I wish to express my sincere greetings and my thanks for the invitation addressed to me by His Eminence Cardinal Sin, President of the National Council, organiser of the Fourth World Meeting of the Family, and to His Eminence Cardinal López Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, to participate in this International Theological-Pastoral Conference on the Family.
The theme assigned to me, "The Christian Family and the Church's Mission of Evangelisation" presents a very particular aspect in today's context of the Church's Mission "ad intra" and "ad extra", in which the Christian family is portrayed, on the one hand as an object and, on the other, as a subject and agent of evangelisation.

The Family and Evangelisation

One of the most significant and richest fruits result of the Second Vatican Council was certainly that of the affirmation of the missionary nature of the Church: "The Church on earth is by her very nature missionary, since according to the plan of the Father, it has its origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit." This realisation comprises the awareness that all Christians, through baptism and each one according to his or her specific vocation, are responsible agents in the missionary task of the Church.

From this perspective, it is significant and providential that in the post-conciliar period, whilst the institution of marriage and the family were subjected to multiple crises and challenges, a regard for and a significant deepening of the dignity and mission of the Christian family may have taken shape. Both the teachings of the Magisterium in its various directives and theological-pastoral reflection have helped the Christian community to rediscover the biblical and theological riches of the reality of marriage and the family, drawing attention to their innate and specific evangelising mission.
John Paul II has offered every Christian Community continual reminders and orientations on the centrality of the family in and through its ecclesial and social life. His teachings, in the Familiaris Consortio , the Apostolic Exhortation at the conclusion of the 1981 Synod of Bishops and in the Letter to Families on the occasion of the Year of the Family in 1994 , have achieved a rich synthesis on the duties of the Christian family in today's world. What is valid for the universal Church has been repeated with specific emphasis for the Christian community of the different cultural contexts, bearers of values and of complementary testimonies of family life, in the continental Synods, celebrated in preparation for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.
This richness of the teachings of the Magisterium was prepared, accompanied and developed by a biblical-theological and pastoral reflection, involving, not only experts, but, in ever more discerning ways, the Christian family itself. In this connection I briefly intend to analyse three aspects of the evangelising mission of the Christian family.
a. The foundation of the missionary activity of the family, in addition to that in the original call of each of its members, is rooted in Baptism and Confirmation and is established in conjugal love, as a specific fundamental choice of the Christian spouses: in their participation in the paschal mystery, they become effectual signs of the great covenant between God and his people, between Christ and the Church.
b. The predominant sphere of the evangelisation of the family is the very context of the family itself, where mutual evangelisation is developed daily between the husband and wife and between parents and children, in an unending process of witness and proclamation of the Gospel from generation to generation.
c. The dynamism of conjugal and family love naturally tends to express itself as an evangelising dynamism to those outside the family community, so that, in its own way, it may be realised in the Christian community, in civil society and "to the ends of the earth".

1. The Christian family, a community of love for evangelisation.

The Church defines the nature of her universal mission first of all in relation to the mystery of the Trinity. Everything originated from the love of the Father who, has lived eternally in relationship with the Son and the Spirit and, in the fullness of time, has shared with men the mission of Christ and the Spirit. The fruitfulness of inter-Trinitarian love which is manifested in creation and in the promise of salvation, of which Israel was the chosen guardian and completed in Christ: ["This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him. Love consists in this : it is not we who loved God, but God loved us and sent his Son to expiate our sins" (1 Jn. 4:9-10); "For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (Jn. 3:16).]
Salvation history portrays the revelation of a God who works unceasingly according to the logic of love. From this viewpoint in the biblical account there emerges the repeated divine offering of a covenant with humanity [through the covenant with Noah (cf. Gen. 8:15-9:17), with Abraham (cf. Gen. 17), with David (cf. 2 Sam. 7:; Ps. 89; 1 Chr. 17) with Moses (cf. Ex. 19-24) and finally in the "new and eternal covenant" in the blood of Christ (cf. Lk. 22:20; 1Cor. 11:25). In passing from the old to the new covenant, we hear the voices of the prophets, who describe the covenant between Yahweh and his people in terms of spousal love elevated to signs of divine love (cf. Jer. 3:1-13; 3:31-34; Ezech. 16:8-63; Is. 54:1-10).] The same conjugal symbolism will be taken up again by Paul to exemplify the great mystery of the love of Christ for the Church (cf. Eph. 5:21-33).
While not overlooking the precautions suggested by analogical language, it is obvious from the biblical texts that the vocation of spouses is to be, in their conjugal and family life, a credible and significant sign of the love of God for humanity and of Christ for the Church. The conjugal life of Christians must correspond to the model of the Great Covenant that has its full and unequivocal expression in the Cross. From this it is to be understood that their mission is that of becoming the privileged manifestation of that Covenant established in the blood of Christ, witnessing to all "Good News" in such a way that, in the life of Christian spouses, Christ continues to give glory to the Father, convoke calling his Church together in communion and giving Himself for all humanity.
[ This plan of salvation "flows from the "fountain-like love", that is from the love of God the Father" fulfilled in the redemptive love of Christ and entrusted to the Church animated by the Spirit. From the Trinitarian foundation of mission it clearly appears that the mission of the Church consists in accepting, announcing and implementing the Father's loving plan, making present always and everywhere the salvific work of the Son and allowing herself to be animated by the Spirit. The Church, the universal sacrament of salvation, is called to accomplish God's saving plan in history, implanting therein the seed and the yeast of the Kingdom of God. Her whole life and all her actions are marked by Trinitarian love. ]
This dynamism of love is passed on to families by the Church and by them passed on to the Church, in such a way that the essential missionary activity of the Church is carried out in a characteristic way in the family's missionary activity. In other words: the Christian family, in its own way, shares in the missionary nature of the Church. In this perspective "the family stands as a symbol, witness and participant of the Church's motherhood".
The missionary nature of the Church, therefore, finds in the family "the domestic Church" a concrete realisation, a place of privileged, though partial fulfilment of the mission of the greater Church. The daily commitment of developing and deepening the communion of love between husband and wife, and between parents and children, is the irreplaceable form of the authentic missionary activity of the Christian family. Each external witness and proclamation will only be credible and efficacious if it is the fruitful expression of conjugal and family love. When a Christian family is a credible sign which recalls the love of God acting in history, it fulfils its vocation and essential mission, through its own life proclaiming the Gospel of love and contributing to the development of a civilisation of love. Two baptized people, consecrating their love, accepting that God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, makes their love the sign and "joyful proclamation" of how the Father loves men, of how Christ loves the Church; they offer God their love, because they place themselves at Christ's disposition for the salvation of the world.
This theological identity of the Christian family, transformed into a coherent witness of life of the Christian spouses today becomes a sign of contradiction to a mentality and a praxis that trivialises sexuality, empty of all serious commitment to the marriage contract, tending to destroy the institution of the family at its foundation.
The evangelisation of the Christian family because they live the sacrament of matrimony consistently, is an increasingly earnest requirement in a world that tends towards globilisation, giving rise to multi-ethnic and multi-religious society opening out diverse cultural contexts to the Christian community. In this situation the task of the Christian family in safeguarding its proper dignity and the vast basis of their specific evangelising mission becomes more important. And it is this radiant horizon which opens out to the Christian family so that it may enrich and deepen the awareness of its own identity and its own missionary task. To be a community of love, animated by the gift of communion which comes from the Holy Spirit, is the basis of the evangelising mission of the Christian family.

2. The Family - the Evangelised and Evangelising Domestic Church.

"Spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross" , that is the spouses are called, through the authenticity of their love, to make visible, to make Christ's love for his Church a living reality in the world. In other words we can say: the contract of love, the covenant between Christ and the Church is the model, the source, the reference point of conjugal Christian love and conjugal Christian love is the visible and efficacious sign of the covenant between God and humanity, fully achieved in Christ.

The identity, that is the essence of the married couple and the Christian family, will not be complete if the if it does not understand the development of relations with the Church. It is the Church that evangelises the Christian family: with the proclamation of the Word of God, the Church reveals its true value to the family; with the sacraments the Church enriches and invigorates the family with the grace of Christ, for its sanctification; with the proclamation of the new commandment of love, the Church animates and guides the Christian family in the service of love.
The family, born of the sacrament of matrimony, becomes a living reflection, an historical incarnation of the Church: she manifests and proclaims it, makes it present, through it incarnating the mystery of salvation. Not that the family exhausts the reality and mission of the Church, but, it its own way, it really shares in the reality and mission of the Church, in married and family love, revealing and accomplishing the love of Christ. All this not only as a single person, but as a couple who give life to a family community, receptive and expressive of communion, the gift of the Spirit. We have here the recognition of the vocation, the charism and proper ministry of the Christian family. This is not always accepted, and often is not yet, especially in practice, but the awareness is increasingly has a bearing on the feelings and actions of the Christian community.
For this reason we can say that as the Church lives by witnessing and proclaiming the Word, adoring God in spirit and in truth, placing herself at the service of the history of humanity, so the Christian family lives:
- witnessing and proclaiming to the world the mystery of God love for her, for her children, for all. The more profound and visible is the love between husband and wife, between parents and children the more it becomes a sign that reveals what it means to be Christian: to love as Christ loved us, to understand, to forgive ...; - with their own lives rendering spiritual worship to the Lord: married-family life with the education of the children, the sharing of joys and sorrows, mutual help .. all becomes the place and content of the action of the cultural action of the family. It this context various religious actions have been inserted, such as married and family prayer, penitence and the Eucharist, the reading of the Word ... ;
- introducing into society the values of life, personal encounters, free self-giving, generous openness to the needs of others, welcome and solidarity.
This is accomplished in meetings for and with other families, in the school, in social engagements. It is possible to undertake all this if we start from the premise that the Christian family is a community which is brought up on love, in a continual journey of self-evangelisation, to be always faithful to its mission-identity.
What we have said risks remaining as an academic exercise, if we do not ask ourselves how Christian family values may be announced and implemented in our present society, which lives in concrete cultural contexts. There are various risks to be avoided, such as discouragement, defeatism, resigned indifference or utopian perfectionism, whereas the method of all pastoral action should envisage respect for the law of graduality, should express a healthy realistic optimism, relating to the Gospel and history.
This derives from a continuous evangelisation of marriage and of the family, promoting relevant initiatives in individual families, in groups of families, in all parish and diocesan communities. The suggestion must bear in mind both the present negative values such as hedonism, consumerism individual subjectivism, the negation of the values of fidelity and fruitfulness, and the perennial values of a love that is fully human, unqualified, exclusive, faithful and fruitful.
When married love is lived in its most authentic nature, it is expressed in every life situation, becoming a witness, proclaiming and realising the Kingdom of God: "it is in married and family love ... that the Christian family's participation in the prophetic, priestly and kingly mission of Christ and his Church finds expression and realisation. Therefore, love and life constitute the nucleus of the saving mission of the Christian family in the Church and for the Church".
The conjugal love of the spouses is fully expressed in fatherhood and motherhood, the fruit of their fecund love, which makes them co-responsible for the gift of life, by protecting, developing, educating and evangelising: "Christian couples are, for each other, for their children and for their relatives, cooperators of grace and witnesses of the faith. They are the first to pass on the faith to their children and to educate them in it. By word and example they form them to a Christian and apostolic life".
The grace of the Spirit, through the sacrament of matrimony enables Christian spouses to be witnesses of the love f God through their paternal and maternal love, which constitutes the indispensable fertile ground of all effective education. The family environment, therefore, becomes the place of a continuous and mutual evangelisation. The propagation of "family catechesis" is certainly a privileged way to make Christian parents aware of their vocation and mission of educators, , so as to involve them directly in the itinerary of initiation to the Christian life for their children, for forming them for an active participation in the life f the ecclesial community in all its aspects.
Starting from the Council the calls for the necessity of evangelising the family have multiplied, so that they may recognise and assume their evangelising mission. It is their indispensable and inalienable, original and primary duty to educate their children in the essential values of life, collaborating with the other educational bodies. It would be a serious inconsistency for the parents to request baptism for their children, without giving continuity and a gradual development of their Christian formation. This negligence would mean a renunciation of their triple prophetic, priestly and kingly ministry.
An authentic evangelisation, if it does not want to be unrealistic, but wishes to penetrate comtemperary culture, must directly involve the family, at one and the same time party to and receiver of ardent evangelisation. The present cultural situation, on the other hand, should not discourage the Christian family, but should rather prompt them to deepen the awareness of their dignity, which is a gift of the Spirit, to be witnesses and credible announcers of the gifts they have received. Thus a fruitful communication of blessings and graces will be accomplished among the Christian community in its entirety and its vital cells, the "small domestic Church".
The community of believers is called to offer, primarily and above all, the concrete witness of a life lived with theological insight, genuinely inspired by faith, hope and charity, and a credible response to the question of meaning. This centrality of direct witness in the transmission of the faith has profoundly changed the physiognomy of the Christian community: the great territorial community is progressively being transformed into a "family of families", in a community of small groups in which true and deep relationships have been established
and active and participating roles have develop.
In the specific area of relations between marriage and the ecclesial community, Christian married couples need the theological witness of other Christian couples, An this witness is credible and is accepted in the measure that it draws attention to a deep coherence between the faith that the couple profess and the life that they lead.
The calls that the Christian couple set the community vary according to the different stages of their history. The first need is born before the couple are formed: it is the remote preparation for marriage: the prospect of a vocational course needs to be offered to adolescents. The immediate preparation for marriage, which should be a more formative than an informative course, presenting them with their otherness as a completion of the itinerary of identity and not in opposition to this, the relationship as an encounter of communion and not of exploitation, the couple as a relational entity to be built and nourished. The community participation in the celebration of the marriage rite, helps the spouses to understand the profound values that underpin the marriage liturgy, and take a solemn pledge to support the new family in their faith journey; then there is the welcome into the community of the young Christian spouses who often leave the area, or even the city in which they have lived, and it gives support to the on-going formation of the spouses; there is, finally, help in the witness of faith for the children who need teachers in the faith and, therefore, various adult figures to refer to among their relatives. A community which partners and accompanies the life of the spouses, which welcomes them by sacramental witness, which undertakes their growth in communion, can finally become the one reliable witness of the validity of the sacramental journey of the spouses, of the maturity of their love which is expressed more in the completion of the journey than in its still timid and uncertain beginning.
What each couple of Christian spouses asks of the community, should become its explicit task to give back, as a conjugal ministry, to other couples in the same community. Between the family and the ecclesial community there exists a mutual prediction. The community should witness its faith in the family and the family should offer its gifts to the community, carrying out its own specific charism in it.
Too often, when the fruitfulness of the couple is spoken about, it stops at the consideration of natural procreative fecundity, or just opens out to parental fecundity which is achieved by adoption and fostering. On the contrary lay spouses are also called to undertake an innovative mission of ecclesial fecundity. The Christian family has its own evangelising mission, which bears its own charism, according to the tradition initiated by the first couples of Christian spouses (cf. Acts 18:1-3, 11,18-21, 24-2&). The Christian family carries out its ecclesial mission by witnessing to the values which are their own: welcome, compassion, the promotion of difference; respect for the times and journeys of others, education for the freedom and responsibility of children, mutual respect; the sharing of common projects; the full development of woman, her dignity and her charism; communication directed to communion. An ecclesial community ready to welcome in their fullness the values witnessed to by the Christian family will be able to achieve that full sharing of responsibility and ministry, which gives concreteness to the ecclesiology of communion.

3. The Family at the Service of God's Kingdom in the World.

As the Church finds her "raison d'être" in the mission entrusted to her by Christ to announce to all the Good News of the Kingdom, so the Christian family, in the Church, is invited "to transmit the faith , to sanctify and transform our present society according to God's plan ... by constantly radiating the joy of love and the certainty of hope for which it must give an account". The participation of the family in mission is a response to God's call "to take part actively and responsibly in the mission of the Church in a way that is original and specific, by placing itself, in what it is and what it does as an intimate community of life and love, at the service of the Church and of society".
This opening out to the society and the world is the expression of innate fecundity in a conjugal and authentically Christian family life. The conjugal and family "we" requires, for its logical essence, to open itself out to the ecclesial, social and worldwide "we". Only in "losing" its own life for others, can the family fully discover its true self, its self-understanding and grow towards full development.
Each Christian family conscious of the greatness of its own vocation, indicates the need of weaving a network of friendships, of opening itself out to warm hospitality, sharing a common project of participating in the social economic, political responsibility in its own sphere of life. The strength of love makes it capable of expressing an extraordinary fecundity, which bears the fruits of sharing and solidarity, of encounter and dialogue, of willingness and generosity, of justice and fairness and of reconciliation and peace.
The Christian family is called, by the sacrament of love that establishes it, to be a sign of the love of God in the history of me, thus becoming salt and yeast in the dough of humanity, a light for the world in which it lives. What values would salt have that had no taste, yeast that did not leaven the dough, light that did not give light? There are manifold areas that are opening up to the evangelising witness and action of the Christian family:
- the area of respect for and promotion of human life in its origin, in its development and at its end: "... the role of the family in building a culture of life is decisive and irreplaceable. As the domestic Church, the family is summoned to proclaim, celebrate and serve the Gospel of life";
- the area of social relations at the economic, political and cultural levels, become promoters of the conditions which favour a full development of family values according to the proposals in the Charter of the Rights of the Family;
- the area of international relations, where justice and peace are involved, with special attention to the situation of marginalisation and poverty: the world of the handicapped, migrants, drugs, abandoned minors ... ,
- the area of education, the school, culture, which in a significant way has an influence on the future of the new generation;
- the area of the quality of life, counter to violent manipulation and every indiscriminate exploitation of nature, so as to educate to values of responsibility, moderation and solidarity.
The quality of married and family love is refined and deepened through on-going formation and the constant exercise of making oneself a gift for others, with a serious project of social commitment, which overcomes foolish incidents of a purely emotional nature.
The missionary activity of the family, if it grows in a consistent manner in the family ambience and reaches out to the Christian community and society, opens itself out spontaneously to the mission ad gentes of the Church, placing no limits on its horizons. In fact its prophetic priestly and kingly ministry finds its complete expression when the door to witness and the proclamation of the Gospel to those who are waiting for its first efficacious proclamation. In the present situations the place for the mission ad gentes are extending, because it is no longer sufficient to refer to traditional geographical spaces, since "even in traditionally Christian countries there are regions that are under the special structures of the mission ad gentes, with groups and areas not yet evangelised". Moreover, the "new worlds and new social phenomena cannot be overlooked, let alone "the cultural sectors or modern equivalents of the Areopagus" which require the specificity of the mission ad gentes.
In these new areas of mission the family is called to give its own contribution, as happened in the past, though in a new form corresponding to today's situations. In general the calls to the missionary obligation of the laity are very wide, but specific reference to the commitment to the Christian family is not lacking.
The first ambience of evangelisation the family encounters within themselves, to those members, whom the Christian proclamation has not yet reached in a way vital enough to kindle faith and conversion to Christ, incorporate them in the community of believers . It is a task of great delicacy which presents the faith, through a witness of life and a dialogue lived in charity, to people with whom we share life and affections, but who for various reasons show indifference, to religious matters considering them irrelevant. It is on this soil that married and family love constitute the appeal and the most credible inquiry, becoming resourceful in preparing the favourable conditions for beginning a journey of reflection and conversion.
A second area is composed of the social group in which the family is inserted. The influence of the family, demands from those who call for it a "new evangelisation" so as to reawaken their sleeping faith, to reach out to those who are not Christians. In countries of older traditions, the presence of persons and families coming from other socio-religious contexts is frequently increasing, and who for the first time are coming into contact with the Christian community, also developing relations and communications in a religious ambience, especially when inter-religious marriages take place. Avoiding all mediocre forms of proselytism. but " animated in its own inner life by missionary zeal, the Church of the home is also called to be a luminous sign of the presence of Christ and of his love for those who are "far away", for families who do not yet believe, and for those who no longer live in accordance with the faith they once received. The Christian family is called to enlighten "by its example and its witness those who seek the truth". (LG, 35; AA, 11).
By missionary activity in its own proper ambience they extend the boundaries of the universal mission of the whole Church, by efficaciously contributing to the evangelisation of all the peoples that do not yet know Christ. It is an immense field that opens to the heart of every Christian family, which develops by educating itself to a truly "catholic" spirit and feels itself participating in the missionary eagerness of the whole Church.
The most immediate form of this participation is accomplished when a family welcomes as a gift, fosters, promotes and supports a specific missionary vocation of one of its sons or daughters and when it commits itself to " an educational work which " trains their children from childhood to recognise God's love for all people (AA, 20)"".
So important is the participation of the Christian family for all the initiatives of animation and missionary cooperation that it should be the hallmark of every Christian community.
A further step in participation in the universal mission of the Church is the ready availability of the Christian family to be directly inserted in the mission ad gentes. Naturally it must be treated as an authentic and specific vocation, which calls a family to offer its specific presence to the Church's mission, in communion with the other missionary presences of priests, religious and laity. In this perspective Familiaris Consortio, briefly recalls, the example of the missionary couple at the beginning of the Christian story.
In fact in our times also they are not lacking and there is no shortage of generous responses, to the Church's call, from Christian families, for the most part belonging to Church associations, movements and groups. It is desirable that examples and experience of these missionary insights be better known, but above all that they be realised so as to enrich the missionary presence of the Church in history and in the culture of various nations.
the logic of God, who calls, liberates, sanctifies and sends. When two baptised persons celebrate the sacrament of matrimony, the call becomes a mission: the Christian spouses become participants in the mission which Christ entrusted to the Apostles and to the whole Church. To respond to the call for Christian families means accepting the invitation journey along the way of holiness, which John Paul II addressed to every Christian community for the New Millennium: "The time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this "high standard" of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian community and of Christian families must lead in this direction".
Card. Crescenzio Sepe
Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples