in Pennsylvania's First Congressional District
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania's_1st_congressional_district http://archphila.org/pastplan/MAPS/Arch.pdf
and the Central Garden State

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Pope Francis, 6/17/15 General Audience

"In the course of catecheses on the family, today we take direct inspiration from the episode narrated by the Evangelist Luke, which we have just heard (cf. Luke 7:11-15). It is a very moving scene, which shows us Jesus’ compassion for one who suffers -- in this case a widow who has lost her only son -- and it shows us also Jesus’ power over death.

"Death is an experience that concerns all families, without any exception. It is a part of life and yet, when it touches family affections, death never seems to appear to us as natural. For parents, to survive their children is something particularly excruciating, which contradicts the elementary nature of relations that give meaning to the family itself....And the child that remains alone, because of the loss of a parent, or of both, also suffers something similar....

"In the People of God, with the grace of His compassion given in Jesus, many families demonstrate with facts that death does not have the last word. And this is a real act of faith....

"We can console one another in this faith, knowing that the Lord has conquered death once and for all....

"To be born and reborn in hope! – this is what faith gives us. However, I would like to underscore the last phrase of the Gospel we heard today. After Jesus brings this young man back to life, son of the mother who was a widow, the Gospel says: 'Jesus gave him to his mother.' And this is our hope! All our dear ones who have gone -- all -- the Lord will restore to us and we will meet together with them. And this hope does not disappoint. Let us remember well this gesture of Jesus! 'Jesus gave him to his mother.' Jesus will do this with all our dear ones in the family.

"This faith, this hope protects us from the nihilist view of death, as well as from the false consolations of the world, so that the Christian truth 'does not risk mixing itself with mythologies of various sorts,' yielding to rites of superstition, ancient or modern” (Benedict XVI, Angelus, November 2, 2008).

"Today it is necessary that Pastors and all Christians express more concretely the meaning of faith in dealing with the family’s experience of bereavement. The right to weep should not be denied. We must weep in mourning. Jesus also 'wept and was 'profoundly moved' by the grave mourning of a family he loved (John 11:33-37). Rather, we can draw from the simple and strong witness of so many families who, in the very hard passage of death, were also able to pick up the secure passage of the Lord, crucified and risen, with his irrevocable promise of the resurrection of the dead. The work of the love of God is stronger than the work of death. It is precisely of that love of which we must make ourselves active 'accomplices' with our faith! And let us remember that gesture of Jesus: 'And Jesus gave him to his mother.' He will do this with all our dear ones and with us when we shall meet, when death is definitively defeated in us -- and defeated by the cross of Jesus.

"Jesus will restore all families" (Pope Francis, 6/17/15 General Audience).

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