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What is Family Spirituality? |
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Family spirituality is the spiritual dimension of everything that the family does to be a family. Its most important ingredient is the love flowing between family members. Where genuine love is, we always find God because God is love. Family
spirituality is best thought of as family life itself. It encompasses everything alive in the family. It
thrives in the caring relationships between family members. God is particularly
attuned to family living because, in a sense, God lives in a family, the Holy
Trinity. A
singular loving gesture of God ignited the very existence of the Universe. From
God’s deep love streams all created reality, past, present and future. The
artistic masterpiece of God’s creation is, of course, the human person. God
did not intend that the human person live alone, but as one immersed in the
nourishing moments of communal experience. Life itself begins in a sexual
expression of love and develops out of the continuing love within the family as
well as the love pulsing through the wider community.
Into
each heart God places a profound hunger for the experience of being loved and
loving others. This hunger can only be satisfied by God’s total and
all-encompassing love, but snippets of God’s love are mirrored or experienced within the daily moments of human respect, care, consideration and concern.
The
family can awaken itself to God’s loving presence through prayer, both
individual and communal, through shared activities, both religious and human,
and through the countless efforts given to the care and support of each other.
The family is like a cell in a larger living body. In the Church the family is
rightly described as a domestic church, a church of the home, a household of
faith. No
family acts are too small, no words are too brief, for them all to be sacred or
holy. From the stirring of the first family member with the sun rising to light
a new day until the last light or candle is extinguished, the spiritual life of
the family unfolds. The
Kingdom of God itself comes to be in families whenever two or three loving
people connect and live together in a family. While on the surface most of what
happens in the family may appear utterly worldly and temporal, know that every
simple gesture of love in the family receives both an amen
and an alleluia in heaven. For those near God know all too well that what
alone lasts is love. Only love conquers death, only love can give birth to and
energize all that is most sacred in creation, life itself. We are reminded that
Jesus came that we may have life. He was born into a family and his final
gesture on the cross was to ensure that his mother was cared for. Who
we are
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