ChristianMINISTERIUM Family in Africa – iAn Journthe Faceal ooff CovidContextual-19 Pandemic: Theology Challenges Vol. 6 (Dec. to Family 2020 )Communion 1-13 …

CHRISTIAN FAMILY IN AFRICA IN THE FACE OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC: CHALLENGES TO FAMILY COMMUNION AND WITNESS IN SOCIETY

Michael Muonwe, Ph.D.1 E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract One of the measures taken worldwide by governments against the spread of COVID- 19, and advocated for by the World Health Organization (WHO), was lockdown of cities, by which people were advised, and in most cases, made to stay, and possibly work from home. This represents a significant shift from the normal busy life of offices, shopping malls, schools, work places, churches, mosques, and synagogues, to the restricted space of home; from social, political, and religious gatherings to the seclusion of home; from physical proximity and relationship to social distancing, virtual relationship, and sometimes isolation. This made many families that hitherto had no time for one another stay and most probably work and share experiences together under one roof for long. This meant much for Africans who value family togetherness a lot. In this kind of situation, the family provided ample opportunity for more bonding and greater closeness. But it could also be a nightmare for some trouble-laden families who would ordinarily not wish to be together for too long, and those for whom going out for work provided some relief from tensions. Within this period too, many families experienced the hardship and pain from death of their loved ones, loss of jobs and sources of livelihood. This paper seeks to answer the question of how, in Africa, Christian family, understood theologically as domestic Church, could promote the human dignity, love, friendship, consolation, and ideals of togetherness of members at such a critical period. In fact, it seeks to reflect on the implications and challenges of COVID-19 pandemic to Christian family in Africa, how it was able, or should have been able, to live up to its obligations and expectations as domestic Church.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, Africa, family, domestic Church.

Introduction One of the videos that made rounds in the social media in Nigeria at the peak of COVID-19 pandemic, and which touched many deeply and kept them talking, was that of a father who refused to travel home with his son who returned from one of the worst-hit States in Nigeria. Despite pressures from people around, he blatantly declined, asking his son to isolate himself elsewhere

1 Michael Muonwe is an expert in Pastoral Theology and Religious Studies. He lectures in the Department of Religion and Human Relations, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria. He is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Ekwulobia, Nigeria.

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for about two weeks before he could have anything to do with him. The father cited what he referred to as an expert advice to the effect that the virus had about two weeks of incubation before symptoms could begin to manifest. As the son followed him to join him in his car, he hurriedly started the engine and drove off. Here, we see paternal/filial bond in tension with the struggle for survival. The son wanted to go home with the father to stay with him, and possibly with other members of the family and enjoy their company. He may have missed them a lot, but the father did not allow whatever relationship he had with his son to interfere with his safety concerns and that of his entire family. He was worried that his son could be a carrier of the disease, and his coming home might put the life of his entire household in mortal danger. What seemed not to have been considered by the father was his son’s safety, especially with regard to where he could go for the two-week isolation experience. It is therefore clear that COVID-19 left in its trail a significant shift, and in some cases, subversion in our consanguineal relationships and the way we live it out in the modern African society. It disrupted the regular rhythm of life and activities across nations and regions. Family members, even couples, were sometimes afraid of one another and were being extra careful with the way they interacted to avoid contagion. Physical proximity was replaced by social distance. But the flipside of it was that it also made many who were distant from one another due to work-related engagements to be together. This paper examines the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on Christian family in Africa, especially in the light of the theological understanding of Christian family as domestic Church. It reflects on the implications of this understanding and how it could help the family to bear effective witness to her calling amidst the dangers and challenges posed by the pandemic. It also investigates the strengths and weaknesses of Christian families as they faced this challenge, and how they could have possibly been of help to each other in cushioning its effects.

Family as link between Church and Society Christian family, Church, and society are interrelated. The Church is often referred to as the family of God and Christian family as domestic Church. The Church comprises men, women, and children, whose longing for intimate relationship and union with the Lord brought them together from different families to worship as one large family of God – the family of families.2 The family is therefore constitutively and organically significant to the Church,

2 J. Trokan, “The Challenge of Ministry with a Family Perspective,” New Theology Review, vol. 5, no. 2 (1992): 27.

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representing the Church’s foundational, germinal, or smallest cell,3 just as it is also the most basic and foundational institution of the human society.4 The different families that make up the Church have their distinctive features, charisms, and configurations that are galvanized together to enrich the Church. While some families have couples who are properly wedded, some remain unwedded with or without children; some are simply divorced; others are divorced and remarried; some are single parents with adopted children; others are widows and widowers; there are also families constituted by only orphaned children; etc. These differences are unified in the family of God, the Church, where they are expected to see themselves as one, sharing in the same faith in the risen Lord. Seen as one big family, members of the Church feel obliged by their distinctive calling to eschew all forms of racism, ethnocentrism, undue particularism, sexism, and segregations, in order to conform to the demands of their new identity in Christ. Christian family provides a link between Church and society, both of which are saddled with the responsibility over the spiritual and temporal aspects of the human person, respectively. According to John Paul II, just as marriage, by its nature, transcends couples, so also does the family transcend individual households and is oriented towards the society.5 It is usually through the family that new life is born and introduced into the human society, thereby supplying society with human life that contributes to the society’s progress. The family helps to keep society together being “the first school of social virtues that every society needs.”6 It is also from the family that the human person approaches the Church to be reborn in the waters of baptism, and is thus cleansed of sin and prepared to be sent into the larger society for effective witness to his or her faith. The family is thus the fount of both Church and society. It is a gateway through which the Church enters the human society and through which the human society in turn enters the Church.7

3 Paul VI, Address to the Notre-Dame Teams, 4 May 1970, no. 8, cited in L. Alessio and H. Munos, Marriage and Family (Staten Island, NY: The Society of St. Paul, 1982), 29. 4 C. Onyeka Nwanunobi, African Social Institutions (Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press, 1992), 41. 5 John Paul II, Post-Synodal Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa, 14 September 1995, no. 85. 6 Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World of Today, Gaudium et Spes, 7 December 1965, no. 3. Hereafter, GS. 7 John Paul II, , , 22 November 1981, no. 15.

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Collaboration between Church and Family Once baptised, the Church nurtures the faith of her members through the Word, the Sacraments, works of charity, and other practical forms of Christian witness within and without the community of faith. The family, on her part, helps to nourish and deepen this faith with her own charisms and specific mission. It is in the family that this faith, as Onwubiko states, becomes “rooted because it has become ‘home-made’.”8 Christian family can therefore be properly said to be domestic Church having realized in itself, the demands of its baptismal commitments and vocation,9 thus, allowing the Lord to accomplish his mission through her.10 Its mission as domestic Church is not to domesticate the Church, but to live the reality of the Church within its own context in such a way that both become, so to speak, extensions of each other. The Church should therefore be at the service of the family as much as the family is at the service of the Church. They ought to work in close collaboration with each other, in order that the faithful achieve deeper union with the Lord.11 When the Church is true to her nature and nurtures her faithful in ways of love, peace, charity, and other Christian virtues and values, the encounter of the faithful in the Church makes the family better. The Church becomes a source of hope and encouragement for the family, especially in difficult times. The values and beliefs that the Church defends and promotes help the parents, as the first and primary teachers of the faith to their children,12 to train their children in ways appropriate to become good citizens. If, on the contrary, the Church fails to live up to expectation, the family is also affected. It is very clear that many families have been torn apart by scandals, competitions, jealousy, disappointments, and abuses emanating from the Church. If these come from Church leadership, it could be so devastating, because, as symbolic representatives of the sacred, their misdemeanour could be seen as exploitation from the Church or even God.

8 Oliver Onwubiko, The Church as the Family of God (UJAMAA) in the light of Ecclesia in Africa (Nsukka: Fullabu, 1999), 8. 9 Cf. F. C. Bourg, Where Two or Three Are Gathered: Christian Families as Domestic Churches (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 114; Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964, no. 11. 10 United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Follow the Way of Love, 1994, accessed August 31, 2020, https://www.usccb.org/topics/marriage-and-family-life-ministries/follow- way-love. 11 Vatican Council II, Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem, 18 November 1965, no. 11. 12 Vatican Council II, Declaration on Christian Education, Gravissimum Educationis, 28 October 1965, no. 3.

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Sometimes, people expect Christian family to merely mirror the life of the Church, the parish or the diocesan community, in order to show that it is indeed domestic Church. Such expectations are not needed. The family should not merely mimic or reproduce parish life in the home. This undermines the peculiarity of the family life and its great potentials. The Church has her distinctive characteristic features that may not simply be replicated in the family. Besides, Christian family has its specific features that may not be visible in the life of the Church. Their sharing of a common mission should not undermine the differences in their charisms and vocations. According to Wright, what makes Christian family a truly domestic Church is by living those charisms that are authentically her own, and which are manifestations of the paschal mystery, the dying and rising in Christ which we celebrate in the Christian community.13 What makes some people see the task of Christian family as nothing more than mirroring that of the Church is what I may call subordinationist thinking whereby Christian family is seen as secondary or even inferior to the Church. Some may argue that, after all, Jesus taught that whoever gives up father, mother, brother, or sister for his sake and for the sake of the kingdom would be repaid a hundredfold in this world and in the next eternal life (Mk 10:29-30). But this teaching of Jesus is not meant to make Christian family subordinate to the Church. Jesus is rather stressing the need for Christian family to be true to its vocation of promoting the Kingdom of God in its daily life and not otherwise. Blood ties is as important as spiritual bonds of discipleship. We cannot be disciples of Jesus without being disciples of one another. We cannot claim to love God if we are unable to show this in the love that sustains family relationships.

Family Communion Family ordinarily engenders a complex set of relationships. Vatican Council II describes Christian family as an “intimate community of life and love.”14 This intimacy must be lived across the complex relationships in the family which encompass conjugal, paternal, maternal, filial, and fraternal bonds. The first and fundamental contribution of the family to the human society is the communion and sharing that should characterize their daily life, having been founded on conjugal communion. At the heart of this communion and sharing is selfless love that demands that each seeks the good of the other in humble and sacrificial service to the Gospel values. It entails giving oneself freely for the good of the other, respecting the personal dignity of each and every member as a creature made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:27). The

13 W. Wright, Sacred Dwelling (New York: Crossroads, 1990), 24-25. 14 Gaudium et spes, no. 48.

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family is expected therefore to set the pace for what obtains in the wider society. According to John Paul II, “the fostering of authentic and mature communion between persons within the family is the first and irreplaceable school of social life, and example and stimulus for the broader community relationships marked by respect, justice, dialogue and love.”15 Building this communion and sharing demands creating valuable time for togetherness with one another at meals, prayers, recreations, and leisure. This ensures that the young are drilled in family and societal history, values, norms, expectations, and tradition, so that they become deeply rooted in the wisdom, the tradition, and the culture of the society in which they live. This prepares them to forge ahead with confidence to meet the present and future challenges. The Jews know the significance of history and incorporate it in their family Passover meal, where they read the Jewish Hagaddah in fulfilment of the injunction given to them in Ex. 13:8, to tell the story of their liberation from Egypt to their children. Our Christian parents should find time to do the same to their children, so that they can learn and live the story of our own liberation in Christ within the family. They should use the time spent together to drill their children in the wisdom of our elders in the faith and the tradition of the Church. Parents should help their children learn how to deal with violence in the world, be accommodating, promote multiculturalism and social action, and use prayer for peace and justice, avoiding sex-role stereotyping and male chauvinism.16 Parents should in turn learn from their children the present challenges the world throws at them, which many of the parents are ignorant of. The children’s sharing of their own experiences with one another also helps to nurture the spirit of oneness that holds them together. When this is lacking in the family, hatred, rivalry, and selfishness would be allowed the opportunity to penetrate and tear the family apart.

African Experience of Family Communion Even though Africa is rapidly undergoing serious changes resulting from its encounter with the forces of modernity and globalization, its community spirit, sense of solidarity and communion have not been eroded completely. As the most basic cell of the society, the family provides the most fundamental locus where these values are lived out. In Africa, family, much more than the wider society, provides the context for check-mating the threat of individualism. Because Africa has an extended understanding of family, family membership extends beyond just husband, wife, and child(ren). It includes

15 John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 43. 16 Kathleen McGuiness and James McGuiness, Parenting for Peace and Justice, 2nd revised ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990).

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grandparents, grandchildren, uncles, aunts, nephews, departed relatives (the living-dead), still considered to be part of the family, as well as the unborn.17 This extended understanding provides fertile ground for reinforcing the interconnectedness and communion among larger number of people within the society. In other words, it helps to promote unity, bonding, love, communion and community-building. In this connection, John Paul II remarks, “The extended family system provides a loving human environment for the care of orphans, the old, and the poor.”18 In most of the traditional African cultures, the good or interest of the family or community enjoys priority over the individual’s interest or concern. Any individual project or aspiration that does not take family or community interest into consideration is viewed with caution, because, as Mbiti notes, it is “only in terms of other people does the individual become conscious of his own being… ‘I am, because we are; and since we are, therefore I am’.”19 What this means is that what affects one member affects others, for everyone is involved directly or indirectly in the life of the other. To belong to the family or the whole community is part of what it means to be human.20 Therefore, to be isolated from the community in any way whatsoever is as good as being dead. That is why one of the greatest punishments in African traditional society is ostracism or excommunication. Different societies in Africa have different terms with which they express the reality of communion among persons, which is basically realized in the family. Among the Southern African and Bantu language groups, the concept of ubuntu is very popular in expressing collective personhood or morality. Desmond Tutu, speaking about ubuntu, notes:

It is the very essence of being human… It is to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inexorably bound up in yours. We belong to a bundle of life. We say, ‘A person is a person through other persons.’ It is not ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather, ‘I am because I belong. I participate, I share.’21

17 John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969), 106-107. See also Michael Muonwe, New Dawn for African Women: Igbo Perspective (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2016), 61. 18 R. Burke and P. Prunty (eds.), Pope John Paul II in Nigeria, Feb. 12th – 17th 1982, Homilies and Addresses (Port Harcourt: Mirian Books Centre, 1982), 8. 19 Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, 108-109. 20 Ibid., 2. 21 Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1991), 31.

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Ubuntu expresses the fact that each person’s existence is individually-communal as well as communally-individual. This makes people to always want to be with others to share with them their humanity, brokenness, strengths, and visions about life together, since each sees himself or herself in the other. Some other terms used in Africa to express this communal orientation include the Swahili socio-economic concept of ujamaa, put forward strongly by Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and connotes familyhood, extended family, brotherhood or sisterhood, and incorporates essentially such qualities as, equality, justice, and one’s belongingness to a community as a basis for personhood.22 These qualities begin from the family and work themselves up to the wider society, thus, making everyone see the other as one’s brother or sister.23 African Christian family cannot be truly domestic Church unless this spirit of communion is realized among its members.24 In Igbo context, the concept of Igwebuike (literary, “group is strength”) expresses this community-orientedness of every individual existence and identity. Igwebuike expresses the fact that, even though one’s identity is ontologically individual, it is the community that gives it meaning as well as grounds it.25 Other Igbo expressions, like onye aghana nwanne ya (do not forsake your brother or sister), I biri ka m biri (live and let live), etc., also point towards the same idea of togetherness, community spirit, communalism, communion, and complementarity as guiding principles for the human society.

Family Communion and COVID-19 Pandemic Due to the various engagements and work outside the home in our contemporary culture, many families in Africa hardly have enough time to be together, to foster and live the family communion and sharing. Nevertheless, the protocols of COVID-19 imposed strict requirements on people to stay at home, especially at its initial stages, to slow the rate of transmission of the virus. Even though it was a difficult time for families, the requirement made many families experience one another more deeply than they had ever done. It provided an opportunity for more intimate bonding and growth in the knowledge of one another, by their working, playing, and praying together, sharing and exchanging of special gifts and talents, forgiveness, reconciliation, and

22 Izunna Okonkwo, The Eucharist and World Hunger: Socio-Theological Exploration (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2011), 426. 23 W. R. Duggan and J. R. Civille, Tanzania and Nyerere: A Study of Ujamaa and Nationalism (New York: Orbis, 1976), 172-173. 24 John Paul II, Ecclesia in Africa, no. 85. 25 Ikechukwu Kanu, “Sources of Igwebuike Philosophy: Towards a Socio-Cultural Foundation,” International Journal of Religion and Human Relations, vol. 9, no. 1 (2017): 2.

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harmony. This way, the pandemic had the positive outcome of facilitating the deepening of family communion, which is very highly valued in Africa. Since the churches remained closed in most of the cities, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic, the family provided environment for prayers and spiritual exercises to realize more vividly the presence of God among the people. It offered Christian families the opportunity to relive the experience of the early church, which gathered in the home of members for the celebration of the Eucharist. It opened the eyes of many to the significance of the home as the pre-eminent place of encounter with the Lord before gathering as a community of faith in the wider parish setting. It also provided an opportunity for people to realise the value of caring for the spiritual good of one another, catechising and educating the children, as well as appreciating the general priesthood they share as lay persons in the Church, thanks to their baptism (cf. 1 Peter 2:9). Being together could also help to stir up humanity in family members to realise how interconnected they are, the level of unity expected of them, and to develop such spiritual values as compassion, sympathy, kindness, caring, and understanding. Many Christian families displayed these virtues in abundance, especially when a member afflicted with the disease was required to home- isolate himself or herself. The level of care provided to such patients by the family would demonstrate their being authentically African family and domestic Church, given the risky nature of the job, the danger of contagion, especially in crowded households. Conversely, staying together indoors for an extended period could also be a very tormenting experience for those for whom work outside the home provided opportunity to ease off some tensions and ward off conflicts. As Fahey notes, we need not romanticize about the family, but must recognize its imperfect, sinful, patriarchal, and dysfunctional nature.26 Indeed, some family members find it difficult to manage their differences over a protracted period of time without some sort of break. Going out daily for work provides them such a break, and shortens the time they spend together. However, the continuous and unavoidable stay at home, no thanks to the pandemic, could be very frustrating, leading to endless fuss and quarrels. Pubs, restaurants, recreational facilities, official and unofficial meetings and gatherings, church attendance and meetings, etc., which offered them avenues to let off steam were closed for some time. Those who could not manage may have ended up walking away from some family relationships.

26 M. A. Fahey, “Fine-Tuning the Notion of ‘Domestic Church,’” in Thomas Knieps- Port Le Roi, Gerard Mannion, and Peter De Mey (eds.), The Household of God and Local Households: Revisiting the Domestic Church, 97-110 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 109.

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Some families have children with some form of addictions or seemingly intolerable character, but tight schedule of their jobs before the pandemic kept them apart for the greater part of the day. Nevertheless, with COVID-19, they had to stay at home with their parents and siblings, many a time idle. For those of them with caring parents, brothers and/or sisters, it might have been an opportune time for them to receive adequate care and love in their struggle to be better. Some of such habits may have been caused by loneliness in the first place. But there are limits to what people could take. Their presence may eventually become burdensome to the family, even if not so initially.

Pain of Separation There were also families whose members worked far away from home and were usually united at weekends or month ends, but because of the pandemic, could no longer do so. Some had elderly parents they needed to visit, but were unable to. In many cases, virtual communication supplied but could not be an adequate substitution. Many of such elderly parents suffered loneliness, which may have led to depression, anxiety, or even death. Those of them infected with the virus remained separated from their children many of whom could have been physically present by their side at such difficult moments to offer them love and comfort, especially if they were home-isolated. Due to the high rate of contagion associated with COVID-19, it was the usual practice for the state to provide isolation centres where infected persons could be kept away from regular hospital wards. This cut them off from their relatives, none of whom was allowed to pay a visit. Many of the patients were also prevented access to priests for final sacramental rites, anointing of the sick, and Holy Communion, which they had longed to receive at such hard times. Many priests remained locked up in the presbytery and their private chapels offering prayers for the people without the much-needed physical proximity or contact. For some patients who could not make it, they died in solitude without their loved ones around and without the presence of the Church. An African would ordinarily love to die surrounded by his or her family with whom he or she remains strongly united, even after death. He or she would love to be buried by his or her relatives with elaborate funeral proceedings, involving dances and merriments, condolence visit by relatives, friends, in-laws, business associates, etc. Unfortunately, some who died at this period were denied all these. They were buried surrounded only by unfamiliar medical staff, morticians, and funeral directors; there were minimal or no religious funeral rites. As they battled for their lives or were buried, their family, Church members, friends and colleagues kept vigils and prayed for them from afar. Many nurtured the feelings of

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traveling to be with them, to say their last farewell, and attend their funerals, but could not. This could be very disheartening and devastating for some.

Touch Privation The kind of clothes worn by the medical personnel attending to the patients – Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) – specifically made to prevent physical contact and touch between the medical staff and the patients, brought a new dimension to the relationship between the two parties. With this kind of caution in place, the patients did not get the kind of attention they would have ordinarily got. They were made a group of “untouchables”. It is true that touches could easily be misunderstood in clinical practice,27 especially in highly litigious societies. It is also true that there could be cases of sexualized touches that cross the boundaries of culturally accepted patient-caregiver relationship. Nevertheless, the power of touch, as non-verbal expression and communication of care, loving concern, intimacy, affection, and affirmation, to comfort or heal a sick and suffering person may not be over-emphasized. LaTorre has noted its significance in enhancing psychotherapeutic process, especially when appropriately employed.28 Touch can really be an important factor in normal intellectual and emotional development.29 In liturgical worship, touch has become an important ritual action during the kiss of peace, imposition of hands, the washing of feet, etc. Jesus Himself utilized touch in some of His healing miracles (cf. Jn 9:1-12). But due to COVID-19 protocol, the Church and her ministers, family members of patients, and medical personnel refrain from physical, body-to-body contact with patients to avoid contagion. All these presented an immense challenge to the Christian family understood as domestic Church, especially in Africa, where warm embrace, hugs, and handshakes are easily offered as gestures of affection and love.

Family Outreach during COVID-19 Rubio identifies two major dimensions of the vocation of the Christian family as domestic Church, namely: social and personal. Apart from such tasks as guarding, revealing and communicating love, prayer, and serving life, which

27 See E. van Dongen and R. Elema, “The Art of Touching: The Culture of ‘Body Work’ in Nursing,” Anthropology and Medicine, vol. 8, nos. 2/3 (2002): 149-162; J. Evans, “Cautious Caregivers: Gender Stereotypes and the Sexualization of Men Nurses' Touch,” Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol. 40, no. 4 (2002): 441-448. 28 M. A. LaTorre, “Touch and Psychotherapy,” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, vol. 36, no. 3 (200): 105-106. 29 A. Montagu, Touching, the Human Significance of Skin (New York: Harper & Row. 1986).

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could be judged as personal, he also mentions openness to other families, especially the poor and the needy, and service of the broader community as social tasks to be embraced by the family.30 These social tasks could be achieved when the family is not closed in on itself but reaches out to other families, promoting thereby “interfamily relationships, for reciprocal spiritual and material assistance, the rediscovery of the ecclesial mission proper to the family and its responsibility for the building of a more just society.”31 This way, Christian family becomes, as John Paul II puts it, “a sign of salvation of Christ operating in the world.”32 This interfamily relationship and outreach are ever more needed today given the shock many families received no thanks to the ripples generated by the pandemic. The economic difficulties people experienced as a result of loss of jobs and other means of livelihood, and rise in prices of commodities occasioned by closure of factories and companies were too much for many families to bear. Many societies also experienced sharp increase in crime rate, especially at the peak of the pandemic. As a matter of fact, it brought about loss of hope in the entire social system for many people. It was nevertheless gratifying that many families rose to the challenge and gave helping hand to the less privileged ones. Many donated to charity by which many others were fed and enabled to pick up their broken lives. In Nigeria, some landlords gave wavers to their poor tenants, some families welcomed their relations into their homes when they could not afford the rent anymore, thus proving themselves authentic Africans, Christians, and domestic Churches (cf. Lk. 10:30-37).

Conclusion The opening story in the introductory section of this paper painted an image of a father-son relationship redefined by COVID-19 pandemic. The story serves as a pointer to deeper forms of conflict of interest that trailed the pandemic. Christian family as domestic Church is a place where members should show their love and communion with one another in spite of difficulties and challenges they encounter in their lives. Bonding together and being by each other’s side provides succour to the afflicted and hope to the downcast. Coronavirus pandemic provided many families the opportunity to be together, pray together, and share their experiences and challenges together more than they had hitherto done. The pandemic therefore helped in a sense to reinforce

30 J. H. Rubio, A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family (New York: Paulist, 2003). 31 John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 6. 32 Ibid.

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the African spirit of oneness, community, and togetherness, because, for an average African, an individual exists authentically only in the context of the community. Many individuals and families also utilized this period to show their kindness to others. Many donated to charity in form of relieve materials; others welcomed the homeless to their properties and reduced rents for the jobless ones. But the pandemic also estranged many from one another due to lockdowns that prevented family visits. This made many of the elderly stay alone without the warmth of their children and grandchildren. Some of them died without their loved ones by their side, and without the usual Church services and Masses they had longed to be buried with. They were instead surrounded by strange faces of nurses, medical personnel, and morticians with unidentifiable faces because of the PPE worn to avoid contagion. Before their death, they missed the physical touch, which is an important aspect of healing process, and were treated as untouchables. The pandemic indeed provided opportunities as well as challenges to Christian family in African. The hope is that the experience will help to strengthen and help them to assess how far they have been faithful to their vocation as domestic Church and place where primary witness to the faith should be borne.

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