By : Valson Thampu
The Conference of the Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI), now in its 29th week-long session in Bhopal, could not have chosen for its focus a more relevant and crucial issue than the drift and disarray of families at the present time.

It is a foundational issue. It is a sign of vitality that seminal issues are addressed upfront and with an open mind. Living in denial implies a state of spiritual paralysis. Particularly commendable is the effort to root thinking on this issue in the experiences of specific families. Bishops listening to the life experiences of families reverses the stereotype of the laity being kept at the receiving end all the time.

Family is coeval with life itself. It has its origin in God’s own initiative. Family was God’s idea! God meant family to meet a deep and irreducible human need. So, if family is wilting it means, inter alia, that people are shifting from “need” to something else. This reflects the dominant cultural pattern today.

Family is the building block of society and Church. Edward Gibbon, in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire points out that one of the factors that contributed to the disintegration of the great Roman Empire was the decay of family.

I refer to this instance in order to underline the fact that family, though an institution of divine initiative and origin, is necessarily situated in the material matrix if culture. Family is the reliable index to what life at any given period is founded on. On what foundation do believers live today: Gospel or culture?

Now, culture is a domain of decay. Why? Because culture is man-made. Whatever is man-made is subject to decay; for the reason that all man-made things and systems are imperfect. Whatever is imperfect is open either to improvement or to decay. Over twenty major civilizations have come and gone, as Arnold Toynbee (A Study of History) points out. All cultures are programmed to decay and death. They are not spheres of permanence.

Decay is arrested, in culture, through maintenance. But it cannot be averted altogether. Culture has the means only to delay disaster, as in the case of medical sciences. The best of doctors can only delay our death by a sliver of time. To be sustainable and to endure, there has to be a means for renewal.

The domain of imperfection–which is what culture certainly is-cannot generate the means of its own regeneration and improvement; just as a man cannot lift himself by his own bootstraps. The means for the sustenance and renewal of culture has to come from a source beyond culture.

In addressing this crucial contemporary need to spiritually revitalize family, it is necessary to ensure that the approach is paradigmatically spiritual, and not cultural. Culture functions in terms of maintenance. The spiritual paradigm is fulfillment.

“I have come,” Jesus clarified, “not to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come to fulfill them” (St. Matthew 5: 17).

This is the key text in understanding Jesus’ approach to the issue that the Catholic Bishops Conference is seized of.

The issue is the decline of family as a divinely instituted, sacred privilege. The task at hand is not to maintain, or to preserve. It is to equip the flock to fulfill the spiritual purposes–the divine plan- underlying family.

Consider a parallel from philosophy in the interest of clarity. According to Martin Heidegger, we cannot merely “preserve” anything. We shall surely fail if our aim is only to preserve, or to merely maintain, something as it is.
“Preservation” per se is feasible in respect of lifeless things, as in a museum. No museum piece has any scope for “fulfillment”. Such relics of the past can only be preserved.

But think of a garden. What does a gardener do? Is he merely keeping the garden as it is? It might seem so. But his practice of “preservation” includes an additional dimension, according to Heidegger: that of “enhancement”. So, we must aim at “preservation-enhancement”. Preservation cannot be separated from enhancement. The only feasible way of preserving anything dynamic and living is by enhancing it continually.

The dynamism of biblical spirituality is, according to Jesus, in the “seeking” approach (Mtt. 7:7). We are to seek and find. Find what? Find what does not exist at the given time. Spirituality is instinct with a continual urge to seek perfection. Enhancement is the bridle-path to perfection. “Be you perfect,” Jesus said, “even as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Mtt. 5: 48).

Health, or wholeness, from a spiritual perspective, lies in the dynamism of seeking. In the messages to the Churches in Asia, the church at Sardis is told, “You have the reputation of being alive; but you are dead.” (Rev. 3:
1). This state of ecclesial mortality results from the cessation of seeking as a spiritual way of life.

Jesus, we confess, is “the way” (Jn. 14: 6). Surely, “way” is used in its metaphorical, not literal sense. It is a metaphor for going forward, for seeking, for progressing, for attaining enhancement. “Behold, I shall make all things new,” (Rev. 21:5). Now we see in part, says St. Paul, who was mindful of the Gospel-culture tension, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away (1 Cor. 13: 9, 10).

The world is a realm of the part and the partial. It is in the nature of the world to be partial, or to take sides. Even think of something as innocuous as a tennis match between two countries with which we have nothing to do personally. We will take the side of this team or that. It is in our nature. We cannot but take sides. And to the extent that we do, we fail by the canon of truth.

That is because we see things only “in part”. To do that is to be necessarily partial. Being partial is a proof of imperfection. Perfection is predicated on truth. Jesus is the Truth (Jn. 14:6). In him the “fullness” or “richness” of Godhead dwelt in a bodily form (Col. 2: 9). Permanence and durability can be sought only on this foundation.

The challenge, therefore, amounts to relocating family, so to speak. Family, in its present state, may be likened to a sprig, cut from a plant, kept in a flower vase. Decay is inherent and inevitable in that state. The only remedy is to re-graft the severed branch and to return it to where it rightfully belongs.

Re-location involves a shift in foundation: shifting from one thing to something else, something radically different. Today family exists, mostly, on the foundation of worldliness. The world functions in terms of power. Power operates in terms of control. There is no room for ‘community’ in power. Community needs the foundation of love. Spirituality is a revolution, or a radical shift in foundation. Jesus came to make us a new creation, a community of love (Jn. 13: 34). We were rooted in power. Now we are re-established in love. It is in the nature of love to “seek” and, in particular, to seek perfection. ‘Power’ is rendered insecure and discomposed by perfection; for what is perfect cannot be controlled and manipulated.

“Joy” is the sign of perfection. Where there is love, there is joy. Love never fails (1 Cor. 13: 8).

The decline of family is a significant symptom. It means that life has shifted its foundation from faith to culture. God is not the light by which we walk. The Word is no longer a lamp to our feet or a light to the path of our life (Psalm 119: 105). We are living according to the neon lights of culture. This light will dim and die. It cannot be helped.

Significantly, it is to Zacchaeus that Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.” (Luke 19: 9) Culturally, this rich tax collector was doing fine. Thriving, in fact. But he knew he was in deep trouble. If we read between lines, we know that Zacchaeus’ trouble was of a domestic kind. He had all that the world could offer. But he did not have what only God could: a happy home! No wonder he ran out of it like a desperate crackpot.

At the conscious level Zacchaeus was seeking a spectacle: catching a glimpse of the unique man who was passing by. In reality, unbeknown to him, he was seeking a relocation. He experienced a shift in foundation. God is never an object to be seen. He is the Eternal Subject: the enduring home for us to abide in (Jn. 15:4). God is the ground of our existence. In Him we live, and move, and have our being.

Family is a divine institution, but planted in this world. That’s what makes it complex. It involves a profoundly difficult co-existence: co-existence of two contrary principles–culture and spirituality. From a cultural perspective, they are utterly incompatible. There is no margin for spirituality in the register of culture. Spirituality, on the other hand, though otherworldly is not world-less. We are taught to pray, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” At the heart of spirituality is God’s love for the world (Jn. 3:16).

It is for the sake of the world, and not by way of despising it, that we have to rise above the world. The best we can do to the world at the present time is to live a godly family life. The spiritual renewal of the people of faith is today de facto social service! The situation is that desperate.

The eye is the lamp of the body, said Jesus. If the eye becomes blind, if light turns into darkness, how woeful is that blindness! (Mtt. 6: 22). We are called to be the light of the world. It is the same as saying that we are to be the eye for the world. Or, we are to be the means for enabling the world to see everything–family, in the present instance-as in itself it truly is, or what it should ideally be. That is not a matter of claiming or boasting, but of being.

The best sermon on Christian family–the only one the world will heed- is a spiritually redeemed, revitalized, wholesome community of faith that serves as the “salt of the earth and the light of the world” (Mtt. 5: 13-16). As the words of the old chorus go, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love”!

(Valson Thampu is former principal of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi)