Tradition vs future

Today’s readings: Eccl. 3, 2-6.12-14; Colossians 3, 12-21; Luke 2, 41-52.

When we speak of the family, nostalgia is no sin. It is not simply wishing things to stand still as if talk about the family, or even the family itself as a social reality, can ever be put in deep freeze. Nostalgia where the family is concerned is yearning for those constants in a world of flux which make the family what it is and which conserve it from becoming what it is not.

If we take today’s first reading from Ecclesiasticus, it transpires clearly how in this day and age we seem to be literally reversing a culture which for so long has been consolidated socially and religiously. This book, which forms part of the wisdom literature in the Bible, deals with a wide range of issues and takes the fear of God as the founding principle of relationships in society and family alike.

In our times though, it seems that the secularisation of the family has brought radical changes to our way of conceiving relationships that have always been held as sacred. We’ve come to a point in time when we are trying to reinvent something new, persisting in exploring further and rendering fluid what for so long was solid. There is so much uncertainty as to what awaits us down the road.

Statistics have reached saturation point and interpretations thrive. But we still lack the right focus and perspective as to which constants are the sine qua non for the family.

Pope Benedict recently affirmed that “the question of the family is not just about a particular social construct, but about man himself – about what he is and what it takes to be authentically human”. What is at stake today is strictly speaking much deeper than simply the family nucleus. An anthropological revolution is underway and that calls for a much deeper examination.

With all this in mind, and particularly with the concern for the future of the family, we are tempted to ask what inspiration can come from the past, from the living tradition of the Church including the Scriptures. That tradition, compared to how we live today, seems far too distant to speak to us with authority.

Luke’s narrative today cannot be read in sentimental mode as simple family turmoil of a lost and found child. Metaphorically the narrative can speak to today’s family as having lost something which she needs to recover. The problem is what to be in search of and where. The pilgrimage towards Jerusalem “for the feast of the Passover” hides a deeper truth we need to ponder upon. Mary and Joseph’s non-understanding is remarkable. It is the same non-understanding that characterises Mary in the Annunciation and later in the Temple at Simeon’s words.

The child himself is incomprehensible. His identity transcends all possibility of comprehension to human logic. The entire narrative itself of losing and finding Jesus again points to the parable of life itself as it stands before the hidden mystery of God which is unfolding. Even for Mary and Joseph it was not easy to live with this mystery. As Luke writes: “His mother stored up all these things in her heart”.

There is so much in life that we cannot grasp while it is unfolding. We are called to be patient with God’s mystery in life, when all we go through cannot be grasped fully in its deep meaning unless it is stored with trust. Non-understanding can make us enter into darkness. But it can also open the way to deeper trust in God whose loving care is never failing.

“The heart,” writes David Ford in his book The Shape of Living, “is like a home for all the concerns of our lives, where our identity is sorted out year after year”. Yet experience shows also that “the wounds that most cruelly disfigure the heart are given and received between lovers, in relationships where deep trust and loyalty create potentially tragic vulnerability”.

This explains fully the words of Pope Benedict that “the family is the authentic setting in which to hand on the blueprint of human existence”.

It is the true “community of the heart” whose future constantly calls for the recovery of whatever is lost along the way.