Christian households give and serve
Can a chart-topping pop star be a prophet? Maybe.
In his song Seven Years Lukas Graham sings, Soon, I’ll be sixty years old, will I think the world is cold? / Or will I have a lot of children who can warm me? These lines are catchy, yes, and also counter-cultural.
Many people who “think the world is cold” would not think “having a lot of children” would remedy the situation. In fact, the natural response to cold is to contract, withdraw and to avoid any sources of inconvenience and vulnerability. Most people would not haphazardly have children at the risk of having them freeze. That would be so irresponsible!
The Christian family (and, decidedly, Lukas Graham) are not most people.
When living out their vocations, members of a Christian family are above all givers and servants. Even in the freezing cold. The Catholic family is called unequivocally to an openness to life and to fruitfulness in many forms. This fruitfulness is not limited to the size of our families, although this can be an accurate litmus test for a family’s generosity. There are many other ways to be fruitful outside of the physical realm, however, as so many religious, single people, and childless families have demonstrated so well.
Christian families seek out ways to be fruitful, generous and self-donative in all areas of their lives and in all of their affairs.
In his post-synodal exhortation on the family, Amoris laetitia (The Joy of Love), Pope Francis writes, “the couple that loves and begets life is a true, living icon … capable of revealing God the Creator and Saviour. For this reason, fruitful love becomes a symbol of God’s inner life.”
As the family grows together in love and chooses Christ more easily and more completely, they will undoubted begin to feel the scorn of the world. This scorn is fierce and it can feel like biting cold. At first, it may look like condescension. Then, maybe sneering ridicule. Then, blatant persecution from those we considered friends (or even family).
Often, it happens the members of a Christian family will suffer invisibility and perhaps isolation among colleagues and neighbours. Those who do not desire the good for themselves cannot stand to look at goodness square in the face.
Why this dramatic response to a group of people trying to live as Christ’s disciples? What is so offensive or dangerous about a family “devoting themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers”? (Acts 2:42)
A glance through the scriptures serves as a potent reminder. If the family is a prophetic sign of the kingdom of God, we must be treated like the prophets were and finally, as Christ was treated. “Remember that the world hated me first….” The Christian family also serves as a sign of what the world has come to reject; a reminder of the better part that has not been chosen by most.
Being a sign means being an easy target. The choices of a striving Christian family are consistently preyed upon: how many children they have, the morals they instil, how they educate them, how they raise them, how the family spends money, how they stand firm in unpopular values and viewpoints, how they carefully guard their time of leisure and rest together. All of these areas draw criticisms like it is open season. Because it is.
Let’s all see to it the world sees and hears the prophetic voice of the family in our respective corners of the vineyard. It is a voice that cannot ultimately be ignored because the family is the portal through which everyone and everything that is true, good and beautiful must pass.
What the world does with the prophetic voice is not the part that matters. What matters is the encounter; an encounter that demands a response.
Be steadfast, be courageous. Onward, Christian families!
