"The Church, the Christian community, is the trustee of an extraordinary 'treasure' that it has received from the Lord—that is, marriage and the family that it engenders—which has continued to be enriched over the centuries by the long history of holiness, theological thought and wisdom that should be transmitted to the entire society. Marriage is like a 'primordial sacrament' in the plan of creation that becomes the 'sacrament of grace' in the project of redemption." These are some of the words pronounced by the President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, on Sunday, March 1st, in Barcelona, in the course of his lecture, "The Gospel of the Family in a Globalized World."
This lecture, fit into a cycle of Lenten Conferences organized for the third consecutive year by Purísima Concepción parish, particularly highlighted the hunger in today’s society for gestures of kindness that reconcile people, in friendship and goodwill. Faced with this need, Monsignor Paglia maintained, the family can really be a protagonist, with its love and daily courage: indeed, "in a world marked by loneliness and violence, marriage and the Christian family must be the 'good news' that helps to promote the new humanism so desperately needed in contemporary society. The moment is favorable, however, not because it is easy to spread the good news, but because it is the only truly effective response to the need for love that is emerging all over the world."
At the end of the lecture, many of those present complimented the President of the PCF, thanking him for his words. A woman in the audience, Chiara Curti, commented on the meeting, saying that it was "an uplifting moment, in which we once again had the opportunity to put the family's true value in the center. Sometimes the daily grind smothers 'the first love:' its commemoration is an essential gift."
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