Parishes to host conversations around family

Petra Conroy

The word is beginning to spread in the town lands and parishes around the country: the World Meeting of Families (WMOF2018) is coming to Ireland next year, and there are high hopes that Pope Francis is coming too.

Naturally, news of a possible visit from the Holy Father captures a lot of interest: Will he really come? How long will he stay? Where will he visit when he gets here? But the message from Rome is that Pope Francis wants us to look not so much at the visit but at the reason for it. If he comes, it is for the World Meeting of Families, it is to celebrate, support and give encouragement to family and marriage.

In the year running up to August 2018, Pope Francis has given Ireland a particular responsibility: the task of “translating in a special way the teaching of Amoris Laetitia”, his document on marriage and family, so that families will “have a way of deepening their reflection and their sharing of the content”.

In response, the team at WMOF2018 is busy preparing ‘Amoris: Let’s Talk Family! Let’s Be Family’, a whole suite of resources from parish programmes to dynamic animations and concrete activities.

Resources

These resources aim to encourage reflection on the vision of marriage and the family so beautifully presented in Amoris Laetitia, and then to inspire families, parishes and organisations to look for new forms of “missionary creativity” so that we can present “the reasons and motivations for choosing marriage and the family” with more energy and joy, but also with humility and mercy.

The Joy of Love Parish Programme is already being offered across Ireland. Under the guidance of Martin Kennedy, a member of the pastoral team at WMOF2018, dioceses and parishes have been preparing to host a six-part parish based conversation which will guide people through key messages from Pope Francis’ document.

In many parishes, this invitation to conversation around family will begin in the spring, after parish communities have engaged with some of the practical initiatives that accompany The Joy of Love parish programme. This menu of activities ties in with key seasons, celebrations and sacraments throughout the year and aims to communicate messages from The Joy of Love in a way that families of all sorts can connect with – from a Blessing of Homes at Easter to St Valentine’s Day Gift Tokens with a difference.

‘Amoris: Let’s Talk Family Let’s Be Family’ isn’t just for Irish families and parishes: this is a WORLD meeting, and the team at WMOF18 is offering resources for use around the world, working in partnership with iCatholic, Kairos Communications and Ministory. One of the most exciting of these is the Amoris Animations Series. Each two-minute animation presents a key theme from Amoris in a creative, enjoyable but also thought-provoking way: ‘How families can change the world for the better’, ‘The challenges faced by families living in a digital age’ and ‘What do we REALLY mean by love and mercy?’. The animations will be available in several languages and my guess is that they will be one of the big hits of World Meeting 2018 and will be watched far and wide for many years.

Another exciting online resource already in the works is a box set of six television programmes being shot at the WMOF2018 studio set, as well as on location in Ireland and around the world. For those of us who may never make it through a papal exhortation, the programmes will use the shared stories of real families to walk us through the main messages of Amoris Laetitia.

Starting with the idea that, in spite of the messy reality of life, family is a place where we can first experience love, we’ll follow a path through the series that helps us understand what the Gospel of the Family really means for families struggling along day by day.

We’ll be challenged to take a long hard look at what love in marriage means after the rose petals have faded, and to ask if we’re ready to step out of our comfort zones and, as a family of families, to walk with each other in joy, in pain, in brokenness, in love, with renewed energy.

There’ll be a strong focus on concrete suggestions, from family prayer, to good communication skills, to support for couples preparing for and in the early years of marriage. Families supporting families will also be a strong theme throughout. Our website amoris.ie will include suggestions on how to use the animations and television series in various settings.

We can’t talk about family without looking to youth. Part of our WMOF2018 are special resources for children and young people, including resources for schools, a huge focus on family during Catholic Schools Week 2018, animations just for children and studio programmes for and by young people.

Our hope is that all of these tools will help people really look again at family and marriage as a gift of love to the world and will inspire us to better support each other in concretely living this love long after World Meeting of Families has moved on to its next venue.

You can find the resources on www.amoris.ie as each set comes online in the months ahead.