Wednesday, June 15, 2016

How great is your goodness, Lord, stored up for those who fear you. You display it for those who trust you, in the sight of the children of Adam. (Ps. 31:20)

Luke, Chapter 7, Verse 16

Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming, “A great prophet has arisen in our midst,” and “God has visited his people.”

This was said after Jesus had raised the widow’s son in Nain. There exists no better model for Godly leadership than our Lord. Everything he spoke he did. He had compassion on the high and the low. He had compassion on this poor widow. He looked around him and where he saw misery; he acted. He healed the sick, cast out evil spirits and raised the dead. They came to Him broken and empty and He filled them with faith, hope and love as well as taking physical action to help with their suffering. His focus was to restore the widow her son: to restore the family which is the true tabernacle of the Holy Spirit.

Amoris Lætitia[1] Looking to Jesus: The Vocation of the Family-(58-60)

In and among families, the Gospel message should always resound; the core of that message, the kerygma, is what is “most beautiful, most excellent, most appealing and at the same time most necessary.”

Kerygma refers to the initial and essential proclamation of the gospel message. To put it simply, the kerygma is the very heart of the gospel, the core message of the Christian faith that all believers are call to proclaim. “God loves you” “Christ died for your sins”

This is the first and most important proclamation, “which we must hear again and again in different ways, and which we must always announce in one form or another.”

Our teaching on marriage and the family cannot fail to be inspired and transformed by this message of love and tenderness; otherwise, it becomes nothing more than the defense of a dry and lifeless doctrine.

We need to model the gaze of Jesus and how he “looked upon the women and men whom he met with love and tenderness, accompanying their steps in truth, patience and mercy as he proclaimed the demands of the Kingdom of God.” The Lord is also with us today, as we seek to practice and pass on the Gospel of the family.