THE FAMILY: GIFT AND COMMITMENT, THE HOPE OF HUMANITY

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo

1. The family

The theme, "The family: gift and commitment, the hope of humanity" - which I undertake to illustrate and which will be the subject of the Second World Meeting with the Families of the Holy Father, set to take place in Rio de Janeiro on the 4 and 5 of October, 1997 - expresses and comprises fundamental elements of the family and opens the heart and the mind to ample prospects which begin with the security of the presence of the Lord in the domestic church. This presence, which enriches families with eminent energy, lends consistency to the hope in strength with which we walk towards the future, which is in the hands of God, who dynamically introduces us to the Third Millennium.

The first part of the reflection is "the family," focusing on the use of the singular form since in the actual historical context it is used more often than not in the plural form "The Families" which this way negates the model of the family, founded on matrimony, as a community of love and life, of man and woman, open to the transmission of life. In taking account of the family, without confusion and without undue concessions, wanted by God, we remain far away from a superficial and hurried vision that perceives marriage and family as the fruit of human will, product of mutual consent. Consensus, agreements, that do not offer the stability and identity as a richness, but rather are precarious, so that the matrimonial unity is exposed to successive deterioration and erosion which debilitates the family.

For marriage there is an order established by God since creation (Mt. 19,4): «He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. So they are no longer two, but one. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder». The gift, therefore is that future spouses mutually offer themselves with free choice and explicit welcome, that is consensus, an element that is indispensable «that constitutes matrimony» (CCC n. 1626).

It is a gift received by the Church ("gift of the Church") and through the domestic Church it «visibly expresses that matrimony is an ecclesial reality» (CCC n. 1631), a public duty with the tie established by God, an irrevocable tie that demands fidelity between spouses and to the faithful God for all that he gives in divine knowledge. The gift becomes "one sole body," which is developed through marriage, it is a personal offering and as such it does not include in its original project, the logic of possession or domination of the other but that of its full realization, a project in which the exercise of sexuality is at the service of a language that expresses the gift. (cf. Familiaris Consortio n. 11).

For the spouses, the moment of conjugal union constitutes a particular experience and is a special moment of responsibility, also in the scope of the potential procreativity allowed in the conjugal act. This gives back its greatness to sensuality and redeems it of emptiness and of instrumental use now in vogue in the consumeristic mentality. With the sexual language, man expresses himself and, in a certain way, designs and models his destiny and makes him rejoice in love the gift and the mystery of one sole body.

By virtue of the complete gift, it is easier to understand the need of indissolubility that frees and protects love, which is not a prison or an impoverishment. It is false to say that matrimony deprives love of its spontaneity and dynamism. Certainly there is the need to continuously enliven the personal gift, also through the obligation of faith, essential for the quality of the gift.

The marriage union must recreate the same loving union that Christ had with his Church: for this is why it is love, indissoluble and faithful and Christ reaches out to Christian spouses, offering his grace and his strength in order that they be able to live in the dimension of the Kingdom.

2. The children, gift and commitment

The «fundamental obligation of the family is the service of life, the realization throughout history of the original blessing of the Creator, transmitting through generations the divine image from man to man» (Familiaris Consortio n. 28). For the spouses, the child does not come and join in on the outside of the reciprocal love, but flourishes from the same heart of their mutual gift and thus is fruit and completion. «Safeguarding both of these essential aspects, uniting and procreating, the conjugal act integrally conserves the sense of mutual and true love and its placement at the highest vocation of man towards paternity» (HV, 12). The reciprocal and complete gifting presupposes in and of itself the opening towards life, while on the other hand contraception imposes a language that is objectively contradictory, that is of not gifting oneself to the other in totality.

In the Catechesis on Human Love, Pope John Paul II speaks of the "language of the body," which in the conjugal union signifies not just love, but also the fecundal potential and therefore cannot be deprived of its full and suitable significance. Because it is not permitted to artificially separate the unifying and procreative significance, «the conjugal act deprived of its interior truth, such that it becomes deprived of its procreative capacity, no longer becomes also an act of love» (page 468).

The conceived child, who will be born, should not be looked upon as a burdensome obligation; the new human being invites one to celebrate and rejoice, in addition to calling for responsibility and sacrifice. This atmosphere of celebration does not in any way reduce the force of the commitment that the gift of the child embodies, as a grand, gratifying and ineludible responsibility (cf. Grat. Sane. 12).

The child constitutes the gift of the family: the family will concentrate its attention on the child and, taken by tenderness and a sense of recognizance, from stupor and surprise at the discovery of the various moments of affirmation of a new being, will follow with love all of the development, up to the conception, by way of an education that follows an appropriate pedagogy, like that of Christ, who places a child amidst his disciples and says: «Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me» (Mark, 9, 36-37).

The sign of welcoming already carries the message of offered gift, and in the welcoming sends it back to God, the giver of all good. Children are a message transmitted in the spontaneous tenderness, carriers of the "Good Gospel," which in them is proclaimed and resplendent.

The child, center of preoccupation, makes it so the parents make themselves available to this common good with which they find themselves in personal convergence, as a profound urgency that is vital and existential, a characteristic form of common proposition, that from their intimate communion comes forth as the fruit of their love, blessed fruit in the double guise of "service" and of "temporariness." (cf. CCC. no. 2208). A common project and proposition that carry on from the moment of the procreation up until the end of the developmental process.

The commitment to the education of the children places in its proper perspective the authority, overcoming the instinctive tendency to transfer to or model in the children one's own personality and one's own hopes, and requires that there is a true commitment to the education in faith (cf. GS, 48).

3. The family, gift to society

«The family is the originating cell of the social life. It is the natural society in which the man and the woman are called to the gifting of themselves in love and in the gift of life.... The life of family is an initiation for the life in society» (CCC, no. 2207). The relations between the family and the society in the mediation of the State are neither easy nor transparent. And this is true for various reasons. The State invades spheres that used to be reserved for the family. And while democracy waves the flag of respect and of participation, the family is seen more and more confined to a reduced space, where it breathes with difficulty; actually, the family feels itself more than ever relegated to a marginal role. The power of the State becomes omnipotent. In certain ways, the privatization movement, in the reduced environment of intimacy, can well represent a form of escape and refuge, with respect to the obligations the family has towards the society.

To seek refuge in the private sphere and not create opposition is a temptation that facilities the ambition of a new domination of the State, which has as its end not just a failure to recognize in the family something that is "sovereign," before the State itself, but to confine the family to the impotence of that which no longer has strength.

The Holy Father John Paul II underlines the importance of the family, which must be recognized as a «primordial society and, in a certain sense, sovereign». This concept, which is very interesting, is explained by the Pope in the Letter to the Families, Gratissimam sane, with its precise outlines and its nuances, dealing with the family and society (cf. Grat. sane, 17).

The family is a sovereign family, recognized in its identity of social subject. It is a specific and spiritual sovereignty, solidly deep-rooted in its reality, even though it is conditioned by many points of view. The rights of the family, strongly tied to the rights of man, must be recognized in their quality as subject, that furthers God's plan and requires specific rights outlined in the Charter of the Rights of the Family. The State must not take the place and the duty of the family, violating its autonomy. The Church's position is categorical, and based on an experience that no one can negate: «An excessive invasion by the State would be damaging, as well as unrespectable. An invasion is justified, within the limits of the principle of support, when the family is not capable of fulfilling its functions» (cf. Grat. sane, 17).

4. Family, hope of humanity

How can we elevate our hearts to hope, while in the context of signs there are mostly doubts, for many founded on the survival of the family, especially regarding the current outlines? There are evident symptoms of erosion, especially in certain countries, and there are worrying creases in family structures occurring in wider areas. Notwithstanding this, we cannot let ourselves get lost by a kind of "determinism" of a fatalistic sort, in a way which would make us surrender without fighting the tendency of eclipsing families. To bring the family back at the center of world attention, also through the II World Encounter, it is necessary to represent it as a privileged space of humanity, center of social mediation, an institution wanted by the Creator, for the good of all people and at the service of the identity of the human person. It is here that we must root the richest possibilities of the family to privilege the dimension of the child, as a straight walk towards the redemption of the institution of the family and to help strengthen it. All this must be done with the working presence of Christ in the life of spouses and of the family: it is He who renews love and communicates hope, because He is hope.

(An excerpt from the volume "The Family: gift and commitment, hope of humanity" that will be published on the occasion of the II World Encounter with the Holy Father with Families in Rio de Janeiro, October 4-5 1997).