Angelus (7 November 1982)

On 7 November 1982, the Holy Father prayed the Angelus in Barcelona, where he spoke of the Sanctuary of Montserrat as the “magnificent Temple of the Holy Family.”

Dear people from Barcelona and all Spaniards.

Virgin of Montserrat! Temple of the Holy Family!

Visiting these two places so loved by you today, I have the grateful impression of breathing the genuine Christian religiosity - so ancient in its roots and always fresh in its manifestations - which gives strength to the spirit of this Comital City (Barcelona - ndt) and of all Catalonia.

1. Up there in Montserrat, Mary continues to accept, in the trusting silence of those who turn to her, the providential risk of offering her virginal womb, in obedience to the will of God the Father, so that men may continually renew their hearts in the image of her Son, Jesus, and under the creative impulse of the Spirit. Mary, Virgin and Mother - present in many Sanctuaries - offers asylum and refuge of salvation to the new humanity restored in Christ, the Church, whose children "not from blood, nor from the will of the flesh, nor from the will of man, but from God they were born” (cf. Jn 1, 13). You too who listen to me are born of God. You are children of Mary! Yes, because the Church is the universal home of the family of God, she is your home.

2. This magnificent Temple of the Holy Family in Barcelona aims to be a visible expression of this mysterious reality, due to the inspiration of a soul particularly sensitive to everything concerning the Church such as Father Giuseppe Mañanet y Vives, and a work of art by the brilliant master Antonio Gaudi. Mysterious but true reality, because Barcelona has been able to give strength to this family vocation, through the unity of faith and the communion of life that animate the daily occupations of its inhabitants.

“Cap i Casal” of Catalonia, Barcelona is admired throughout the world for the well-known, hard-working and enterprising dynamism of its men; However, no less laudable and meritorious, especially for the Church, is the traditional welcoming spirit that throughout history has led you Barcelonans and Catalans to share human and Christian citizenship with countless people, originating from other regions of Spain.

They have formed a hearth among you; next to you their life has perhaps regained meaning and breath; with you they have enthusiastically undertaken this journey of pain and joy which makes its way through existence day after day, as the mysteries of the Rosary, represented in this Temple, remind us.

It is therefore extremely instructive that, all united, you can proclaim before the Church that this city and this region are a great hearth open to Christian brotherhood, where "you are no longer strangers or guests, but you are fellow citizens of the saints and family members of God , built. . . above the Messiah, as the cornerstone" (cf. Eph 2, 19-20).

3. This Temple of the Holy Family is a work not yet finished, but it receives solidity from a principle, it recalls and summarizes another construction made with living stones: the Christian family, an essential human cell, where faith and the love. I hope that the family will always be an authentic "domestic Church" among you, a place consecrated to dialogue with God the Father, a school for following Christ, through the ways indicated in the Gospel, a ferment of coexistence and social virtues in close communion with the Spirit who dwells in the your souls.

In reciting the Angelus now, I would like there to be a particularly affectionate and supplicating intention in everyone's hearts for the mothers of families, whose mission has Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ and Mother of the Church, as its model. “The Virgin - the Second Vatican Council tells us - in her life was a model of that maternal love, with which all those who, in the apostolic mission of the Church, cooperate in the regeneration of men must be animated ( Lumen Gentium , 65).

May God bless your families.

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