I will be doing a great deal of traveling at the start of this new year. As I write this column, I’m just back from Mexico City where I participated in the solemn Mass that concluded the Sixth World Meeting of Families (Jan. 13-18).
What a joyous celebration it was! The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe was filled to overflowing with people young and old from all over the world, and Pope Benedict XVI addressed us all at the end of the Mass via a special video link-up.
In the days since that great occasion, I have found myself reflecting a lot on the family and what it means. It is a truth that we do not often think about, but the family is at the heart of the mystery of our religion.
In the first pages of Scripture, we hear of the marriage of Adam and Eve and in the final pages we read of the marriage feast of the Lamb, Christ and his church. The promise that God made to Abraham is a promise to families: “By you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.” (Gn 12:3)
To fulfill that promise, our Lord chose to come among us as a member of a family. Jesus chose to share in the most fundamental of human experiences, coming into the world as each one of us did — as a child in a mother’s womb; and he grew in strength and wisdom in the home of a loving mother and father.
He did this to show us the beautiful meaning of the family in God’s plan. The family is meant to be a school of love and a school of holiness. In the family we learn to shed our selfishness, to give of ourselves freely and joyfully and to grow in our knowledge and love of God.
In the family we see a glimpse of what God wants for every one of us. The blessing that God wants to bestow on every person in every family on earth, is this — adoption into his own family, the family of God, the church.
We enter the family of God in baptism, by which we are able to call God our Father. “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God — and so we are!” (1 Jn 3:1)
I wonder, my brothers and sisters: do we try hard enough to cultivate that joyful sense that St. John and the early Christians had? Do we treasure the great gift of belonging to the family of God, of being God’s own sons and daughters? Do we treasure the great gift of our own families?
The early church celebrated the extended family as the place where our faith and values are nurtured and handed on. St. Paul praised by name St. Timothy’s grandmother and mother, Lois and Eunice, for their witness to teaching the faith in the home. (2 Tm 1:15)
The human family is an icon of the family of God. That is what makes the current crisis of the family in America, and throughout the Western world, so tragic.
The threats against the family today are real. If we do not change course, the family as God intended it — founded on the faithful lifelong union of a man and a woman — may be lost forever.
The church must defend the family against the many threats it faces in the culture, especially against the drive to redefine marriage to include homosexual and other kinds of unions.
But I also believe we need a greater public witness from ordinary Catholics to the crucial importance of the family. This witness can and should take many forms. We can help our neighbors who are experiencing unexpected or difficult pregnancies; we can lend a hand when our neighbors need help with aging parents or sick relatives. We can find many ways to help single parents and working families.
First and foremost, in our homes we need to help our young people to discover the beauty of the church’s teachings on human sexuality and marriage. Our married couples, too, perhaps need to rediscover these truths in their own relationships.
Let us try to make our church here in San Antonio a family of families, a place in which, through the love of parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles and cousins, we may all know the love of God.