教宗呼吁为主教会议祈祷以便让天主使那些令我们愤慨和害怕的变成奇迹
瓜亚基亚（亚洲新闻）—社会给家庭的帮助不是“一种施舍，而是国家机构应该付出的真正的‘社会债务’”。在这其中我们可以学到爱、服务、帮助和信仰。家庭在今天面临着“许多艰难和重大的挑战”，十月即将召开的世界主教会议将努力寻求具体的解决办法。为此，教宗邀请大家为此祈祷，“以便让天主使那些令我们愤慨和害怕的变成奇迹”。
这是教宗方济各在抵达厄瓜多尔后第二天在瓜亚基亚主持第一台弥撒圣祭中讲道强调的。从首都基多抵达厄瓜多尔人口最多的城市后，教宗首先前往天主慈悲朝圣地朝圣。并在祈祷后向在场人士表示，“我把你们大家都装在我的心里！我会为你们每一个人祈祷、会向天主说：‘你知道当时在场的那些人的名字’。我将为你们每个人祈求耶稣无数的慈悲：用祂的慈悲覆盖你们、眷顾你们”。
中午时分，教宗来到了数十万，甚至可能百万人海中为他们主持弥撒圣祭。讲道中，教宗围绕加纳婚宴一段福音指出，“这是若望福音中讲述的第一个奇迹。玛利亚的担心变成了向耶稣的诉求：‘他们没有酒了’。而‘现在’的表达方式，在受难一段记载中才会理解。这样是对的，因为这样才会使我们意识到耶稣在听到母亲的呼求后迫切渴望教导、伴随、治愈和使人喜乐”。
“加纳婚宴更新了世世代代、每一个家庭、我们每个人和我们的努力，使我们的心能够在持久、硕果累累和喜乐的爱内获享稳定。让我们给玛利亚——就像福音作者所称呼的‘母亲’——开辟空间、让我们和她一起走完加纳的历程”。教宗讲道全文英文版如下：
“Mary is attentive in the course of this wedding feast; she is concerned for the needs of the newlyweds. She is not closed in on herself, worried only about her little world. Her love makes her ‘outgoing’ towards others. So she notices that the wine has run out. Wine is a sign of happiness, love and plenty. How many of our adolescents and young people sense that these are no longer found in their homes? How many women, sad and lonely, wonder when love left, when it slipped away from their lives? How many elderly people feel left out of family celebrations, cast aside and longing each day for a little love? This lack of ‘wine’ can also be due to unemployment, illness and difficult situations, which our families may experience. Mary is not a ‘demanding’ mother, a mother-in-law who revels in our lack of experience, our mistakes and the things we forget to do. Mary is a Mother! She is there, attentive and concerned.
“But Mary approaches Jesus with confidence, Mary prays. She does not go to the steward, she immediately tells her Son of the newlyweds’ problem. The response she receives seems disheartening: ‘What does it have to do with you and me? My hour has not yet come’ (v. 4). But she nonetheless places the problem in God’s hands. Her concern to meet the needs of others hastens Jesus’ hour. Mary was a part of that hour, from the cradle to the cross. She was able ‘to turn a stable into a home for Jesus, with poor swaddling clothes and an abundance of love’ (Evangelii Gaudium, 286). She accepted us as her sons and daughters when the sword pierced her heart. She teaches us to put our families in God’s hands, to pray, to kindle the hope, which shows us that our concerns are also God’s concerns.
“Praying always lifts us out of our worries and concerns. It makes us rise above everything that hurts, upsets or disappoints us, and it puts us in the place of others, in their shoes. The family is a school where prayer also reminds us that we are not isolated individuals; we are one and we have a neighbour close at hand: he or she is living under the same roof, is a part of our life, and is in need.
“Mary finally acts. Her words, ‘Do whatever he tells you’ (v. 5), addressed to the attendants, are also an invitation to us to open our hearts to Jesus, who came to serve and not to be served. Service is the sign of true love. We learn this especially in the family, where we become servants out of love for one another. In the heart of the family, no one is rejected. ‘In the family we learn how to ask without demanding, to say ‘thank you’ as an expression of genuine gratitude for what we have been given, to control our aggressiveness and greed, and to ask forgiveness when we have caused harm. These simple gestures of heartfelt courtesy help to create a culture of shared life and respect for our surroundings’ (Laudato Si’, 213). The family is the nearest hospital, the first school for the young, the best home for the elderly. The family constitutes the best ‘social capital’. It cannot be replaced by other institutions. It needs to be helped and strengthened, lest we lose our proper sense of the services which society as a whole provides. Those services are not a type of alms, but rather a genuine ‘social debt’ with respect to the institution of the family, which contributes so greatly to the common good.
“The family is also a small Church, a ‘domestic Church’ which, along with life, also mediates God’s tenderness and mercy. In the family, we imbibe faith with our mother’s milk. When we experience the love of our parents, we feel the closeness of God’s love.
“In the family, miracles are performed with what little we have, with what we are, with what is at hand… many times, it is not ideal, it is not what we dreamt of, nor what ‘should have been’. The new wine of the wedding feast of Cana came from the water jars, the jars used for ablutions, we might even say from the place where everyone had left their sins . . . ‘Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,’ (Rom 5:20). In our own families and in the greater family to which we all belong, nothing is thrown away, nothing is useless. Shortly before the opening of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, the Church will celebrate the Ordinary Synod devoted to the family, deepen her spiritual discernment and consider concrete solutions to the many difficult and significant challenges facing families in our time. I ask you to pray fervently for this intention, so that Christ can take even what might seem to us impure, scandalous or threatening, and turn it – by making it part of his ‘hour’ – into a miracle.
“It all began because ‘they had no wine’. It could all be done because a woman – the Virgin Mary – was attentive, left her concerns in God’s hands and acted sensibly and courageously. But there was more to come: everyone went on to enjoy the finest of wines. And this is the good news: the finest wines are yet to be tasted; for families, the richest, deepest and most beautiful things are yet to come. The time is coming when we will taste love daily, when our children will come to appreciate the home we share, and our elderly will be present each day in the joys of life. The finest of wines will come for every person who stakes everything on love. And it will come in spite of all the variables and statistics, which say otherwise, the best wine is yet to come for those who today feel hopelessly lost. Say it until you are convinced of it: the best wine is yet to come. Whisper it to the hopeless and the loveless. God always seek out the peripheries, those who have run out of wine, those who drink only of discouragement. Jesus feels their weakness, in order to pour out the best wines for those who, for whatever reason, feel that all their jars have been broken.
“As Mary bids us, let us ‘do what he tells us’ and be thankful that in this, our time and our hour, the new wine, the finest wine, will make us recover the joy of being a family.”
