 |
| Image from marypages.com |
According to Fr John A Hardon, SJ, the one phenomenon that characterizes the modern world is the breakdown of the family. He says that this is particularly true with the western world. He further states in the same article that stable parishes before were animated by united families but in many countries now are merely "fond memory and for some people an outdated anachronism".
Some people say that the breakdown of the family starts when a couple starts having a communication gap, this is followed by misunderstanding, then the amplification of simple and very common problems which seem to be unsolvable later on due to lack of trust between husband and wife, etc. The breakdown may also be caused by unresolved compatibility issues especially among couples who have not gone through enough period of courtship, or among couples who have decided to get married due to unwanted or unplanned pregnancy of the girl, and many more.
In his homily on the Feast of the Holy Family, Fr Tommy Lane declares a very important reality: that we call the family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as the "Holy Family" and yet we forget that this very same family is far from having "the perfect" life on earth for they also had to face many troubles which were even more life-threatening than that which any other human family here on earth has faced, presently experiencing or has to overcome. He enumerates those troubles here and the list includes the case of Mary's out-of-wedlock conception, the lack of a decent space when it was her time to give birth to the infant Jesus, the threat to the baby's child which led them to flee to Egypt, and more.
But in all these troubles, the Holy Family continued to be united. They sustained their family because of one very important virtue: love. And it was not just an ordinary human love which keep them close and cohesive. It was divinely inspired charity founded upon strong faith in God and boundless hope in His promises. No problem or trouble ever kept them from their concrete practice of charity. Instead, their charity for each other kept their problems and troubles away. In no way did they disregard those problems and troubles. But they did not let those problems and troubles affect the "holiness" of their family. Fr Lane further says that, "Whenever our families are successful, it is because they are places of love."
In an article Alex Colvin lists some possible real and major root causes of the breakdown of the modern family. In his discussion, he mentions the erroneous notions of modernism such as [1] God, religion, and questions of morality are matters of personal opinion which have little or no relevance to social problems; [2] Man as Animal: Evolution as a Result of Random Mutations; [3] Relative Values; and [4] The Nature and Role of Human Sexuality. He also mentions the institutionalization of secular relativistic ideas which unfortunately can even be found being promoted through the educational and legal systems and most particularly through entertainment media and the advertising industry. His discussion can be found here. Though he speaks about family breakdown in a US setting, we can probably apply the same things in a way or another here in the Philippines or in some other societies - with a few considerations.
"First quality of the Holy Family relative to all families: all families are born of God. No Christian group of people come together as a society, whether domestic or religious or parochial or, on a world scale, ecclesiastical, except by a special providence of God.
"We can say more. Every family comes into existence in order to be a reflection on earth of the Eternal Family, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which constitutes the Holy Trinity. There was from all eternity a divine Holy Family of the three Persons. Hear it! God as God is not a solitary. God as God is a community.
"Families on earth are to be created manifestations of the uncreated Family, which is the triune everlasting God. If there is no such thing as chance with God we may be sure that no earthly family is just a happening. Our father and mother didn’t just happen to meet one another and coincidentally happened to marry and by some quirk of fate happened to have us as offspring. No! Every family, I repeat, domestic, religious, parochial or ecclesiastical is the providential creation of God who is Himself the infinite community of the most blessed Trinity.
"Second quality: all members of a family are different. I could almost skip the observations I want to make. But let’s get beneath the difference. This difference is part of God’s all wise plan for His children. He makes us different from the moment He creates a different soul for each one of us. And that, by the way, is an article of faith. What’s an article of faith? That each soul is individually, distinctively, therefore differently and uniquely created by the Almighty God at the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb.
Variety in creation is a glorious reflection of the infinity of the all-perfect God. No one creature, no ten thousand times ten thousand creatures, could adequately manifest the ocean of attributes in the all-perfect God. And to further dramatize it as scientists tell us, did you know not even two snowflakes out of the millions that fall on a winter’s night are the same? Did you know that? God wants us to be different. He made us that way.
"Third quality: the different members of a family should be united. No less than the three Persons in God are not the same. Father is not the Son. Father and Son are not the Holy Spirit. Yet all form together the one God. So the members of every family should be united. A family ceases to be a family when each person, who is notoriously and for us painfully embarrassingly, different. A family, I repeat, ceases to be a family when each person so different pursues his own interests without reference to or concern for the other members of the family. A family is a family! It is not a mere group or a cluster or a crowd or a chance gathering of different people.
"My subway rides in New York, crowded trains, a perfect symbol of different people who happen to be on the same train. Dead silence, except for the screech of the wheels and the deafening noise of the New York subways.
"Fourth quality: love is the bond that unites a family. Only love can unite different, even disparate, people. Only love brings them together, keeps them together and enables them to work together as a family. Where this love is missing or weak, the family as family falls apart. This is the verdict of history."
Every family must be truly and fully united by love - a love that is more than human, a love that is divinely inspired. Unless every relationship is founded upon such kind of love, we shall never see perfect union of every family and every group here on earth. For it is love that would set us above problems and troubles, unite us against divisive forces and issues, and keep us stable when the storms of life and the threats of death surges!
No wonder that our Lord Jesus Christ made only one very significant requirement for us to become his friends for it is the only thing that truly matters: to love one another [see John 15: 12-17].
_________________________
_________________________
More about our sources here
[1] Fr John Hardon
[1] Fr John Hardon
[2] Fr Tommy Lane
[3] Alex Colvin
No comments:
Post a Comment