Last summer, the Holy Father Francis published a letter on the role of literature in formation (August 4, 2024) addressed to priests, seminarians, pastoral agents and, in general, to Christians who wish to learn to rest by reading, to be culturally formed and to prepare themselves to intervene in the substantive debates that are currently underway in our society.
There is no doubt that we can withdraw for reasons of age, fatigue, weariness or interest from the front line and leave to others the task of forming the heads and hearts of Christians who can contribute to the development of our society. cultural battle which is at a time of special interest.
It is also true that, even if others speak in debates, write in the press, spread the truth of Jesus Christ and his message of salvation and happiness on the Internet, we will not be able to avoid the question, because generations of Christians will come to ask us in the warmth of our trust and friendship, the issues that are in the street.
Facing the wreckage of our time
In the first of the Encyclicals of the Holy Father Francis, ".Lumen Fidei" (June 29, 2013), the pope was referring to the fact that each generation of Christians would have to confront the doctrinal questions that appear more obscure to the companions of our environment.
Precisely, the problem and the current concern is the loss of trust in the Church in so many environments and in broad strata of society. To rebuild trust, it is essential to live with coherence between faith and action, to know the doctrine of Jesus Christ and to know how to communicate it effectively to the people of our time. In other words, we need, as the colloquial language says, "understanding" and also "explanations".
For example, in the case of the abuses committed by some priests and religious throughout the world, we must know what the root causes were: loss of the sense of personal relationships and violation of the freedom and moral authority of persons, loss of a supernatural and human sense, etc. Moreover, it will be necessary to apply as soon as possible all the protocols established by Pope Francis for these problems, as the magisterium of the Church has always done, knowing how to be very close to the victims and their families and also to the culprits so that they do not fall into despair.
Culture and personal cultivation
Within the topics of reading and possible deepening, we must promote the necessary culture to know Jesus Christ and fall in love with Him, to know the doctrine of the Church to identify ourselves with it and to know ourselves to be able to love God and souls more and better.
The theological and scriptural genre is completely on the rise since the book of Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI, who brought to the common heritage of priests the true and weighed contributions of modern exegesis. It is very interesting the collection of books directed by Santiago Guijarro in ediciones Sígueme, as well as the collection of patristics of Ciudad Nueva, the works of Mons. Cesar Augusto Franco and José Miguel García on the first times of Christianity.
To know better the mystery of the Church and the means of sanctification. Precisely, the image of the Church as "Communion" rightly expresses one of the keys of the Second Vatican Council and has been developed by Benedict XVI and the great ecclesiologists of the present time. It is enough to read the manuals of Ecclesiology of the various publishing houses.
Personal holiness
Pope Francis' document "Gaudete et exultate" (Rome March 18, 2018) has helped us to discover the richness and timeliness of the concept of the beatitudes and that of the virtues, as true gifts of God and, therefore, to approach the Christian life as a loving correspondence to an invitation of love, rather than as a strenuous and exhausting effort.
Evidently, this touches very closely on the question of canonizable holiness: how the "Positio" should be written about the life, virtues and reputation for holiness of the servants of God and, consequently, to consider the "heroic virtues" as the abundance of God's grace and the response to God's gift. It will be convenient to read the translation of the book where the commentaries of great thinkers of the time to the "Gaudete et exultate" are collected, soon to be published by the BAC.
Among the conclusions of the recent Congress on Vocations in the Church, held at IFEMA with more than 3,000 participants, nearly seventy bishops and various institutions and dioceses, was the importance of the Christian family as a cradle of vocations. Its role is key to strengthening the Christian fabric and contributing to the future of the Church and society.
The key to the family
The formation of thousands of Christian families is up to all of us: to be "rodrigones" of the families, to be close to the family so that they grow up healthy in an inhospitable environment, in the confluence with other disparate families.
Both "Familaris consortio" of St. John Paul II and "Amoris laetitia" of Pope Francis provide abundant light for the formation of families and for the pastoral care of dysfunctional families. In order to teach how to love, we need to learn how to love. We must teach spouses to love each other because, in many cases, they no longer have the reference of their parents and grandparents.
Obviously, we will need to read many books that are being published in all the publishing houses about the life of prayer, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, meditation on the Gospel, etc. Learning to love will teach us to love in spiritual accompaniment and in conversations with young people.
Friendship and love are rising values in our society. The "New Commandment" lies in "as I have loved you". The key is the personal relationship in prayer.
