• Pope Francis: "Guarding harmony in the family, fighting the dictatorship of the self"

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December 26, 2021 "The family is the story we come from". This is the first aspect that Pope Francis wished to underline at the Angelus on today's feast of the Holy Family of Nazareth. "We come from a history interwoven with bonds of love - he observed - and the person we are today is not born so much from the material goods we have enjoyed, but from the love we have received, from the love in the bosom of the family", he said. said the Pontiff.



Perhaps we were not born into an exceptional and problem-free family - continued Francis -, but it is our history, everyone must think 'it is my story', they are our roots: if we cut them, life dries up! ".



According to the Pope, "God did not create us to be solitary leaders, but to walk together. Let us thank him and pray to him for our families. God thinks of us and wants us together: grateful, united, capable of keeping our roots".   



 "To be a family you learn every day", said the pontiff. "Every day, in the family, we must learn to listen and understand each other, to walk together, to face conflicts and difficulties. It is the daily challenge, and it is won with the right attitude, with small attentions, with simple gestures, taking care of the details of the our relationships, "he said again.



"It helps us a lot to talk in the family - he said 'off the cuff' -, talking at the table, dialogue between parents and children, dialogue between siblings, helps us to live this family root that comes from grandparents, dialogue with grandparents" . According to Francis, "to safeguard harmony in the family, we must fight the dictatorship of the self. It is dangerous when, instead of listening to ourselves, we blame ourselves for mistakes; when, instead of having gestures of caring for others, we become fixed in our needs; when , instead of talking, we isolate ourselves with the mobile phone, it is bad to see everyone at the table with the mobile phone, talking with the mobile phone; when we accuse each other, always repeating the usual phrases, staging a comedy already seen where everyone wants to be right and at the end a cold silence falls: that sharp cold silence,after a discussion. This is bad ", the Pope said. 



 "I repeat a piece of advice - he said again -: in the evening, after all, make peace. Never go to sleep without having made peace, otherwise the next day there will be the 'cold war'! Equesta is dangerous, because a story of reproaches, a story of resentments. How often, unfortunately, conflicts arise in the home from too long silences and untreated selfishness! Sometimes it even leads to physical and moral violence ", added the Pontiff. "This tears harmony and kills the family. Let's convert from I to you. What must be most important in the family is the you. And every day, please, pray a little together, to ask God for the gift of peace ", added Bergoglio. "And let us all commit ourselves - parents, children, the Church, civil society - to support,defend and care for the family, which is our treasure! ", he concluded.



"Speaking of the family, a real concern comes to me, at least here in Italy: the demographic winter, it seems that many have lost the illusion of going on with children, many couples prefer to remain without or with only one child. It is a tragedy" , the Pope said at the end of the Angelus speaking to the faithful in St. Peter's Square.

"We are doing everything possible to regain awareness, to win this demographic winter which - underlined Francis - goes against our families, our homeland and our future".