English
EspañolThe Church “lives by the Eucharist,” so does the family.
Text
“The family’s communal journey of prayer culminates by sharing together in the Eucharist, especially in the context of the Sunday rest. Jesus knocks on the door of families, to share with them the Eucharistic supper (cf. Rev 3:20). There, spouses can always seal anew the paschal covenant which united them and which ought to reflect the covenant which God sealed with mankind in the cross. The Eucharist is the sacrament of the new covenant, where Christ’s redemptive work is carried out (cf. Lk 22:20). The close bond between married life and the Eucharist thus becomes all the more clear. For the food of the Eucharist offers the spouses the strength and incentive needed to live the marriage covenant each day as a “domestic church.” (The Joy of Love, n.318)
Commentary
We priests have this experience: a family that forsakes Sunday Mass is a family that also forsakes prayer, confession, spiritual direction, and little by little distances itself more and more from the sanctification of its family life. It is like a slippery slope. I am not referring to the cases in which it is genuinely impossible to attend Mass, nor do I imply that attending Mass automatically means that everyone in the family has reached sainthood. No. However, attending Mass is a critical turning point. It is not a matter of going to Mass despite the interior disposition (shouting, anger, lack of charity, etc.). Indeed, it is necessary to go to Mass after parents and older siblings have spent time raising the atmosphere of love, the family’s spiritual temperature, and enlivening each one´s faith. One by one, they must prepare for this encounter with Jesus. If we go to the cinema, we choose a movie and comment on why that specific one and not another; why do we not talk about what we will encounter at Mass when we attend together? In this same chapter, the Pope said that family spirituality is “the spirituality of the bond inhabited by divine love.”
Love that stems from family bonds or ties is the love that constitutes our identity justly owed to those we love: I am your father, your mother, your child, your brother or sister, your husband or wife. I embody that love that I owe my loved ones. It is precisely this love that is renewed in Eucharistic communion. Furthermore, the nuptial covenant which originated this new family is also reaffirmed and renewed, participating in God´s unfailing covenant with humanity.
