Family

Families, become what you truly are!

In the Family Lies the Mystery of Life or Death of Our Nation

 "Our chief duty is to watch and to labour, so that in our nation too, family life may be preserved and maintained in all its purity, innocence and vigour." Josip Juraj Strossmayer

According to Strossmayer, the family and the family home are a place of warmth and love, and as such are irreplaceable for society and the Church. In His wisdom, God grants to individual nations particular families from which the great figures of history then emerge, all for the purpose of fulfilling God’s designs. Strossmayer interprets the expression "the home" as that place which the Catholic Church has always sought to transform into a "domestic church": "The faithful will contribute to the wellbeing of the nation if they carry out their sacred duty by turning their homes into living images of the house of Nazareth, and if ‘parents and elders become, in some manner, domestic priests to their young.’" Such families have the task of preserving and maintaining, in their own homes, faith, prayer and devotion: "Those, gentlemen, who bore and raised us, who gave us our body and bodily life and nourished it, are worthy of our eternal recognition, our eternal gratitude; but those who provide us with the means to a higher formation of the soul give us a higher life, one that is worth as much more than the first as heaven is worth more than earth, the spirit more than the body, the goods of the soul more than the goods of the body. These are our spiritual parents, to whom we can never show recognition enough, nor gratitude enough."

Hits: 37

This Mystery Is a Profound One

The Slovenian artist Fr Marko Ivan Rupnik, SJ, is the author of the official image of the World Meeting of Families in Rome, presented at the Vatican. The World Meeting of Families, to be held in Rome from 22 to 26 June 2022 under the theme "Family Love: Vocation and Path to Holiness", will also conclude the Amoris Laetitia Family Year. The meeting was originally due to take place this year, but because of the coronavirus pandemic it has been postponed to 2022. The image "This Mystery Is a Profound One", measuring 80×80 cm, in bright and warm colours – yellow, orange and red – depicts the biblical scene of the wedding at Cana, and, in the artist's own words, seeks to convey that the family is an expression of the sacrament of marriage. He teaches at the Gregorian University in Rome. Until last year, he directed the "Aletti" Centre for spirituality and culture, and his mosaics and sacred works adorn more than 220 places around the world. He gives spiritual retreats and is also a consultant to several Roman congregations.

We bring you the catechesis of the artist himself on the mystery of marriage and family from a Christian perspective, through the "Wedding at Cana", and also on how the artist himself sees it.

Watch the video!

Turn on the Croatian subtitles!

Hits: 68

God Trusts This Man

These days everything around us is filled, on the one hand, with birth, and on the other with death. On one side the joy of Christmas, on the other fear and suffering, caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the powerful earthquake that destroyed many homes in Petrinja, Sisak, Glina and the surrounding areas. Many families have been left without their homes. We bring you an article dedicated to the Holy Family, who are in exile on the road to Egypt, and thereby to every family in difficulty. They are fleeing before Herod, who wants to take the life of the newborn child Jesus. This mystery of the Family's flight and of God's closeness will be illuminated for us by the painting "Rest on the Flight into Egypt", painted in 1597 by Caravaggio. It is found in the Church of St Agnes, on the beautiful Piazza Navona, and was intended as a wedding gift for Olimpia Aldobrandini, who married Prince Camillo Pamphili.

Hits: 77

In the Family Lies the Mystery of Life or Death of Our Nation

 "Our chief duty is to watch and to labour, so that in our nation too, family life may be preserved and maintained in all its purity, innocence and vigour."

Josip Juraj Strossmayer

According to Strossmayer, the family and the family home are a place of warmth and love, and as such are irreplaceable for society and the Church. In His wisdom, God grants to individual nations particular families from which the great figures of history then emerge, all for the purpose of fulfilling God’s designs. Strossmayer interprets the expression "the home" as that place which the Catholic Church has always sought to transform into a "domestic church": "The faithful will contribute to the wellbeing of the nation if they carry out their sacred duty by turning their homes into living images of the house of Nazareth, and if ‘parents and elders become, in some manner, domestic priests to their young.’" Such families have the task of preserving and maintaining, in their own homes, faith, prayer and devotion: "Those, gentlemen, who bore and raised us, who gave us our body and bodily life and nourished it, are worthy of our eternal recognition, our eternal gratitude; but those who provide us with the means to a higher formation of the soul give us a higher life, one that is worth as much more than the first as heaven is worth more than earth, the spirit more than the body, the goods of the soul more than the goods of the body. These are our spiritual parents, to whom we can never show recognition enough, nor gratitude enough."

Hits: 68

Seek His Face

My heart says to me: "Seek his face!" Yes, your face, O Yahweh, I do seek. (Ps 27:8)

We live in a time of the lost face. Man cannot live without the presence of another's face. He cannot see his own face; it is not possible to have a relationship exclusively with one's own face. We have a need for a face that is different from our own. A mirror does not help. In this loss of face - because we have lost the face of God - we have also lost the time we need, the time given to us to find a face. That is why we are constantly in a hurry. Time is needed to gaze upon the face of another. It is extremely important.

Hits: 68

Take this child and nurse it for me

He must go on, the father tells his son. He cannot go with him — but the boy must carry on without him, doing everything just as they had done together.

The son says he wants to stay with him.

He must carry the fire — life itself, the father goes on.

These days we are witnesses to images of mothers and fathers from Afghanistan handing their children to soldiers and "passing" them over the wall, abandoning them and, in doing so, amid unbearable pain, saving them. In the photograph we see a father raising his arm, holding in his hand the son he is handing over — like a basket of food, like a gift, like a testimony — to a complete stranger, a soldier in full combat gear, with threatening, lethal weapons.

Jochebed, Moses' mother, did something similar, pushing her son into the waters of the Nile in despair, trying in this way to save him. She abandons him so that he may be saved.

What could drive parents to do something so drastic, so painful?

Hits: 60

From that source misfortune poured out upon the homeland and the people

Ancient Rome, with all its splendour, its legacy in numerous surviving works of art, and everything else on account of which it would come to be called the cradle of civilisation, is described in numerous works by writers who lived  both in the age of its flourishing and for centuries after the fall of the Empire. Rome experienced its greatest flourishing under the emperor Augustus, in the 1st century BC, when, after the victory over Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, peace came to the state within the Empire, since that victory marked the end of the long wars the Romans had until then been waging. Soon after consolidating his political position, the emperor Augustus began reforms within the Empire. Numerous laws were passed with the intention of strengthening the family and the economy, both of which had suffered heavy losses on account of the wars.

Hits: 69

A House or Home Is Like a Mother's Womb, a Place of Safety and Comfort

The house is a place of memory; our life is imprinted upon it, together with its joys, sorrows, contradictions and hopes. Here we raise our children, here our friends die, here love is born and illness is lived through. The place where we live has something to do with memory, feelings, concrete desires and relationships with one another. The primary meaning of the house is therefore a place of gathering and union. Freud wrote that the house is a substitute for the mother's womb, the first dwelling of the human person, for which, in all likelihood, man never stops yearning, because in it he felt safe and at ease.

Hits: 83

I Always Feel You Right Here Beside Me

A few days ago, the world marked sixty years since the first human flight into space. That man was Yuri Gagarin.

We bring you the letter Yuri Gagarin wrote to his wife and daughters two days before his first flight into space on 12 April 1961, together with some very interesting glimpses into their family life.

The letter was to be given to his wife Valentina only if something went wrong. In fact the mission was a success, and after one hour and 48 minutes of flight, Gagarin returned to earth, landing in the Saratov region, about 850 kilometres south-east of Moscow. However, what amounted to his spiritual last testament was delivered to his wife seven years later, on 27 March 1968, when he lost his life in a plane crash. This moving farewell letter contains very powerful words about a man's devotion to his calling and to life, and it brings to mind man's first journey into space.

Hits: 62

Thou Preparest a Table Before Me

"To invite someone to dine

is to take charge of his happiness for as long as he is

beneath your roof (at your table)"

               Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

                                                                                                 

"Those who sit down at table are people who share the same life, or whom life closely binds together in some way. The table becomes a place for manifesting and sharing that communion. To invite someone to the table cannot, therefore, be reduced to 'giving them food'. To receive someone at table means giving them a place in one's life, sharing life with them, communicating in that which shapes life. To deny someone a place at the table means depriving them of communion."

 "Eating reveals us as we truly are. It reveals us to ourselves as we truly are, and directs us towards others. The way we eat manifests our habits, our desires, the maturity of our relationships with others, our responsibility for them, our skill in recognising gifts, and a humility that is always grateful for all that we receive.".

                                                               Fra Ante Crnčević

Hits: 64

Cardinal Farrell: A Concrete Proposal for Being a "Domestic Church"

Yesterday my friend Géza from Budapest called me. We talked mostly about how we are living through this time at home with our households. At one point, Géza told me that they feel fortunate because, in the isolation in which we have suddenly found ourselves, they have their own house, they can go out into the garden, take a walk, and so on.

Then he added: "We didn't even know how rich we were until now. There are five of us in the house. We have turned the house into a home, a church, an office, a workshop, a playground… The house suddenly took on dimensions we had never known before. We truly feel enriched, especially as regards our relationships with one another."

Géza put into words what Cardinal Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, had written three days earlier in his letter published in L'Osservatore Romano. The Cardinal underlines what a hidden treasure we have, and what a hidden treasure we ourselves are as a family. We bring you excerpts from the letter.

Hits: 55

On the day the Church keeps the memorial of Sts Joachim and Anne, Jesus's "grandfather and grandmother", Pope Francis called on young people to make a gesture of tenderness towards the elderly, especially those who are alone, in their own homes or in care homes, those who have not seen their loved ones for months. "Dear young people, every one of these old people is your grandfather or grandmother! Don't leave them alone! Use the imagination of love - telephone them, contact them by video call, send them messages, listen to them and, if possible and in keeping with health guidelines, go and visit them. Offer them an embrace. They are your roots. A tree cut off from its roots does not grow, and gives neither flower nor fruit. That is why it is important to be united and connected to our own roots. "What has blossomed on the tree comes from what lies beneath the ground" - as the Argentine poet Luis Bernárdez says. That is why I invite you to give a great round of applause to all our grandmothers and grandfathers!", concludes Pope Francis.

Hits: 69

This Is the Most Beautiful Day of the Year, Precisely Because You're with Family and Friends

Christmas is the most favourable moment of the year to express and share the strength of goodness, of love given and received, above all within the family, among people who love one another.

In the magic of the Christmas spirit, we can all find in our hearts that precious ingenuity we had as children: that inclination towards goodness and sincerity that we need to nurture at every stage of life.

                                                                            Andrea Bocelli

The operatic tenor Andrea Bocelli has released a new Christmas album, on which he sings every song together with his son Matteo and daughter Virginia, entitled "A Family Christmas". Although Matteo (24) has not yet fully matured as a musician the way his father has, he strongly resembles him. Virginia, Andrea's 10-year-old daughter, on the other hand, brings a wonderful childlike innocence to the whole album. Though still a little girl, she shows a capacity for musical performance that her father should be proud of.

We are especially moved by the song "Il Giorno più Speciale". This song feels much more personal than the other songs on the album. A family singing together - it almost looks like an impromptu family sing-along on Christmas Eve.

Hits: 79

Let Us Set Out Anew from Nazareth!

God's blessing on the house — text found on a medallion, recited at the requiem Mass for A. G. Matoš.

The text on the medallion reads: God's blessing on the house/Where there is faith — there is love/Where there is love — there is also peace/And where there is peace — there God reigns, the father of your home.

"The ancients felt that our body is a house. For only he is truly a man who is a living house of God: templum Dei absconditi (temple of the hidden God), a living church, where the spirit is the priest, the heart the altar. The eyes — two wondrous windows." 

                                                                                             A. G. Matoš

"Our authors, already familiar to readers of these pages, Raffaella and Ciro, in their book 'We Need Nazareth' (C'è bisogno di Nazaret), have set about the task of seeking answers to what the Gospels do not tell us about the life of the Holy Family. Their work helps readers enter the house of the Holy Family in Nazareth in order to picture the days, the feelings, the difficult decisions, the indescribable joys. But not in order to tell fairy tales, but rather to help each of us illuminate our own history through the appearing of the Lord's glory."

The greater part of Jesus' life unfolds in Nazareth, in the house of Joseph and Mary. Those roughly thirty years are described as the "hidden" years, since Scripture is silent about them, a silence broken only by two events: the Holy Family's flight into Egypt and the finding of Jesus in the Temple at the age of twelve. These three decades were probably spent in the ordinary duties of everyday life in Nazareth.

Hits: 78

© 2019 Udruga HOD ZAJEDNO | izrada i održavanje M2