Jean Laffitte - The Choice of the Family: A Call to Wholeness, Abundant Life, and Enduring Happiness

T he Christian life we are called to live within the family is not something just to be studied. It is something to be lived. And it is something to be lived with joy.

Every familybelieving and nonbelieving alikeis a unique expression of the universal experience of family life. Each family exists within a living ecologya unique environment shaped by the dynamism of its members, who present a variety of age, health, maturity, responsibility, ability, personality, and aspiration. No institution in society can shape and, in so many ways, determine a persons life to the same extent as the man and woman who give one life, and the family with which one shares ones formative years.

At the same time, the family is also a school of transcendence. By its very existence, the family points each of its members toward the future in a context of hope. The journey of the family is in this way a journey toward transcendence. In opening the person to this horizon of transcendence, the family becomes the most universal way in which a person is introduced not only to the concept of God, but to the experience of Him. The family is a sign of Gods love as well as a manifestation of Him as love. While the love of spouses, parents, children, and siblings is often the benchmark of human love itself, the very structure of the family points us to a greater love as its own model. The family opens up to each of its members a vocation to serve life that is inherently and intimately collaborative with the God who is the author of life.

The Christian family presents the believer with this vocation, which finds its true meaning by cooperating with the vocations of the other members of the family, thus creating a unique union of vocations. Thus we may consider the Christian family as a great dialogue among persons who are at the same time engaged in a dialogue with God.

Pope Francis expressed this reality beautifully:

The image of God is the married couple: the man and the woman; not only the man, not only the woman, but both of them together. This is the image of God: love, Gods covenant with us, is represented in that covenant between man and woman. And this is very beautiful! We are created in order to love, as a reflection of God and his love. And in the marital union man and woman fulfill this vocation through their mutual reciprocity and their full and definitive communion of life.

The Catholic Churchs vision of family stems not merely from a knowledge of families gained through an experience of family life or through the experience of serving families, but from a knowledge of the God who is love and who gave the human race the institution of the familyan institution in which He makes Himself present. Therefore, the Christian sees the family in its essence as an institution that calls each of its members to a vocation shaped by love.

In every family, just as in every marriage, there are times when each person becomes keenly aware that his or her vocation to love demands a radical decisiveness. Every family in its journey will make decisions that call its members closer to a life in Christ and to authentic happinessor farther away. At times, ones vocation of family entails a conscious decision, an orienting of ones life in a new direction out of love and in the embrace of the other. At other times, this vocation entails embracing a reality that is the result of a decision not our own, as when one becomes a grandparent or when a new sibling is born. But in each instance, our vocation requires the decisiveness of a love that is open and generous.

The richness of family life makes the family an irresistible subject of study. But it is a subject that is not capable of being understood in an abstract way or for abstract reasons. It is not possible to truly know the family unless we know the active, concrete experience of family life, and this requires us to admit that there is no better school of the family than the family itself.

Catholics, especially those whose daily life and vocation center around the family, have received a great gift: the numerous Church leaders in recent years who have been so grounded in their own family experiences that they have brought profound theological insight and devotion to their pastoral approach to the family.

In the theological approach of Pope Benedict XVI we see the fundamental importance of personal communion to our encounter with truthan encounter which is opened to us first within the family:

Truth is not an imposition. Nor is it simply a set of rules. It is a discovery of the One who never fails us; the One whom we can always trust. In seeking truth we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ. That is why authentic freedom is not an opting out. It is an opting in; nothing less than letting go of self and allowing oneself to be drawn into Christs very being for others.

And with Pope Francis it is evident that the vocation of Christian spouses is a clear path to understanding their call to discipleship through the family.

Christian matrimony is a lifelong covenant of love between one man and one woman; it entails real sacrifices in order to turn away from illusory notions of sexual freedom and in order to foster conjugal fidelity. Your programs of preparation for the sacrament of matrimony, enriched by Pope John Pauls teaching on marriage and the family, are proving to be promising and indeed indispensable means of communicating the liberating truth about Christian marriage and are inspiring young people with new hope for themselves and for their future as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers.