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March 8, 2018
Mark Zimmermann
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON – Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl has called on all parishes and individual Catholics in the Washington archdiocese to help expand and strengthen the Catholic Church’s marriage and family outreach, guided by Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love.”)
He was joined at a special Mass March 4 at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle by families from throughout the archdiocese for the release of his broad and detailed pastoral plan for implementing “Amoris Laetitia” at the parish level.
After Mass, the cardinal personally greeted the families in attendance – they represented the archdiocese’s 139 parishes in Washington and surrounding Maryland – and handed them copies of the plan, titled “Sharing in the Joy of Love in Marriage and Family.”
Cardinal Wuerl in his homily invited local Catholics to join in that work. He said hoped the gesture of handing the plan to the families after Mass “will be a sign of the commitment of each parish to renew its efforts to share the joy of marriage and family life.
He said he also hope it would show the archdiocese’s “dedication to try to be there for all who may be facing difficulties, so that we – as Christ’s church – can accompany them on the journey.”
An archdiocesan statement said the cardinal’s pastoral plan is the first of its kind to implement “Amoris Laetitia” at the parish level.
The cardinal’s plan summarizes teaching on marriage and family life found in “Amoris Laetitia”; examines challenges faced by couples and families in contemporary culture; emphasizes Pope Francis’ call to accompany people where they are; offers specific ways that people at parishes can reach out to families in many different circumstances; and lists resources to support people in all stages of married and family life.
In his homily, Cardinal Wuerl noted how in that day’s Gospel reading, Jesus offered “gentle and consistent accompaniment” to the Samaritan woman at the well who had been married many times, an encounter that helped her experience Christ’s love and changed her life. The cardinal said Pope Francis uses the story of that woman to illustrate how people who might be distant or detached from God on their life’s journey can experience God’s love when someone offers them patient accompaniment.
When carried out through the church’s pastoral ministry, such accompaniment, he said, “helps move us beyond hearing the Word, to come to understand it, to appreciate it, to appropriate and live it.”
That reality, he said, underscores the call for Catholics to reach out people where they are and accompany them, and motivated him to issue the pastoral plan to strengthen marriage and family life.
The pastoral plan spells out ways that parish priests, staff and volunteers can support married couples and families. It lists ways they can reach out to engaged and newly married couples; young families; older couples and adults; and families in special circumstances – immigrant families, military families; families with members who have special needs; people in ecumenical and interfaith marriages, single parents and families of divorce, and families with loved ones who identify with same-sex attraction.