English
EspañolThere is a mystique in the family. Each type of familial love contains an experience of intimate union with God. This experience is intense, different, and profound in each one, with unceasing, unprecedented landscapes; it lasts for a lifetime. Dare yourself to live this fascinating experience!
Text
“A positive experience of family communion is a true path to daily sanctification and mystical growth, a means for deeper union with God. The fraternal and communal demands of family life are an incentive to growth in openness of heart and thus to an ever fuller encounter with the Lord…Since “the human person has an inherent social dimension,” and “the first and basic expression of that social dimension of the person is the married couple and the family,” spirituality becomes incarnate in the communion of the family.” (The Joy of Love, n.316)
Commentary
Many decades ago, when I was brought up as a child, I was told nothing of what Pope Francis teaches in the Joy of Love. If only it had been taught to me sooner! What light and companionship I would have had throughout life and its trials! What do I mean? Among other things, I am talking about the presence of the Trinity itself in each of my family bonds and familial loving relationships.
This is what Pope Francis’ text suggests to me. There is a mysticism proper to the family. God is the eternal and infinite communion of love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And this “family” of the Trinity is the model in whose image and likeness we were created, out of love and in order to love, as familial beings. We are not family in the image and likeness of plants and animals. We are not family because we are just another living species and have to reproduce. Each one of us, a singular and unrepeatable male or female incarnate person, is the image and likeness of the Triune God. We are more like God than animals. That is why we are spouses, fathers, mothers, children, siblings, grandparents, and grandchildren. Furthermore, those very personal names, the ones we are to each other in our families, are intimate bonds, and stories of love truly lived, which plants or animals cannot possibly be.
There is a specific image and likeness of the Love of the Trinity in each of our family bonds;
the love of spouses, fathers, and mothers, children and siblings… Therefore, when we live the truth, goodness, and beauty contained in each of the family ties and when we do so with the intelligence, freedom, and gratuitousness proper to the love between persons, we are, for that very reason, taking concrete steps in our intimate union with God.
It is the “mystique” of the Family, contained in every surrender, in every embrace, in every effort to keep the union alive, which is demanded of us, daily by each type of familial love. The Spirit of God, Love itself, appears as inspiration, a companion and accomplice, consolation and strength, tender light, and teacher of love. In these scenes of family life, the intimate, concrete, extraordinarily personal experience of encountering and uniting with the Triune God emerges.
Change the vision you may have of your family ties. Perhaps it is too superficial, conventional, and routine. Prior to being a social institution, the family is the bosom of your loving intimacy and the concrete place of your encounter with God. Try seriously, in the naked and intimate depths of your heart, to call the Spirit of God: “come with me to live my family life.., be my friend and companion in what I am and what I have to live as a husband, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, grandparent or grandchild”! Share the experience of this invocation, as much as you can, with your family members. Try, persevere, trust… and you will see how the Spirit of God comes within you and teaches you to love more and better.
