A summary of chapter 3 of Pope Francis Exhortation on the Family

1. POST-SYNODAL
APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
AMORIS LAETITIA
OF THE HOLY FATHER
FRANCIS
TO BISHOPS, PRIESTS
AND DEACONS,
CONSECRATED PERSONS,
CHRISTIAN MARRIED COUPLES,
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON LOVE IN THE FAMILY

2. INDEX
1. In the light of the Word
2. The experiences and
challenges of families
3. Looking to Jesus: The
vocation of the family
4. Love in marriage
5. Love made fruitful
6. Some pastoral perspectives
7. Towards a better education
of children
8. Accompanying, discerning
and integrating weakness
9. The spirituality of marriage
and the family

3. Chapter 3
Looking to Jesus:
The vocation of the family
 Jesus restores and fulfils
God’s plan
 The family in the
documents of the Church
 The sacrament of
Matrimony
 Seeds of the Word and
imperfect situations
 The transmission of life and
the rearing of children
 The family and the Church

4. In and among families, the Gospel message should always resound;
the core of that message, the kerygma, is what is “most beautiful, most excellent,
most appealing and at the same time most necessary”. AL58

5. I now wish to turn my gaze to the living Christ,
who is at the heart of so many love stories,
and to invoke the fire of the Spirit
upon all the world’s families AL 59

6. Christ “looked upon
the women and men
whom he met with
love and tenderness,
accompanying their
steps in truth,
patience and mercy
as he proclaimed
the demands of the
Kingdom of God
AL60

7. “Let marriage be held
in honour among all,
and let the marriage
bed be undefiled”
(Heb 13:4).
This divine gift
includes sexuality:
“Do not refuse
one another”
(1 Cor 7:5).
AL61

8. The indissolubility of
marriage - ‘what God
has joined together,
let no man put asunder’
(Mt 19:6) - should not
be viewed as a ‘yoke’
imposed on humanity,
but as a ‘gift’ granted to
those who are joined in
marriage AL62

9. Through his
Church, Christ
bestows on
marriage and the
family the grace
necessary to bear
witness to the
love of God and
to live the life of
communion
AL63

10. Jesus showed the true
sense of mercy, which
implies the restauration of
the allianc AL64
-Cana Jn 2,1
-Family of Lazarus Lc 10,38
-Family of Peter Mt 8,14
-The widow of Nain Mk 5,41
-The Samaritan woman Jn 4,1
-The adulteress Jn 8,1

11. The incarnation of the Word in
a human family, in Nazareth,
by its very newness changed the
history of the world. AL65

12. Nazareth teaches us
the meaning of family life,
its loving communion,
its simple and austere
beauty, its sacred and
inviolable character.
May it teach how sweet
and irreplaceable is its
training, how fundamental
and incomparable its role
in the social order’
(Paul VI, Address in Nazareth,
5 January 1964.) AL 66

13. The Family in Church teaching
Christ the Lord ‘makes himself present to
the Christian spouses in the sacrament
of marriage’ (48) and remains with them.
In the incarnation, he assumes human love,
purifies it and brings it to fulfilment. By his
Spirit, he gives spouses the capacity to live
that love, permeating every part of their
lives of faith, hope and charity AL 67

14. Humanae vitae, - the intrinsic bond between conjugal love and the generation of life:
‘Married love requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in
the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon,
but which at the same time must be rightly understood… The exercise of responsible
parenthood requires that husband and wife, keeping a right order of priorities, recognize
their own duties towards God, themselves, their families and human society’” AL 68

15. spouses, in their mutual love,
receive the gift of the Spirit
of Christ and live their
call to holiness - AL 69

16. ‘marriage based on an exclusive and definitive love becomes an icon
of the relationship between God and his people, and vice versa.
God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love’ AL70

17. The sacrament of Marriage
Jesus, who reconciled all things in himself and redeemed us from sin,
not only returned marriage and the family to their original form,
but also raised marriage to the sacramental sign
of his love for the Church
(cf. Mt 19:1-12; Mk 10:1-12; Eph 5:21-32).

18. In the human family, gathered by Christ, ‘the image and likeness’
of the Most Holy Trinity (cf. Gen 1:26) has been restored, the mystery
from which all true love flows. Through the Church, marriage and
the family receive the grace of the Holy Spirit from Christ, in
order to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s love”. AL 71

19. The sacrament of marriage
is not a social convention,
an empty ritual or merely
the out-ward sign
of a commitment.
The sacrament is a gift
given for the sanctification
and salvation of the spouses,
since “their mutual belong-
ing is a real representation,
through the sacra-mental
sign, of the same
relationship between Christ
and the Church
AL 72

20. Marriage is a vocation, inasmuch as it is a response to a specific call
to experience conjugal love as an imperfect sign of the love between
Christ and the Church. Consequently, the decision to marry and to have a
family ought to be the fruit of a process of vocational discernment. AL 72

21. “Mutual self-giving in the
sacrament of matrimony
is grounded in the grace
of baptism, which
establishes the
foundational covenant of
every person with Christ
in the Church.
In accepting each other,
and with Christ’s grace,
the engaged couple
promise each other total
self-giving, faithfulness
and openness to new life.

22. The couple recognizes these
elements as constitutive of
marriage, gifts offered to them
by God, and take seriously
their mutual commitment,
in God’s name and in the
presence of the Church.
-Faith thus makes it possible
for them to assume the goods
of marriage as commitments
that can be better kept through
the help of the grace of the
sacrament. AL 73

23. Sexual union, lovingly experienced and sanctified by the sacrament,
is in turn a path of growth in the life of grace for the couple.
It is the “nuptial mystery

24. the entire network of relations that they build with their children
and the world around them, will be steeped in and
strengthened by the grace of the sacrament

25. Both are called to
respond to God’s gift
with commitment,
creativity, perseverance
and daily effort.
They can always invoke
the assistance of the
Holy Spirit
who consecrated
their union,
so that his grace may
be felt in every new
situation that they
encounter.
AL 74

26. the ministers of the sacrament of marriage are the man and the woman
who marry; by manifesting their consent and expressing
it physically, they receive a great gift

27. when two non- Christian
spouses receive baptism, they
need not renew
their marriage vows;
they need simply not reject
them, since by the reception
of baptism their union
automatically becomes
sacramental.
The natural order has been so
imbued with the redemptive
grace of Jesus that “a valid
matrimonial contract cannot
exist between the baptized
without it being by that fact
a sacrament AL 75

28. The Gospel of
the family also
nourishes seeds
that are still
waiting to grow,
and serves as the
basis for caring for
those plants that
are wilting and
must not be
neglected.”
AL76

29. … the good of the spouses (bonum coniugum)”, which includes unity, openness
to life, fidelity, indissolubility and, within Christian marriage, mutual support
on the path towards complete friendship with the Lord.

30. “anyone who wants to bring into this world a family which teaches
children to be excited by every gesture aimed at overcoming evil –
a family which shows that the Spirit is alive and at work - will encounter
our gratitude and our appreciation. Whatever the people,
Religion or region to which they belong!” AL 77

31. the Church turns with love to those who participate in her life in
an imperfect manner: she seeks the grace of conversion for them;
she encourages them to do good, to take loving care of each other
and to serve the community in which they live and work AL 78

32. pastors are to avoid judgements that do not take into account
the complexity of various situations, and they are to be attentive,
by necessity, to how people experience and endure distress
because of their condition”. AL79

33. The transmission of life and the rearing of children -
conjugal union is ordered to procreation
“by its very nature”. - The child who is born
“does not come from outside as something added on
to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from
the very heart of that mutual giving,
as its fruit and fulfilment”.

34. From the outset, love refuses every impulse to
close in on itself; it is open to a fruitfulness that
draws it beyond itself. Hence no genital act of
husband and wife can refuse this meaning,
even when for various reasons it may
not always in fact be-get a new life.

35. This is the case because,
“according to the order of
creation, conjugal love
between a man and a woman,
and the transmission of life
are ordered to each other
(cf. Gen 1:27-28).
Thus the Creator made man
and woman share in the work
of his creation and, at the same
time, made them instruments
of his love, entrusting to them
the responsibility for the future
of mankind, through the trans-
mission of human life”AL81
A child deserves to be born of that love,
and not by any other means, for “he or she
is not something owed to one, but is a gift”,
which is “the fruit of the specific act
of the conjugal love of the parents”.

36. “the growth of a mentality that would reduce the generation
of human life to one variable of an individual’s
or a couple’s plans is clearly evident” AL 82

37. if the family is the sanctuary
of life, the place where life is
conceived and cared for, it is a
horrendous contradiction
when it becomes a place
where life is rejected
and destroyed.
So great is the value of a
human life, and so inalienable
the right to life of an innocent
child growing in the mother’s
womb, that no alleged right to
one’s own body can justify a
decision to terminate that life,
which is an end in itself and
which can never be
considered the
“property”
of another
human being
AL 83

38. The State offers educational programmes in a subsidiary way, supporting
the parents in their indeclinable role; parents themselves enjoy the right
to choose freely the kind of education - accessible and of good quality –
which they wish to give their children in accordance with their convictions.
Schools do not replace parents, but complement them. AL 84
EDUCATION

39. The Church is called to cooperate
with parents through suitable pastoral
initiatives, assisting them in the fulfilment
of their educational mission.

40. She must always do this by helping them to appreciate their
proper role and to realize that by their reception of the acrament
of marriage they become ministers of their children’s education.
In educating them, they build up
the Church, and in so doing, they
accept a God-given vocation AL 85

41. Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love,
generous - even repeated - forgiveness, and above all divine
worship in prayer and the offering of one’s life’AL 86

42. The Church is good
for the family, and
the family is good
for the Church

43. Through their union in love, the couple experiences the beauty of fatherhood
and motherhood, and shares plans, trials, expectations and concerns; they learn care
for one another and mutual forgiveness. In this love, they celebrate their happy
moments and support each other in the difficult passages of their life together…

44. The beauty of this
mutual, gratuitous gift,
the joy which comes
from a life that is born
and the loving care of all
family members - from
toddlers to seniors - are
just a few of the fruits
which make the response
to the vocation of the
family unique and
irreplaceable”, AL 88

45. LIST OF PRESENTATIONS IN ENGLISH
Revised 27-5-2020
Advent and Christmas – time of hope and peace
Amoris Laetitia – ch 1 – In the Light of the Word
Amoris Laetitia – ch 2 – The Experiences and Challenges of Families
Amoris Laetitia – ch 3 - Looking to Jesus, the Vocation of the Family
Amoris Laetitia – ch 4 - Love in Marriage
Amoris Laetitia – ch 5 – Love made Fruitfuol
Amoris Laetitia – ch 6 – Some Pastoral Perspectives
Amoris Laetitia – ch 7 – Towards a better education of children
Amoris Laetitia – ch 8 – Accompanying, discerning and integrating weaknwss
Amoris Laetitia – ch 9 – The Spirituality of Marriage and the Family
Beloved Amazon 1ª – A Social Dream
Beloved Amazon 2 - A Cultural Dream
Beloved Amazon 3 – An Ecological Dream
Beloved Amazon 4 - An Ecclesiastical Dream
Carnival
Christ is Alive
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 1 – Church and Family today
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 2 - God’s plan for the family
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 3 – 1 – family as a Community
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 3 – 2 – serving life and education
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 3 – 3 – mission of the family in society
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 3 – 4 - Family in the Church
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 4 Pastoral familiar
Football in Spain
Haurietis aquas – devotion to the Sacred Heart by Pius XII
Holidays and Holy Days
Holy Spirit
Holy Week – drawings for children
Holy Week – glmjpses of the last hours of JC
Inauguration of President Donald Trump
Juno explores Jupiter
Laudato si 1 – care for the common home
Laudato si 2 – Gospel of creation
Laudato si 3 – Human roots of the ecological crisis
Laudato si 4 – integral ecology
Laudato si 5 – lines of approach and action
Laudato si 6 – Education y Ecological Spirituality
Love and Marriage 1-
Love and Marriage 2 – growing up to sexual maturity
Love and Marriage 3 – psychological differences and complimentarity
Love and Marriage 4- causes of sexual attraction
Love and Marriage 5- freedom and intimacy
Love and Marriage 6 - human love
Love and Marriage 7 - destiny of human love
Love and Marriage 8- marriage between Christian believers
Love and Marriage 9 – sacrament of marriage
Lumen Fidei – ch 1,2,3,4
Medjugore Pilgrimage
Misericordiae Vultus in English
Mother Teresa of Calcuta – Saint
Pope Franciss in Thailand
Pope Francis in Japan
Pope Francis in Sweden
Pope Francis in America
Pope Francis in the WYD in Poland 2016
Pope Francis in the U.S.A. -1 ,2, 3
Querida Amazonia
Resurrection of Jesus Christ –according to the Gospels
Russian Revolution and Communismo 3 civil war 1918.1921
Russian Revolution and Communism 1
Russian Revolution and Communismo 2
Saint Joseph
Saint Patrick and Ireland
Sunday – day of the Lord
Thanksgiving – History and Customs
The Body, the cult – (Eucharist)
Valentine
Vocation – mconnor@legionaries.org
Way of the Cross – drawings for children
For commentaries – email – mflynn@legionaries.org
Fb – Martin M Flynn
Donations to - Congregación Legionarios de Cristo
IBAN: ES3700491749852910000635
Swift Code (BIC): BSCHESMMXXX
Dirección banco: Plaza de Parma, 8, Montequinto. CP 41700 Dos
Hermanas, Sevilla. España.

46. LISTA DE PRESENTACIONES EN ESPAÑOL
Revisado 27-5-2020
Abuelos
Adviento y Navidad, tiempo de esperanza
Amor y Matrimonio 1 - 9
Amoris Laetitia – ch 1 – A la luz de la Palabre
Amoris Laetitia – ch 2 – Realidad y Desafíos de las Familias
Amoris Laetitia – ch 3 La mirada puesta en Jesús: Vocación de la Familia
Amoris Laetitia – ch 4 - El Amor en el Matrimonio
Amoris Laetitia – ch 5 – Amor que se vuelve fecundo
Amoris Laetitia – ch 6 – Algunas Perspectivas Pastorales
Amoris Laetitia – ch 7 – Fortalecer la educacion de los hijos
Amoris Laetitia – ch 8 – Acompañar, discernir e integrar la fragilidad
Amoris Laetitia – ch 9 – Espiritualidad Matrimonial y Familiar
Carnaval
Cristo Vive
Domingo – día del Señor
El camino de la cruz de JC en dibujos para niños
El Cuerpo, el culto – (eucarisía)
Espíritu Santo
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 1 – iglesia y familia hoy
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 2 - el plan de Dios para la familia
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 3 – 1 – familia como comunidad
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 3 – 2 – servicio a la vida y educación
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 3 – 3 – misión de la familia en la sociedad
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 3 – 4 - participación de la familia en la iglesia
Familiaris Consortio (FC) 4 Pastoral familiar
Fátima – Historia de las Apariciones de la Virgen
Feria de Sevilla
Haurietis aquas – el culto al Sagrado Corazón
Hermandades y cofradías
Hispanidad
Laudato si 1 – cuidado del hogar común
Laudato si 2 – evangelio de creación
Laudato si 3 – La raíz de la crisis ecológica
Laudato si 4 – ecología integral
Laudato si 5 – líneas de acción
Laudato si 6 – Educación y Espiritualidad Ecológica
Lumen Fidei – cap 1,2,3,4
Madre Teresa de Calcuta – Santa
María y la Biblia
Medjugore peregrinación
Misericordiae Vultus en Español
Papa Francisco en Bulgaria
Papa Francisco en Rumania
Papa Francisco en Marruecos
Papa Francisco en México
Papa Francisco – mensaje para la Jornada Mundial Juventud 2016
Papa Francisco – visita a Chile
Papa Francisco – visita a Perú
Papa Francisco en Colombia 1 + 2
Papa Francisco en Cuba
Papa Francisco en Fátima
Papa Francisco en la JMJ 2016 – Polonia
Queridas Amazoznia 1 un sueños social
Queridas Amazoznia 2 un suepo cultural
Queridas Amazoznia 3 un seuños ecologico
Queridas Amazoznia 4 un sueño eclesial
Resurrección de Jesucristo – según los Evangelios
Revolución Rusa y Comunismo 1
Revolución Rusa y comunismo 2
Revolución Rusa y Comunismo 3
San José
Santiago Apóstol
Semana santa – Vistas de las últimas horas de JC
Vacaciones Cristianas
Valentín
Vocación – www.vocación.org
Para comentarios – email – mflynn@lcegionaries.org
fb – martin m. flynn
Donativos a - Congregación Legionarios de Cristo
IBAN: ES3700491749852910000635
Swift Code (BIC): BSCHESMMXXX
Dirección banco: Plaza de Parma, 8, Montequinto. CP 41700
Dos Hermanas, Sevilla. España.