Mission Intention for the Month of September

(September 1, 2008) Pope Benedict XVI has given the Mission Intention for the month of September: That, faithful to the sacrament of Matrimony, every Christian family may cultivate the values of love and communion in order to be a small evangelising community, sensitive and open to the material and spiritual needs of its brothers. The Holy Father reminds us that God wanted to be born and grow up in a human family and in this way consecrated the family as the first and ordinary means of his encounter with humanity. Jesus living the life of obedience at Nazareth shed light on the primary value of the family in the education of the person. Recounting the episode of Jesus lost in the temple, the Pope explains that this episode reveals the most authentic and profound vocation of the family, namely to accompany each of its member on the path of the discovery of God and the plan he has for each one. In this way the Holy Family of Nazareth is truly the prototype of every Christian family, which united in the Sacrament of Marriage, and nourished by the Word and Eucharist is called to carry out the mission of being the sign and the instrument of unity for the entire human race. The Holy Father invites all to invoke the protection of Mary and Joseph over their families that they may sustained in love and that they take away all the disintegrating forces that are so common in today’s world.