Co-redeeming with Christ through the family

Never before in the history of salvation has there been a greater accent on the redeeming potential of family than in our present time. The Church’s reply to modern rationalism is imperative for the understanding of family, especially against the background of today’s civilization which has made great strides in understanding both the material and human psychology but which leaves contemporary man to a great extent unknown to himself. Thus the family, too, remains a reality which is sliding back from its original union as instituted by God Himself in the beginning of time.

There is an estrangement today from the "great mystery" the family is, according to the apostle Paul, who used the analogy of Christ’s espousal with the people of God or the Church; a profound mystery which is not understandable unless we understand the "great mystery" involved in the creation of man as male and female and the vocation of both to conjugal love, to fatherhood and to motherhood (John Paul II, Letter to Families). The "great mystery" and humanity in Christ does not exist apart from the "great mystery" expressed in the "one flesh" (cf. Gen. 2:24; Eph 5:31-32).

The family itself is the great mystery of God. It is the domestic church. In its experience of love it practices conjugal love, paternal and maternal love, fraternal love, the love of a community of persons and generations. Christ loves His Church to the end. Only if husbands and wives share in that love and in the "great mystery" can they love to the end. Unless they share in it, husband and wife do not know "to the end" what love truly is and how radical its demands are. Husbands and wives should be able to live and relate bearing in mind the sacredness of marriage they have entered in. Only in the consciousness of this holy covenant can the family be "to the end" the great "revelation" of love, the first discovery of the other and the mutual discovery of husband and wife, parents and children born to them. What power for redemption in Christ is present here.

We are told that in a dream an angel bade Joseph to take the Child and His mother to Egypt. They left in the dead of night. Returning after Herod died, not to Judea anymore, but to a little town near Galilee-Nazareth where the Holy Family lived. The Child (Jesus) "was obedient to them (Joseph and Mary)" (Lk. 2:50).

Herods still exist in our present day trying to destroy the very foundations of the traditional Filipino family with all its disciplines. Elders sadly decry the old values being lost to modernity. Obedience to parents, respect for life, togetherness, decency and religious piety still should continue being the very bulwark and power of family life. As co-redeeming with Christ, the family becomes our hope of bringing back to society moral integrity where it has been lost; of promoting justice, love, freedom, unity and peace. This is something to reflect on in a much deeper way as we celebrated the great jubilee of the Redemption in the year 2000. We continue to pray for Filipinos and families the world over, that they may be shielded from our modern-day Herods who pose dangers to life especially to the life of the unborn child. May our families be holy with the holiness of Christ to the very end.

Feast of the Holy Family, Luke 2, 41-52