“No future without children!”
During the General Audience on February 15, 2012, Benedict XVI saluted the presence of 250 members of the Italian National Association of Large Families. “In today’s social context, family nucleuses with many children bear witness to faith, courage and optimism, because without children there can be no future!” he declared. The pope expressed his hopes for new social and legislative measures to promote large families, which are “a treasure and a hope for the entire country.”
Benedict XVI then continued his catechesis on the last words of Christ on the cross, in which He asked God to forgive His executioners. These words invite us to pray “for those who wrong us, who have injured us,” with “the same attitude of mercy and love with which God treats us…. The words of Jesus on the Cross at the last moments of His earthly life offer us demanding instructions for our prayers, but they also open us to serene trust and firm hope.”
From the example of Jesus as He was dying we can derive “the certainty that… however acute the suffering may be, we shall never fall from God’s hands, those hands that created us, that sustain us and that accompany us on our way through life.” (Sources : apic/imedia/vis – DICI no.251 dated March 9, 2012)
