Valedictory Address at 11th HLI Asia Pacific Conference, Bangalore, India
His Eminence Varkey Cardinal Vithayathil, CSSR, Major Archbishop of Emakulam-Angamaly
November 2004



I am grateful to be invited for this Asia Pacific Congress on love, life and family held here in Bangalore. I take this occasion to congratulate the organizers, those who presented papers and the participants who have come from different parts of Asia.

There was this simple question in the Tridentine catechism: why did God create you? The answer was simple: to love and serve God and finally to enjoy the eternal happiness of heaven. This in a nutshell, is human destiny, whether lived in family life, priestly life or in the religious way of life. Human life is a pilgrimage to God the Father here on earth celebrating love, which is God Himself. Celebration of love is celebration of life.

Every Christian home celebrates three main occasions of life: birth, marriage and death. Celebration of birth is the celebration of new life born of the love of couples. Celebration of marriage is celebration of love of couples meant for generating new life. Celebration of death is the celebration of grateful love for the life received from the dead person whether parent, grandparent or other relatives. Celebration on the occasion of religious profession and priestly ordination celebrates Divine Love meant to generate Divine Life.

Celebrations on the occasion of death anniversaries remind children and grand children how much their elders had suffered and toiled and spent themselves to give them life and growth. The name of this commemorative celebration known as Chatham is the Dravidian version of the Sanskrit word Sradham which in its root means attention and remembrance. It is a memorial which calls for attention to patrimony, genealogy, the roots of the progeny, root of life from where one came.

St. John Chrysostom says that where there is love there is festivity (ubi Caritas ibi est festivitas). There are love-meals. There are also prayers offered to God to remind one of the ultimate source of all love and life which is God. Often there will be celebration of the Eucharist where "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

The theme of your seminar is "Family, A conscious choice for happiness." The greatest happiness human beings experience is when they give and receive love. In all the celebrations of love and life that I mentioned earlier, love was unselfish and demanded sacrifice. Parents communicating life to their children, married people growing in love until death, the sacrifices that ancestors who have died have endured for the sake of their descendants shows that love in this world grows only through sacrifice. Those who have the good fortune to grow up in a happy and loving family know this truth. A love that refuses to get out of the self is selfish and leads to death while love desiring always the good of the other is life giving and truly joyful. Christian marriage based on such unselfish love is the way of experiencing true happiness in married life.
Love is a gift received, which has to be restituted. Every debt, we know, calls for restitution. Love that is not open to life has become the curse of our generation, a filicidal curse. That is what our Holy Father means when he bemoans the culture of death propagated by the anti-life attitudes today. Contraception, abortion, same sex marriages are expressions of selfishness which do not lead to true happiness.

Moreover they are serious violations of the law which God who is love has given for the happiness of human beings.

Sex - saturated media, scientific separation of sex pleasure from procreation, easy
availability of contraceptives lead many to grave sin and loss of true peace. In a world of
consumerism, sensual pleasures are straining the very fabric of family life to its limits. Emancipation of women, tensions of both partners employed, late marriage, urbanized atomic families, high cost of child-rearing, invasion of television and internet into homes, unemployment etc. are realities with which every modem family has to cope. How well can a Christian lead his/her family life in these difficult times is an issue which I hope you have discussed during this seminar.

There are two essential things for happy and authentic Christian family life, one is Christian asceticism and the second is commitment to Christ the crucified and risen.

In the early Church the Christian Fathers and Doctors used Homer's Odysseus as an example of man's happy voyage through the world to bring home these two dimensions to live without being shipwrecked. The return of Ulysses to his homeland was through an island where Sirens lived. These sirens were mythical sea-nymphs who enticed travelers with their music to the shallow shores of rocks where disaster befell the ships so that these nymphs could kill them. Being wise enough Ulysses the Captain of his ship put wax in the ears of his fellow travelers and asked the sailors to bind him strongly with ropes on the wood of the mast. Thus the travelers would not hear the sweet music of the sirens and want to go in the direction of danger. The captain could hear the sweet music and keep off the dangerous coast but he could not, even if he were enticed by the music, swim ashore since he was tied to the mast.

Putting wax in the ears of the sailors according to the Fathers indicated the dimension of asceticism, custody of the senses. The importance of this cannot be minimized in this consumeristic culture in which we live. The temptations of the Sirens reach even the interior of the family and home through the TV, internet and other media.

St. Ambrose says: "The meaning of this tale is this: the sirens symbolize singing lust and flattery. Just so the lust of the world (Saeculi Voluptas) delight us with flattering
flesh in order to deceive us."

Hippolitus commenting on the same story says that in order to ward off the dangers to our salvation we should exercise a control over senses like the travelers who had their ears closed in order not to hear the music of the sirens but also have ourselves tied to the
wood of the cross.

This brings us to the second aspect. We cannot be Pelagians who need no grace.

We cannot save ourselves by our own asceticism. That is why St.Paul said in despair: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Rom.7:24-25). The binding of Ulysses to the wood of the mast is interpreted by Fathers as indicating the need of being bound to Christ Crucified and risen.

Therefore St. Ambrose says that rather than stopping our ears we should open them to the voice of Christ and bind ourselves to Christ not with physical bonds, as did Ulysses but with the bonds of the Spirit.

This story and the interpretation of the Fathers underscore the importance of asceticism with deep commitment to the crucified Christ.

There are so many sirens in the world of today threatening the happiness of married life. One could keep clear of these sirens if in married life there is frequent listening to the word of God, reception of the sacraments and daily prayer. These are the means that draw down upon married people the grace of God which is sufficient and necessary to support their weakness and help them to live always in self-less love and happiness. Cut off from God through sin one cuts off from the source of life, love and happiness.

I hope you have, as the fruit of this seminar, well thought out programs and projects to help families all over Asia and the Pacific to cope with the world in their Christian pilgrimage celebrating love and life.

Thank you. God bless you.