The role of prayer in John Paul II’s Letter to Families 'Gratissimam sane'

Abstract

The aim of the text presented here is to attempt to read, 30 years after the publication of Pope John Paul II’s document Gratissimam sane, theses related to the meaning and role of prayer in family life. This time period does not seem long enough, but between 1994 and 2024, dynamic changes can be observed, whether linked to adetailed exposition of moral theology or to the crises faced by the Catholic Church. Prayer, understood as an act that has both apersonal and acommunal dimension, and both aqualitative and a quantitative one, is a category that is rapidly undergoing the transformations mentioned above. These transformations therefore have an impact on the changes in the reading of the contents of the Letter Gratissimam sane. The desk research method was used to analyze the available secondary data from the scientific literature, reports and the results of our own research.