VATICAN - Holy Father’s Message: “the service that the Church offers in its marriage and family pastoral care must be able to direct couples to understand with the heart the wonderful design that God has inscribed in the human body, helping them to accept all that is entailed in a genuine path of maturing.”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – On the occasion of the International Congress “Humanae Vitae: Current Importance and Prophecy of an Encyclical” organized by the Pontifical Institute John Paul II for Studies on Marriage and Family and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, the Holy Father Benedict XVI sent a Message to Monsignor Livio Melina, Director of the "John Paul II" Pontifical Institute For Studies on Marriage and the Family, in which he highlighted the importance and relevance of the Encyclical, “which addresses one of the essential aspects of the marital vocation and of the specific path of holiness that follows from it.”
The Pope wrote in his Message: “The possibility to create a new human life is included in the integral donation of the spouses. If, in fact, every form of love tends to spread the fullness of which it lives, conjugal love has its own form of communicating itself: the generation of children. Thus not only is it similar to, but it participates in the love of God, who wills to communicate himself by calling human persons to life. To exclude this communicative dimension through an action directed to prevent procreation means to deny the profound truth of spousal love, with which the divine gift is communicated... At a distance of 40 years since the publication of the encyclical, we can better understand how decisive this light is to understand the great ‘yes’ that conjugal love implies. In this light, children are no longer the object of a human project, but recognized as a genuine gift to receive, with an attitude of responsible generosity before God, first source of human life. This great "yes" to the beauty of love certainly entails gratitude, both of the parents on receiving the gift of a child, and of the child himself on knowing that his life has its origin in such great and receptive love.”
It is also true that in the path of the couple, “there can be grave circumstances which make it prudent to delay the birth of children or even suspend it,” the Holy Father wrote, explaining that here “knowledge of the natural rhythms of the woman's fertility become important for the life of the spouses,” as “the methods of observation, which allow the couple to determine the periods of fertility, allow them to administer all that the Creator has widely inscribed in human nature, without disturbing the integral meaning of sexual donation.”
The Pontiff then congratulated the Catholic University Sacro Cuore, for their support of the Paulus VI International Scientific Research Institute on Human Fertility and Infertility for a Responsible Procreation (ISI), whose task is “to make progress of the methods both of natural regulation of human fertility as well as the natural overcoming of infertility.” Concluding his Message, the Pope commented: “We can ask ourselves, how is it possible that today the world, and also many of the faithful, find so much difficulty in understanding the message of the Church, which illustrates and defends the beauty of conjugal love in its natural manifestation? Certainly, the technical solution, also in important human questions, often seems to be the easiest, but in reality it conceals the fundamental question, which refers to the meaning of human sexuality and to the need for responsible self-control, so that its exercise can become the expression of personal love. On the contrary, as we well know, not even reason is sufficient: It is necessary that the heart see. Only the eyes of the heart can understand the demands of great love, able to embrace the totality of the human being. Because of this, the service that the Church offers in its marriage and family pastoral care must be able to direct couples to understand with the heart the wonderful design that God has inscribed in the human body, helping them to accept all that is entailed in a genuine path of maturing.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 7/10/2008)