homily, faith ‘is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts. In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always.’

Speaking to all married couples, the Pope said that ‘marriage is not an ideal but the measure of true love between a man and a woman: a love that is total, faithful and fruitful,’ and that enables them, ‘in the image of God, to bestow the gift of life’.

‘I encourage you, then, to be examples of integrity to your children, acting as you want them to act, educating them in freedom through obedience, always seeing the good in them and finding ways to nurture it,’ he told married couples.

‘And you, dear children, show gratitude to your parents. To say, “thank you” each day for the gift of life and for all that comes with it is the first way to honour your father and your mother,’ Pope Leo said.

Speaking to grandparents and elderly people, he asked that they ‘watch over your loved ones with wisdom and compassion, and with the humility and patience that come with age.’

If we love one another in this way, grounded in Christ, we will be a sign of peace for everyone in society and the world. Let us not forget: Families are the cradle of the future of humanity.

The Pope focused his homily on ‘the Prayer of Jesus’ in the day’s gospel reading (John 17:20–26), in which Jesus prays to the Father that all of Christ’s disciples not only follow him but also seek to be in union with the Father.

He re-read portions of the gospel to emphasise God’s plan of unity for all of humanity, particularly: ‘I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.’

‘Jesus is telling us that God loves us as he loves him,’ Pope Leo said. ‘The Father does not love us any less than he loves his only-begotten Son. In other words, with an infinite love.’

‘In his mercy, God has always desired to draw all people to himself. It is his life, bestowed upon us in Christ, that makes us one, uniting us with one another,’ he said, connecting the gospel reflection to how it relates to celebrating the Jubilee of Families.

Jesus’ prayer ‘makes fully meaningful our experience of love for one another as parents, grandparents, sons and daughters,’ he said.

‘That is what we want to proclaim to the world: We are here in order to be “one” as the Lord wants us to be “one”, in our families and in those places where we live, work and study. Different, yet one; many, yet one; always, in every situation and at every stage of life,’ the Pope said.

‘If we love one another in this way, grounded in Christ,’ he said, ‘we will be a sign of peace for everyone in society and the world. Let us not forget: Families are the cradle of the future of humanity.’

All of us are alive today thanks to a relationship, a free and freeing relationship of human kindness and mutual care.

By beatifying and canonising married couples who gave exemplary witness of married life, such as Sts Louis and Zélie Martin and the Blessed Ulma family—mother, father and seven small children—‘the Church tells us that today’s world needs the marriage covenant’ in order to discover and embrace God’s love and to defeat that which breaks down relationships and communities, he said.

No one chose to be born, he said, but someone was there to offer care. ‘All of us are alive today thanks to a relationship, a free and freeing relationship of human kindness and mutual care.’

However, ‘that human kindness is sometimes betrayed. As, for example, whenever freedom is invoked not to give life but to take it away, not to help but to hurt,’ he said.

Nonetheless, the Pope said, ‘even in the face of the evil that opposes and takes life, Jesus continues to pray to the Father for us. His prayer acts as a balm for our wounds; it speaks to us of forgiveness and reconciliation.’

More than 70,000 people from 131 countries gathered in the square after three days of Jubilee events in Rome. Families of every age and size were present in the square; some were holding banners or flags, wearing matching hats or seeking shelter under umbrellas from the hot morning sun.

Pope Leo rode through the crowds before the start of Mass. He broke from his usual blessing of infants and small children hoisted up to him when a young boy in the crowd held out his hand for a shake. The Pope leaned far out from the Popemobile to give him a ‘low five’ to the cheers and fist pumps of the boy and his friends.

Before praying the ‘Regina Coeli’ in the square, the Pope prayed for all families, especially those ‘suffering due to war in the Middle East, in Ukraine and in other parts of the world. May the Mother of God help us to press forward together on the path of peace.’

Reach out to families; let them know God loves them, Pope says

Writing on 2 June to 40 theologians and pastoral ministers participating in a seminar on evangelising with families, the Pope said the first goal of outreach is to help people longing for love and meaning to find that in Jesus.

‘How often, even in the not too distant past, have we forgotten this truth and presented Christian life mostly as a set of rules to be kept, replacing the marvellous experience of encountering Jesus—God who gives himself to us—with a moralistic, burdensome and unappealing religion that, in some ways, is impossible to live in concrete daily life,’ the Pope wrote.

Following the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents and the Elderly, the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life gathered the experts at its Vatican office on 2–3 June to reflect on the theme ‘Evangelising with the Families of Today and Tomorrow: Ecclesiological and Pastoral Challenges’.

Pope Leo told them, ‘This theme clearly expresses the Church’s maternal concern for Christian families throughout the world as living members of the Mystical Body of Christ and the primary nucleus of the Church, to whom the Lord entrusts the transmission of faith and the Gospel, especially to the new generations.’

Ours is a time marked by a growing search for spirituality, particularly evident in young people, who are longing for authentic relationships and guides in life.

Every human being, as St Augustine taught, has a longing for God, the Pope said. And parents have the first responsibility to respond to that longing by making their children ‘aware of the fatherhood of God.’

And while Church attendance and formal religious affiliation in many places are declining, he said, ‘ours is a time marked by a growing search for spirituality, particularly evident in young people, who are longing for authentic relationships and guides in life.

‘Hence, it is important that the Christian community be farsighted in discerning the challenges of today’s world and in nurturing the desire for faith present in the heart of every man and woman,’ he said.

But that, the Pope said, requires paying special attention ‘to those families who, for various reasons, are spiritually most distant from us: those who do not feel involved, claim they are uninterested or feel excluded from the usual activities, yet would still like to be part of a community in which they can grow and journey together with others.

‘How many people today simply do not hear the invitation to encounter God?’ Pope Leo asked.

Another problem, he said, is ‘an increasingly widespread “privatisation” of faith’ so focused on the individual that newcomers have no experience of ‘the richness and gifts of the Church, a place of grace, fraternity and love’.

‘What drives the Church in her pastoral and missionary outreach is precisely the desire to go out as a “fisher” of humanity, in order to save it from the waters of evil and death through an encounter with Christ,’ the Pope said.

It is not a matter of giving hasty answers to difficult questions, but of drawing close to people, listening to them and trying to understand together with them how to face their difficulties.

As an example, he pointed to young people who choose cohabitation instead of Christian marriage. What they need, he said, is ‘someone to show them in a concrete and clear way, especially by the example of their lives, what the gift of sacramental grace is and what strength derives from it. Someone to help them understand “the beauty and grandeur of the vocation to love and the service of life” that God gives to married couples.’

When reaching out to families who are distant from the Church, he said, patience and even creativity are needed.

‘It is not a matter of giving hasty answers to difficult questions, but of drawing close to people, listening to them and trying to understand together with them how to face their difficulties,’ Pope Leo said. ‘And this requires a readiness to be open, when necessary, to new ways of seeing things and different ways of acting, for each generation is different and has its own challenges, dreams and questions.’

The bishops have the first responsibility ‘to cast their nets into the sea and become “fishers of families“ ‘, the Pope said.

But it is a duty all Catholics share since ‘through baptism, each one of us has been made a priest, king and prophet for our brothers and sisters, and a “living stone” for the building up of God’s house “in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity”,’ he added, quoting from the homily at the inauguration of his papacy on 18 May.