178 Acta Apostolicae Sedis - Commentarium Officiale

own needs, to encounter others and share our lives with them. That is why

it is so important to pray as a family! So important! That is why families

are so important in God's plan for the Church! To rest in the Lord is to

pray. To pray together as a family.

I would also like to tell you something very personal. I have great love

for Saint Joseph, because he is a man of silence and strength. On my table

I have an image of Saint Joseph sleeping. Even when he is asleep, he is

taking care of the Church! Yes! We know that he can do that. So when I

have a problem, a difficulty, I write a little note and I put it underneath

Saint Joseph, so that he can dream about it! In other words I tell him:

pray for this problem!

Next, rising with Jesus and Mary. Those precious moments of repose,

of resting with the Lord in prayer, are moments we might wish to prolong.

But like Saint Joseph, once we have heard God's voice, we must rise from

our slumber; we must get up and act.1 In our families, we have to get

up and act! Faith does not remove us from the world, but draws us more

deeply into it. This is very important! We have to be deeply engaged with

the world, but with the power of prayer. Each of us, in fact, has a special

role in preparing for the coming of God's kingdom in our world.

Just as the gift of the Holy Family was entrusted to Saint Joseph, so

the gift of the family and its place in God's plan is entrusted to us. Like

Saint Joseph. The gift of the Holy Family was entrusted to Saint Joseph

so that he could care for it. Each of you, each of us - for I too am part

of a family - is charged with caring for God's plan. The angel of the Lord

revealed to Joseph the dangers which threatened Jesus and Mary, forcing

them to flee to Egypt and then to settle in Nazareth. So too, in our time,

God calls upon us to recognize the dangers threatening our own families

and to protect them from harm.

Let us be on guard against colonization by new ideologies. There are

forms of ideological colonization which are out to destroy the family. They

are not born of dreams, of prayers, of closeness to God or the mission which

God gave us; they come from without, and for that reason I am saying that

they are forms of colonization. Let's not lose the freedom of the mission

which God has given us, the mission of the family. Just as our peoples, at

1 Cf. Rom 13:11.