May 15 is celebrated as International Day of Families, established in 1993 following the proclamation of the International Year of the Family by the United Nations General Assembly. This day aims to raise greater global awareness of the social, economic, and demographic processes affecting families around the world. But beyond demographic analyses, the family is a living place, an intertwining of love, challenges, joys, and sorrows that deserves to be contemplated deeply.
The family in Scripture
The Bible itself is populated by families, with stories of love and crises, from its very first pages: Jesus himself was born in the embrace of a family and chose to begin his public life at a wedding feast in Cana. The Holy Family of Nazareth, then, illuminates the principle that gives shape to every family, enabling it to face the vicissitudes of life and history.
The family is threatened
However, the family is facing a profound crisis today. Although the desire for family remains alive, especially among young people, it is threatened by trends that promote individualism, selfishness, and narcissism, relegating its value to narrow spaces. This leads to a gradual breakdown, to relationships experienced as fleeting, in which communication becomes difficult and there is a tendency to avoid emotional involvement and flee from relationships. The inability to make sacrifices, give things up, and build long-term plans undermines the stability of bonds. Family wounds are often passed on to children, making them “victims” of conflicts between their parents. Statistics show a significant decline in marital unions, and many young people see marriage as obsolete. This situation of pain and disorientation leaves its mark on families and is a source of profound sorrow.
In crisis, a promise of rebirth
Crisis can nevertheless become a kairòs, an opportune time, a call from God, an opportunity for grace. The Christian message about the family is, and remains, “good news.” The Church works tirelessly to help the family rediscover its Christian identity. The path to healing passes through faith, conversion, and the rediscovery of marriage as a sacrament. We are never alone in facing challenges; we can always call upon the Holy Spirit.
Love, taught and embodied by Jesus, is the key. It is not merely a feeling, but a profound choice and a decision of the heart that involves one's entire existence. Married love is called to constant maturation, growing stronger through continuous growth under the impulse of grace. This requires patience, which means being slow to anger; it requires an attitude of kindness, healing envy and avoiding boasting or becoming conceited. It is essential to learn Jesus' gracious language, saying words that encourage, comfort, and give strength.
If you are going through a family crisis, we recommend: Healing the Wounded Family: A book and a method that have saved many marriages in crisis. This book, based on the real-life experience of a married couple who have spent years supporting families on a journey of discernment in the light of faith in God, helps couples in difficulty find the way to heal their wounds and fully and joyfully relive their married life. Through these pages, couples are taken by the hand and, through a simple, practical process, guided to recognize and heal their painful relationships with tenderness and forgiveness.
The three key words: please, thank you, sorry
Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia, identifies three key words for regulating and shaping family life: please, thank you, and sorry.
Another fundamental aspect of conjugal love is tenderness. It is a virtue that is often overlooked but essential, a bond that unites and inspires the joy of feeling loved, while paying attention to the other person’s limitations. Tenderness is expressed through one’s gaze, face, voice, physical contact, caresses, embraces, and kisses. Education in conjugal love, in the form of tenderness, makes it possible to perceive and put into practice the meanings of the language of the body, enriching the spousal dialogue.
An ally: prayer
Amoris Laetitia continues to emphasize “the importance of family spirituality, prayer, and participation in Sunday Eucharist, encouraging couples to meet regularly to foster growth in spiritual life and solidarity in the concrete needs of life.”
Family prayer is a privileged means of strengthening faith. Standing united before the Lord, praying for our needs, asking for help, giving thanks. Participation in the Eucharist is the culmination of communal prayer. In this way, the whole of family life becomes a “merciful pasture,” where each person paints upon the life of the other, bringing out the best.
The International Day of Families invites us to reflect on the family as a “mosaic made up of many different realities, full of joys, dramas, and dreams.” Despite its challenges and wounds, the family is a “way of the Church,” a “vital cell” for transforming the world. Its future and that of humanity pass through it. It is an opportunity, a gift.
It is essential and urgent that every person of good will commit to safeguarding and promoting the values and needs of the family, so that it may be an eloquent sign of God’s love, a small domestic Church.
