LOVE IN THE FAMILY
THE FAMILY
through the eyes OF THE CREATOR
CATHOLICISM PERCEIVES THE PRESENCE OF DIVINE WISDOM IN THE MOST ORDINARY PLACES OF HUMAN LIFE. POPE FRANCIS CELEBRATES THIS FACT IN THE OPENING LINES OF HIS APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION AMORIS LAETITIA (THE JOY OF LOVE): “THE JOY OF LOVE EXPERIENCED BY FAMILIES IS ALSO THE JOY OF THE CHURCH.” (1) Catholics contemplate the family as an agent of divine love in the world. In our homes — no matter how fallen those homes are — the love of Christ is made available to our local parish and the surrounding neighborhood. Yet how are we to recognize the presence of this love? Theology — when it is at its best — is not just an exercise for intellectual Christians. Theology gives us images whereby we can perceive the ordinary world, including the family, through the eyes of the Creator.
THE FAMILY AND THE IMAGE OF GOD In the Book of Genesis, the creation of man and woman is a culminating point of God’s creative love. Unique among all the creatures, man and woman are created in the image and likeness of God. What does it mean to say that man and woman are created in the image and likeness of God? Well, think about what God does in the act of creation. God creates the whole world through peaceful
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acts of speech. God does not create because God is lonely or bored, subject to divine listlessness. No! God creates because God is love. To be created in the image and likeness of God is to be a peaceful co-creator with God, ordered toward self-giving love. The person is created in the image and likeness of God as male and female. To be male and female, as the Scriptures present, is integral to what it means to be a human being. Marriage, in this sense, is a primordial sacrament in the church. That is, it is the sacred sign that precedes the incarnation of Jesus Christ. When men and women come together, pledging their lives to one another, they exercise their identity as those created in the image and likeness of God. In marriage, even before children are born, the union of husband and wife is the creation of a family ordered toward communion. Marriage points toward the love of God. In the act of procreation, God’s wisdom once again reveals itself.
The sexual union of man and woman has the potential to bring forth new life into the world. From an embodied act of self-giving love — the true meaning of sex — a child may be born. This child is to be immersed, according to the wisdom of God in Genesis, in a space of love. Dad, mom and child(ren) exercise their identity as created in the image and likeness of God through sharing communion with one another. The young child, for example, learns about the goodness of the world not through abstract thought but through encountering the mother or father’s smile. The child delights in the love shared by mom and dad alike. Of course, Genesis also presents the shadow side of family life. Our primordial parents’ sin. Adam blames God and Eve for his sin, fracturing the original communion that marked God’s creation of men and women. Violence enters the world as Adam and Eve’s firstborn, Cain, kills their second born, Abel.
TIMOTHY P. O’MALLEY, WRITER • DIEGO DIAZ, ILLUSTRATOR
