Recently a young friend of mine visited the Brompton Oratory in London. As he was quietly praying there he noticed a family of four arrive. The four knelt down, the two young children in the centre flanked by their mother and father. He then noticed that the couple were holding hands behind the children as they all prayed together. He commented to me that the simple scene was so moving that tears came to his eyes. He could see the beauty of the Christian family epitomised in this small praying group.
What he recounted to me brought to my mind Pope Benedict’s prayer during the 2006 Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum in Rome:
Lord Jesus,
the family is one of God`s dreams
entrusted to humanity;
the family is a spark from Heaven
shared with all mankind:
the family is the cradle where we were born
and are constantly reborn in love.
My friend’s “epiphany” in the Brompton Oratory is something with which we all could do: a rediscovery of the transcendent beauty of the Christian family; to see the family – for all its struggles and failings – as “one of God’s dreams”. (In this month’s issue of Position Papers we have a piece about the sad death on the 6th of March of Jose Maria Chema Postigo, the father of a particularly remarkable family which is perhaps the largest in Spain.)
It is in the family that each person discovers the human vocation to love; without the family we are condemned to solitude. The human family is a reflection of the divine family which is the Trinity. This is something pointed out by St John Paul II when he taught: “God in His deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since He has in Himself Fatherhood, Sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love.” It is in the family where we learn to overcome our petty selfishness, to overcome the little caveman which lurks inside us all. In the words of Pope Francis:
The family is the primary setting for socialization, since it is where we first learn to relate to others, to listen and share, to be patient and show respect, to help one another and live as one. The task of education is to make us sense that the world and society are also our home; it trains us how to live together in this greater home. In the family, we learn closeness, care and respect for others. We break out of our fatal self-absorption and come to realize that we are living with and alongside others who are worthy of our concern, our kindness and our affection (Amoris Laetitia, 276)
The world must either choose the way of the family or of solitude.
At the same time, the family is the neuralgic point in the struggle between good and evil in this world. All goodness is oriented towards the kind of communion we find in the family, whereas all evil is the option for isolation and solitude. St John Paul II was a tireless promoter and defender of the family because of his awareness that salvation passes through the family:
The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family. In these pages I have tried to show how the family is placed at the centre of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love. To the family is entrusted the task of striving, first and foremost, to unleash the forces of good, the source of which is found in Christ the Redeemer of man (Pope St John Paul II, Letter to Families, 23.4, 1994).
I had a small but unforgettable encounter as a seminarian with St John Paul II’s zeal for the family. I was on the translation team for the Synod for Lebanon in 1995 and during the proceedings the team had the good fortune to be presented one by one to the Pope. As there had been a campaign to introduce divorce into Ireland at that time I thought I would mention to him that back home in Ireland Opus Dei was working hard to defend the family. When my turn came and I said my piece I saw immediately that my words had struck a chord with the Holy Father: “Very important work, very important work!” he repeated several times energetically in his deep baritone Polish accent.
As we approach the World Meeting of Families which takes place here in Ireland in August of next year 2018, the Church in Ireland has a golden opportunity to showcase the jewel in her crown: the Christian family. What argument could be more convincing for traditional (heterosexual, fruitful and faithful) marriage than that Brompton Oratory “epiphany”: a father and mother hand in hand and at the same time embracing their children, on their knees before Christ in the tabernacle.