Giovanni Paolo Ramonda, president of the Pope John XXIII Community, is in the bookstores with a book-length interview that invites spouses to develop the special gifts of married life by making them bear fruit
"It is natural for parents to love their children, but the one who has generated them biologically must chose them again in accordance with the criterion of love and, first of all, in the love between spouses. Fr. Oreste Benzi was right in saying that a good father must first be a good husband and a good mother must first be a good wife. The natural element helps, but it should not lapse into sentimentality, because love is not a feeling but a choice, a responsibility, it means guiding and educating." Giovanni Paolo Ramonda, president of the Pope John XXIII Community, speaks about love for children in the book-interview I cinque talenti degli sposi – Provocazioni sul matrimonio e la famiglia (The five talents of spouses - Provocations on marriage and the family” (125 pages, 10 €), published by Sempre Comunicazione.
This volume—which also contains a meditation of a "desert" organized by the Community under the title "The Family: God‘s Masterpiece"—wants to indicate the five talents, with an in-depth reflection on them, that spouses should put to good use, and that, for Ramonda, are specifically "love for the husband and the wife, the love for the creatures that the Lord has entrusted, the talent of working hard, family prayer and welcoming the poor." The author is, moreover, convinced—and this belief is constantly experienced as one reads through the book—that, henceforth, "for today‘s spouses, there are no sermons, no moralizing, but only the invitation to leave their moorings and navigate toward something truly great."