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Amoris laetitia: Rediscovering Gospel through challenges facing families
On the first day of the meeting dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Amoris laetitia, Sr. Helen Alford calls for ways to encourage young people to embrace the “great challenge” of family life.
By Edoardo Giribaldi
“Who do you think is up there in the sky?” two parents ask their young son on the shores of Lake Trasimeno, not far from Assisi, hoping to begin talking to him about God. At first, he gives the familiar answers: the sun, the moon, the stars. “But don’t you think God is in heaven too?” they finally ask. The child replies firmly: “Oh no, no. God is here, with us.”
Sister Helen Alford, a Dominican Sister of St. Catherine of Siena and President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, began her meditation with this brief, true story.
She delivered it on the afternoon of 7 October in the Paul VI Hall, during the opening session of the meeting with the heads of the Eastern Churches and the presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences, entitled “Ten years after Amoris laetitia: Proclaiming the Gospel with families today.”
Pope Leo XIV opened the proceedings with an address, following words of welcome from Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, and Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
Joy and responsibility
Addressing those gathered in the Paul VI Hall, Cardinal Grech stressed that, as representatives of the “lifeblood of the universal Church,” they will bring the joys, hopes and concerns of families around the world to the coming days’ discussions.
This responsibility calls for listening and discernment, guided by the Holy Spirit “along the paths of her mission.”
Cardinal Farrell described the Pope’s presence as “a source of immense joy.”
He said the meeting offers an opportunity to reflect on the journey undertaken by the various Churches and the difficulties that lie ahead: “Now is the time to reflect on the journey we have undertaken in our Churches, to look ahead to the challenges that await us, and to ask ourselves what might make the proclamation of the Gospel more relevant to families, so that they may rediscover and live out their Christian vocation with greater awareness.”
Secularization, individualism, and the pervasiveness of technology are contributing to the “gradual weakening of the transmission of the faith within families,” said Cardinal Farrell.
In this context, it is essential to reaffirm the need for environments that nurture Christian life through relationships, affection, faith and life choices.
Sr. Alford delivers her meditation at the encounter (VATICAN MEDIA)
Proclaiming the Gospel to families
Speaking after Pope Leo XIV, Sister Alford recalled his message of 19 March, which led to this gathering and highlighted the need to proclaim the Gospel “both of and to families.”
Very often, she explained, families are where the Good News is received and from where it reaches the most disadvantaged.
In this way, they live out their dual nature as a “domestic Church” and a “vital cell for transforming the world.”
Preventing a breakdown
Sister Alford noted that many families experience stress and strain, giving rise to tensions and divisions. In today’s world, these should be addressed in the light of Christ’s suffering.
As Amoris laetitia states: “In the darkest hours of a family’s life, union with Jesus in his abandonment can help avoid a breakup.”
Pope Leo XIV echoes this idea in his message, stating that “we must learn to evoke the beauty of the vocation to marriage precisely in the recognition of fragility, so as to reawaken ‘trust in God’s grace’ and the Christian desire for holiness.”
Anatomy of a conversation
Amid this large international gathering, Sister Alford turned to the intimate encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. They meet at a well during the hottest part of the day. As their conversation later reveals, the woman is living in a “fragile and irregular family situation.”
Drawing on reflections by Dominican Father Michael Paluch, Sister Alford examined the conversation as it unfolds.
She described the initial approach, in a “somewhat provocative” way, as a “flirting”: a man and a woman are speaking alone, and their exchange remains ambiguous until Jesus confronts her with the truth: “Go and call your husband . . . and come back here.”
The woman answers with complete honesty: “I have no husband.” He replies: “You are right to say, ‘I have no husband,’ for although you have had five, the one you have now is not your husband.”
She then realizes that she is standing before a prophet and eventually feels compelled to tell the other people in her village what has happened to her.
The stages of evangelization
For Sister Alford, this Gospel episode also illustrates the stages of evangelization. The desire to believe is first awakened. Then comes the stage “we would like to avoid”: confronting the other person’s fragility and weakness.
The person is not condemned, but encouraged to be open to a teaching and to understand it, before ultimately sharing it with others.
The “gaze of Jesus”
Another perspective comes from an idea dear to Pope Francis: the “gaze of Jesus.” His gaze transforms a lonely woman who wanted to avoid others into someone worthy of trust, helping her rediscover her own worth.
This is possible because Jesus sees “her full, created reality”: both her shortcomings and the promise of new life she carries within her.
His way of seeing has particular significance today, because “in order to ‘see’ relationships, we have to be looking for them”. As Sister Alford pointed out, relationships are not physical objects, yet they exist and must be rediscovered through a “relational gaze.”
This is especially important within families, since human social reality—and the home above all—“is made up of relations.”
The Apostolic Exhortations on the family
Sister Alford noted that Pope Francis mentions the Samaritan woman four times in Amoris laetitia.
Pope St. John Paul II does not mention her directly in Familiaris consortio, the other Apostolic Exhortation on the family, but he does refer to passages from her dialogue with Jesus.
Pope Leo XIV presents both texts as an encouragement to “the Church’s doctrinal and pastoral commitment to the service of young people, married couples and families.”
One concept they share is the “law of gradualness”: the human person “knows, loves, and accomplishes moral good by different stages of growth.”
As Sister Alford explained, this is not a “gradualness of law,” “but rather a gradualness in the prudential exercise of free acts on the part of subjects who are not in a position to understand, appreciate, or fully carry out the objective demands of the law.”
Both Popes therefore seek to uphold the ideal—“the law is itself a gift of God which points out the way”—while recognizing that many people cannot “understand, appreciate, or fully carry out the objective demands of the law.”
Experiencing fragility
The two documents were published thirty-five years apart. During that time, “the lived situation of Christian family life has been through many new developments.”
When “social situations are turbulent and changing quickly,” it may be necessary to find new ways to reconcile “both the ‘objective demands of the law’ and the ‘law of gradualness’.”
Sister Alford concluded by calling for ways to “encourage young people to take up the great challenge of marriage and family life.”
They should do so fully aware that “they will experience great fragility as part of the process of realizing its beauty, and that in that fragility, they will find new and unexpected sources of God’s grace and experience a desire for holiness that is their very own.”
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