Today’s readings: Eccl. 3, 2-6.12-14; Col. 3, 12-21; Matt. 2, 13-15.19-23.

In the face of deep social, cultural, and political changes that have been radically transforming the physiognomy of the family and the patterns of family life, the Church’s response has always been to repeat the traditional doctrine, many a time without any serious cultural mediation.

While not renouncing its tradition of doctrine, the Church, at this particular and interesting point in time with Pope Francis, seems to be moving with determination in the direction of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s historic work On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine.

It is significant to recall Cardinal Basil Hume’s first intervention at the 1980 Synod of Bishops on the Family when he said: “The prophetic mission of the family, and so of husbands and wives, is based upon their experience as married persons and on an understanding of the sacrament of marriage, of which they can speak with their own authority”.

In its struggle to mediate culturally its deposit of teachings on the family, it is to this ‘authority of the faithful’ that the Church is appealing. Sending a questionnaire to the grass roots of the Church’s life is not simply the holding of an opinion poll. Rather, it makes the Church go back to the drawing board, to what it has always believed in, namely, that the Holy Spirit is active in enlightening the minds of the faithful with his truth and in inflaming their hearts with his love.

It is not only the faithful that need to listen. It’s time for the Church to start listening. In his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis said the Magisterium of the Church should not be expected “to offer a definitive or complete word on every question which affects the Church and the world” and cautioned against “a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance”.

These are tough times for any form of family. In a relatively short time we have moved from the convention of the stable nuclear family to a diversity of sexual and social arrangements. We may really have a problem today to define what makes a family. But what should be of greater concern is not what makes a family, but rather what makes a family function or dysfunction.

The Spirit seems to be moving the Church at this juncture of its history to discern the pastoral implications of what has now been known sociologically for decades. The Church, in all that distorts the human face of the world, cannot be a part of the problem. It is pastorally committed to recall the entire world to the basic humanness that can heal the wounds of society.

St Matthew’s gospel narrative today does not simply reflect what happened at the birth of Jesus but also what the Church was going through at the time the gospel was written. There we read of a return to Egypt, the old symbol for slavery, and again of a new exodus from Egypt after Herod’s death.

What is at the basis of all this is the Christian story, the faith perspective which is so fragile and very often at the mercy of external forces. The Church’s call today is to lead towards a new exodus. Strictly speaking, there is no Christian model of family to be proposed for all times and cultures indiscriminately. It is the Christian faith as a way of life that exists, not the Christian family, as if at some point some form of blueprint for the family became a given.

The family as a network of ties, remains always a social reality that becomes what we call a sacrament, if open to the faith commitment and perspective. As Jonathan Sacks writes, “we might inhabit a culture in which family ties mattered less to us than they do now. But such a culture would be then an altogether colder and less personal one”.

Our ties to our children, parents and loved ones are fundamental to our being not as a result of any rule. Rather, they have to do with who we are. And what ultimately makes us who we are is what St Paul suggests in the second reading when he asks us to let the message of Christ find a home with us. It is love, compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience that define what basically makes a family worth belonging to.

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