This question is more urgent than ever: the family is going through a deep crisis, and the society in which we live certainly does not help us “feel like a family” or “be a family.”
Married couples often experience loneliness in the face of problems that are becoming increasingly dramatic, particularly during this pandemic period.
As Pope Francis recalls in Amoris Laetitia, there are also “The tensions induced by an exasperated individualistic culture, […] the pace of current life, stress, and social and work organization, because they are cultural factors that put the possibility of permanent choices at risk.”
Another wound for married couples is when they encounter difficulty having children: this pain can only be imagined and “caressed” with great delicacy, accompanying it with prayer and silence.
The hope that must accompany every couple and every family comes from the awareness that they are not alone: the Church loves and accompanies married couples, as shown by the book Healing the Wounded Family. Heaven blesses and protects the family: there are well-known examples of married saints (the Martin spouses, parents of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux), or the Blessed Beltrame Quattrocchi couple, and there are saints, such as Saint Maria Francesca of the Five Wounds, who is known as the protector of the family and unborn life. Indeed, her life includes episodes that testify to her closeness to families: women considered infertile who had children, and couples reconciled through her work of reconciliation.
So, can we be a family today? Yes, we can be a family in the fullest and most beautiful sense of the term, knowing that heaven is cheering us on!
