Fr. Norlan H. Julia, SJ
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 4, 2015
It was characteristically Francis: moved by the testimony of families who have come to the Festival of Families in Philadelphia on 26 September 2015, he set aside his prepared speech. He addressed his listeners from the heart who spoke to him from their hearts: a family from Jordan where Christianity is a tiny minority, an engaged couple from Australia preparing for their wedding in November, an elderly couple from Argentina who have been married since 1955, a wife and mother from Nigeria who lost a daughter two weeks after her first birthday. They shared with the Pope the big and small challenges they are confronting as Christian families today. They also made known to him how they are trying to live faithfully as Christian husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, grandparents and grandchildren. They asked the Pope to advise them on how to face these daily challenges. To which the Pope gladly obliged. Using funny anecdotes and vivid images, he offered them some valuable insights and inspirational thoughts on the family.
The Pope reminded them, first of all, that goodness, beauty, and truth lead us to God, for God is goodness, beauty, and truth. And “the most beautiful thing that God created, says the bible, was the family. He created man, he created woman, and he gave them everything, he gave them the world, to multiply, cultivate… All that love he made in creation, he gave it to a family.” Pope Francis called their attention to God’s beautiful plan for the world and for humanity, as we read from Genesis in today’s first reading: God’s original intention of forming a family. God is not just a creator. God is also provider and parent. Seeing that the various wild animals and birds were not suitable partners for man, God made a way to provide man with a suitable partner in the woman. God found a companion for the man, not from outside of him, but from within him, from his own flesh and bone. Thus did the man exclaim: “This one, at last, is none of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called ‘woman’, for out ‘her man’, this one has been taken”.
The Pope then told the audience about a very difficult question a kid once asked him: “Before God created the world, what was he doing?” His reply to the kid was: “Antes de crea del mundo, Dios amaba, porque Dios es amor!” “Before creating the world, God loved, because God is love.” God loved, Pope Francis exclaimed, because God is love. There is so much love in God, love of the Father, the love of the Son, the love of the Spirit. This love is so great, so overflowing that God could not keep it to himself. God has to share with those outside of God’s self. Then God created world. This, Pope Francis says, is where the beauty and goodness of the family lies. In God’s love, the family finds its power. For all the goodness, all the beauty, all the love God has, God gave it to the family.
But Pope Francis is no romantic idealist. He is fully aware of the difficulties and hardships families face, for they do not live in an earthly paradise. He recalled to them how the harmony of the first family was wrecked by the deceit of the devil, how the first crime occurred between brothers. It is no different today, the Pope says, when one’s enemies is within the household: husbands against wives, parents against children. It is the same hardness of heart Jesus could be referring to when he reminds the Pharisees in today’s Gospel of God’s original plan about man and woman and the family. Pope Francis acknowledges how we, in our confusion, destroy the beauty, goodness, and love of God. From his first hand encounters with husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, children, he reminded his listeners, “Families have the difficulties. Families quarrel, and sometimes plates can fly. And children bring headaches, …and mother-in-laws!”
Yet, Pope Francis insisted that these difficulties are overcome by love. “Hatred is not capable of overcoming any difficulty. The division of the heart cannot overcome difficulties. Only love is able to overcome these.” At the end of his message, the Pope rallied the families to take care of and defend the family: “Cuidemos la familia! Defendemos la familia!” But for Francis, the man of peace, one can never take up the weapon of hatred and violence to defend the family. One can rely only on the power that comes from the overflowing love of the Triune God, shared with the family of humanity and of all creation.