Dear people of God, permit me to welcome you all and congratulate the Mother Church for our new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV. May his reign bring restoration of Family values, joy, happiness, blessings, favors, and liberation to the families worldwide, Amen.

 

This year's Family Week, with the theme: The Impact of Environment on the Family Well-Being and Sustainability in the Spirit of Laudato Si, focuses on the importance and significance of a healthy environment for the flourishing of families. The family environment includes both physical, spiritual, and social contexts within which family members grow and develop. The factors, including even the spiritual environment, significantly impact family well-being and blossoming, influencing everything from physical health and development to mental health and social interactions. A healthy environment supports family growth and happiness, while a poor environment can lead to stress, health problems, and developmental delays.

 

Well-being is a state of contentment and prosperity characterized by health, happiness, and positive quality of life. It embraces not just the absence of disease or illness but also a holistic state of physical, mental, emotional, and social health, strongly linked to life satisfaction and a sense of purpose.

In other words, we are talking about family happiness, comfort, safety, welfare, feeling good, functioning well, and healthy relationships with other beings and things in the same environment. In this year's Family Week, Pope Francis (of blessed memory) guides and teaches us how the environment influences family well-being and what we can do to achieve and sustain it. His unique and renowned and encyclical, "Laudato Si - On Care for Our Common Home", guide us through the week-long program.

 

The question is: What is the quality of our own homes where we live? What is our family environment like? What are the conditions in which we live - dirt, stress, toxicity, carelessness, negligence, insensitivity to the suffering members of our families, especially the sick? Is there the presence or absence of domestic violence, abuse, including sexual abuse of children? Are there addicts of substances and alcohol? How do we treat the vulnerable members of our families - the disabled, the widowed, the mentally sick, the elderly, orphans, etc? Is our family environment conducive to children's holistic development - physical, social, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual?

 

Allow me to repeat what I emphasized above: a healthy environment supports family growth and happiness, While poor environment can lead to stress, health problems, and developmental delays, especially in children. The environment in which we live must respect the dignity of every human person in the family. Pope Francis highlights the dignity of the human person in Laudato Si, as an inherent and inviolable quality rooted in being created in God's image. (cf. Gen.1:27). This dignity is a foundation for human rights and duties; every individual possesses unique worth and is valuable regardless of his/her circumstances. His/her dignity is inviolable and unique; therefore, they should not be subjected to exploitation or dehumanization, and each individual is valued for the unique qualities and potential. Remember: cleanliness is next to godliness.

 

To sustain an environment that is friendly to family well-being and development is the responsibility of all in the family: parents who live out their marital love become exemplars to their children and others in the family, especially by shunning domestic violence and other toxic factors; children who show respect to their parents and elders by obeying family rules of the clean environment; other members of the family (aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, in-laws, etc - who live peacefully to provide a healthy atmosphere for the flourishing of families; neighbors who safeguard the environment by appropriately managing waste to avoid unhealthy atmosphere in the community's in which they live.

 

I, therefore, earnestly invite and encourage you to participate actively and fully in the Family Week, recognizing that it is an opportunity to learn and unlearn - to have a more enlightened knowledge of why God created us and how we should care for the environment in which He generously places us; that is, how to keep our environments safe and sound for the well-being of all the members of the family and beyond - where each person experiences good health, happiness, comfort, safety, good feelings, and satisfaction. God bless each member of our families. Amen. Enjoy the week!

 

+Most Rev. Dr. Luka Sylvester Gopep

Auxiliary Bishop of Minna

Episcopal-Chairman, Family and Human Life Unit

CBCN.