The place to which one returns. This is how the philosopher Rafael Alvira defines the family. This is the title of a book of reflections that, despite being some years old, continues to be a reference for understanding what is happening today with the family institution and, above all, how to recover its value.
We return to the family, sooner or later. More or less consciously, but we return. We are children of the blood that runs through our veins. In spite of all the genetic madness we see today, it will never be possible to empty ourselves of our genetics and replace it with another: the limitation of being creatures, the fruit of "other people's work" is what makes us be us. Therefore, when we speak of the family of all Christians, of the children of God, we are not theorizing about a more or less friendly level of coexistence, but about the same blood, the same flesh, just like that, without hot air.
We return to the family, with our body and with our soul. We see it all the time in those elderly people who remember their childhood more clearly than the day before. Returning to the family (if we are talking, obviously, about a family rooted in love and respect) is nothing more than the natural response of each one of us to the environment in which we are loved for what we are, not for what we have.
The opening pages of the aforementioned book by Alvira contain a few brief but profound strokes about the vital infinitude of the family: "in it we are conservative, since we wish to maintain it, we have a reason to conserve it; we are social, since it is there that we learn to appreciate others; we are liberal, since each one acquires his own personality in it; we are progressive, since it is the institution of growth, and in which we invent in order to offer something good to others".
The job of everyone: young, old, adolescent or unborn is, unfailingly, to play their place within the family. To weigh on the family is to think about "the whole" of our life. Therefore, to ask a father, a mother or a child to choose between "work or family" is a direct attack against the basic right of every person. Moreover, such a choice does not exist: one cannot be put on the same level as the other.
The Year of the Family is every year, even though, in particular, we are in this year Amoris laetitia YearThe family, for example, is part of a global reflection on the family and, in particular, on the Christian family.
Certainly, it never hurts to reflect on the family. On ours, yes. To consider how we care for, value and respect each of its members. Also, this is a year to think about the family of others. A time to reflect on how we value and respect the family of my neighbor, that of my subordinates or colleagues... because perhaps, dragged by this hedonistic and utilitarian world we can fall into being one of those who, far from facilitating and proclaiming the joy of love and family, come to ask those around us to choose between work, livelihood, projection, leisure... and family.
So let us return to the place not only where we are from, but to the place "that we are", to the divine and human family of which we are a part, and let us do so with all its consequences. We have a year, or two, or rather, a lifetime.
