HEALING the FAMILY Excerpts from Bernard Dubois' Book: "Guerir En Famille" Chapter One
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HEALING THE FAMILY Excerpts from Bernard Dubois' book: "Guerir en famille" chapter one THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE FAMILY Introduction We must of necessity define the anthropological foundations of the family before we can outline a path of healing for it. Indeed, during the past twenty years, the family has been especially under attack, and today is subject to the wrath of Satan. If the family is currently the target of choice, the reason is clearly because it is the final battle. The Holy Father made reference to this during the celebration of Family Day, when he acknowledged that the very moment of the attempt on his life came during the first day of the Commission on the family. That is why, in order to brave such a spiritual battle, we must have as our support the model that our Savior has given us: his own Family. 1. The Holy Family: a Model Within the family, the woman is the most severely tested. During the second half of the twentieth century, she has gone through an important phase in her growth in humanity by acquiring a certain liberation from man and a better understanding of her unique place within the couple. However, she is heading toward the dramatic loss of her significant calling by God. If the woman forgets God and her irreplaceable role in the salvation of humanity, then man, in turn, will be lost. For he is born of woman and without her help, he will no longer know who he is, and he will no longer be able to become himself. He will not be able to fulfill his calling as man, husband and father. To remedy this situation we need to discover in the person of Mary a totally feminine woman, a spouse and a mother according to the heart of God. Mary can become a healing model for the woman and help her to recover her true calling. And furthermore, she draws us into the Holy Family and puts the Child Jesus in us. Thus, through her Son, she brings us into the Family of the Trinity and gives us Life divine. But we cannot fully live in intimacy with the Holy Family if our spiritual life remains centered on the persons of Christ and the Virgin Mary, without giving Saint Joseph his fair place. To do so would be to lessen the Holy Family and distort the reality of the Incarnation of the Word of God. We must no longer separate the husband from the wife, the adoptive father from his child, Saint Joseph from the Virgin Mary and from their son Jesus. When God decided to come live among men, when he opened the heavens and descended, he spoke not to a single woman but to a couple. It is written in the Gospel of Saint Luke, The angel Gabriel was sent by God (…) to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary (Lk 1: 26,27). (Biblical quotes are from the Jerusalem Bible, unless otherwise cited.) Scripture is careful to specify, even before naming her, that the young woman was given in marriage to Joseph, of the house of David. God is announcing by this fact the Incarnation: he speaks to a family, to a house of royal blood, and to ordinary people. The first name spoken by the evangelist is that of Joseph, who then fades to make room for Mary. In this way the Holy Family is connected to a past. If we forget this man, not only are we missing out on a model husband and father whom we greatly need, but we are also skimping on a part of the Incarnation, which will have serious consequences. Unfortunately, this is what is currently happening too often in the West. Trinitarian life is not given to us through only one person – Mary – but also through Joseph, which is to say through a couple, through a family. This truth is embodied and its consequences are enormous. 2. Man, a Developing Member of the Family To better understand what follows, we need to remember two essential anthropological notions that will help us discover the importance of living in the Holy Family. - Man is a person in the process of becoming, a developing person. At each moment, no matter where he is, or what he is doing, he is capable of change. He is a being on the move. The more one adheres to this dynamic vision of man, the more one grasps the mission of the mentor or of the teacher. Their work consists in facilitating change, of introducing it or of allowing it to happen. We can be those who reveal the capacity in the child (or in the adult) to introduce change into his or her life. Man is also a communal being and part of a family. He was created to live in relation to others because it is not good that the man should be alone (Gen 2:18). He can only truly be himself by being included in a larger family unit. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the family is the only authentic social and spiritual reality. The couple does not exist for itself alone, as an end in itself. It is destined to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28). Promoting the idea of the couple – as self-sufficient – is a modern and secular notion deriving from an egocentric behavior in an individualistic mindset. The same holds true with the nuclear family (parents with only one or two children). The Lord wishes to rebuild the family. To do so he sets forth a simple, idyllic family scene and develops also, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, “New Communities” which restore a true picture of the family: all age groups are represented. In Africa and in certain countries of the Far East, the family is still made up of parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, male and female cousins. In the houses of the Community of the Beatitudes, one can see just how healing it is to have the presence of children and older adults (a “grandmother” or a “grandfather”). Such is the work of God. These larger families have a calling, as an image of the Holy Family, to be homes of love and of light, places of healing, of calm, and of rebuilding identity for young people today. THE FAMILY, IMAGE OF THE TRINITY 1. The Trinitarian Model God is family. Man is a familial being for he has been created in the image of the Holy Trinity. He is endlessly invited to enter into the trinitarian dynamic among the divine Persons who love each other and who constantly live a relationship of love, in the deepest respect of the identity of each. The Father loves the Son and has entrusted everything to him (cf. Jn 3:35). The Son loves the Father and does whatever he sees the Father doing (cf. Jn 5:19). The Holy Spirit is the communion of love which binds the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father. Each person of the Trinity is absolutely unique, but at the same time completely bound to the two others. The love of the Father, Son and Spirit is characterised by a flowing circular motion, a flow of love. Within the Trinity, the three Persons are in a relationship of communal union. Each person receives completely the gift of the two others and gives himself completely, producing a permanent flow wherein each empties himself and is filled with the other, each is received and receives the other. Thus, there is a relational dynamic which is the characteristic of love. Love: The unique impulse in God Here is the trinitarian model, the perfect model: God is love (I Jn 4:8), God is love alone, free flowing love, love which gives itself and pours itself out endlessly. The Holy Family is a “little Trinity on the earth,” because between Mary and Joseph, close to Jesus, is lived the same dynamic of love, the same completeness of receiving and of mutual giving. In the Holy Trinity as in the Holy Family, each one of the persons receives and gives himself. We have none other than the Divine Family as our model; it is revealed to us, incarnate, in the Holy Family. The secret of every human family is contained in this relationship: each person is completed by giving himself or herself to the other. God is family and by making man, he did nothing other than create a family. In the family, each person offers himself or herself, respecting personal identity and togetherness, as St. Gregory of Nysse has explained it (Les Sentences des Pères du désert, Nouveau recueil, Abbaye saint Pierre de Solesmes, 72. Sablé sur Sarthe, 1970, n.2, p. 13): the “three divine suns” give only one and the same light. It will therefore be the Trinity that we take as our model. We cannot be father, mother, child, we cannot be family, if we do not participate in the free flowing exchange of this trinitarian love. God has included man in trinitarian action. From the first moment of the creation of the couple, God has included man in this trinitarian movement, in this circular, familial motion. Certainly man is distinct from God, for he is only a creature fashioned from clay; but this clay molded by God has been given life by his breath, and so has received the first fruits of the Holy Spirit. From that moment on, God lives in man and man becomes the dwelling of God.