We find ourselves helping a child with homework in a subject we got C - in years ago. Or explaining human sexuality to a confused eight year old who overheard a more "advanced" classmate. Or witnessing to why we have faith to a searching teen who questions why the Church is important or even necessary. Or bandaging a cut, putting in eye drops, learning about carbs to provide healthy meals for a diabetic, giving an injection, or helping someone test his/her blood or use a blood pressure cuff. We listen attentively when someone's relationship or marriage breaks up, wipe the tears of someone crying over the death of a pet, hold the hand of a dying parent. Miraculously God the Holy Spirit empowers us to have the love, courage and skill to do these things when we need to do them. Because God knows: people respond best to the people who love them; loving family members make the best first responders.
Pope Francis says it well: "The family is the closest hospital to us: when someone is sick, they are cared for there, where possible. The family is the first school for children, it is the unwavering reference point for the young, it is the best home for the elderly. It is the first school for mercy, because it is there that we have loved and learned to love, have been forgiven and learned to forgive."
Today, my husband and I will be going to an intimate family dinner at a restaurant, organized by our children, in-law children, and grand-children to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary. Over the years our family has grown to include in-law children who have brought new extended family members to the table, of different nationalities, races, religions, traditions, gifts, skills and stories. We appreciate this because our family, like our country, has become a gigantic savory stew, not a boring melting pot.
If we are open and willing to learn, our families and extended families introduce us to the many faces and hearts of the human race. Each family member among parents, grandparents, siblings, children, grand-children, cousins, aunts and uncles, stretches us to deepen our understanding, widen our experience and our love. It is in our families that we learn how to be first responders who mix formula, play peek-a-boo with infants, welcome someone's new spouse, communicate with autistic family members, play peacemakers between arguing family members, listen with acceptance to someone with a sexual orientation different from ours, visit someone in prison or the hospital, try to get help for an addict or someone with mental or emotional illness.
Pope Francis tenderly mentions how inspired he has been by families, how in every gesture of love, service, and understanding, family members reflect the loving mercy of God:
"I think of the weary eyes of a mother exhausting herself with work to bring food home to her drug-addicted son. She loves him, in spite of his mistakes....
"Another example of a gesture that seems small but that really is large in the eyes of God is what a lot of mothers and wives do on Saturdays and Sundays: they line up in front of the jails to bring food and presents to their imprisoned sons or husbands. They undergo the humiliation of being searched. They don't disown their sons or husbands, even though they have made mistakes, they go and visit them. ..It is a gesture of mercy, despite the errors their dear ones have committed... "
The human family is a sign and reflection of God Who intimately loves and lives as the family of the Trinity. St. John Paul II said "Our God in his deepest mystery is not solitude, but a family, for he has within himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family which is love. That love, in the divine family, is the Holy Spirit."
Families today are under great stresses and responsibilities that can pull them away from God. I still remember shopping for our first home, looking at various styles and sizes, going to the bank to see if we qualified for a mortgage. There are tv programs and books that can give young families advice on these practical matters. But, even more basically, parents are called and empowered by God to build a house for the Lord.
"If the parents are in some sense the foundations of the home, the children are like the 'living stones' of the family (cf. 1Peter 2:5)....Psalm 128, in speaking of the gift of children, uses imagery drawn from the building of a house and the social life of cities: "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain..." (Pope Francis.) Parents build a house for the Lord by talking about God with their children, praying with their children, teaching them about their faith, taking them to Church, teaching them by example how to care for others in concrete ways. From Nativity sets to crucifixes and crosses on walls, the family home should be a home where God visibly dwells.
Social stresses and strains separate families when children move far away from the family home. But God also calls and empowers children to take care of their parents: "Honor your father and your mother." This is especially true when parents are elderly; it is sad when adult children fall into the trap of "out of state, out of mind," when they move away and forget to provide for the ongoing well-being of their parents. Do those parents have someone to mow the lawn or snow-blow the driveways? Should a parent still be driving? Is a parent developing dementia? Adults with responsibilities often are called by God to make sacrifices of time and attention to care for the parents who once fed them and changed their diapers.
Doctor, nurse, social worker, teacher, counselor - family members are first providers who wear many hats in building a family for God. They see each family member with the eyes of faith, love, and mercy. Regardless of another's faults, weaknesses, disabilities, addictions, or sins, the best family first responders know that each family member is a child of God, a valued and irreplaceable member of the family. No one is devalued or disposable. Our credibility as Christians begins most powerfully when we are the merciful face, voice, listening ear, hands and feet of God in our precious, unique families!