Normative for Christians is not only Jesus as an individual person, the Way, the Truth and the Life, but since the human person has a social dimension, Jesus’ social and family life, his family consisting of his mother and adoptive human father, is also normative for us, for there is no human life outside the family.
God is one and triune, the human being created in the image and likeness of God is also, naturally, one and triune. Father-Mother-Child, there is no human life beyond this triangle. Every human being is a father or a mother or a child. We are, at the same time, an individual and a social being, because we are each a whole, as an individual being, and a part as a member of a human family.
Each of the three human categories, father-mother-son/daughter, implies the existence of the other two. That is, no man is a father without a wife and a child, just as no woman is a mother without a husband and a child; lastly, a child of a single mother must have a father. The existence of one implies the existence of the other two. Jesus says of marriage, "The two will become one flesh", precisely when the two are one and are engaged in the conjugal or sexual act, they become three. That's why the human being is at the same time one and triune.
Mother without umbilical cord
Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travellers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. Luke 2:41-45
Mother hen, a terrible future mother-in-law
A father, even if he is the child’s biological father, is always an adoptive father because it is the mother who conceives in her body and nurtures the child for 9 months, and then for two years at her breast. At birth, the child only recognizes the mother and even recognizes her by her smell; the father is introduced to him later. And when this happens, the child and father look at each other like two strangers and, if the child is male, even as two rivals later on.
Unlike motherhood, fatherhood lacks the physical experience, as it only occurs at the microscopic cellular level and outside the man’s body. Therefore, St. Joseph, who was the adoptive father to Jesus, can perfectly be the model of fatherhood and the patron saint of all fathers, biological or otherwise. At the end of the day, God the Father in Heaven is also our adoptive Father, for He has only one Son who is begotten while we are creatures adopted by God the Father, by the merits of Jesus Christ who became our older brother.
Being a father or being a mother has its advantages and drawbacks. The fact that the father is adoptive, there is always a distance between him and the child, because fatherhood does not take place at the physical level. Motherhood, on the other hand, takes place at this level, so that a mother always finds it difficult to see her child as a separate entity from herself, and many never manage to cut the umbilical cord, always seeing the child not as a distinct person, but as an extension of herself.
I like jokes a lot, and yet I have never heard a joke against fathers-in-law; all the jokes of this nature target mothers-in-law. A mother hen has the tendency to be a terrible mother-in-law, always trying to interfere in her son's life even when he is already married and has formed a family.
The verse quoted above denotes that Mary and Joseph gave their son a lot of freedom, to the point that they went days without seeing him. We can conclude that Mary was not a mother hen, but a mother who knew her place and saw her son as a distinct person and not as an extension of herself.
The goal of a child's education is to make him free, independent and autonomous. In other words, a father and a mother should aim to make themselves obsolete and unnecessary when their children reach adulthood, maturity and autonomy. To love as St. Thomas Aquinas said is to want the good of the other as the other sees it, and not as we see it.
It is true that a father wants his child to succeed where he himself could not, but that should not prevent the child from choosing his life because he is the one who will live it. I have known many parents who did all kinds of blackmail to prevent their children from following their vocation, especially their religious vocation, despite being deeply religious themselves.
The family and the values of liberty - equality - fraternity
Liberty – is the value on which the life of the human person is based, as an independent and autonomous being. Without liberty there is no human life; in order to realize as a human person, an individual must be free, not dependent on anything or anyone. Free from external constraints, but also free from internal constraints such as addictions.... Therefore, there are two types of freedom: external and internal.
Equality – is the value on which the life of the individual who lives in society is based. No individual is an island, because every individual is born from a relationship of two individuals, a father and a mother. Therefore, every individual is and always will be part of a family, a clan, a tribe, a country...
Fraternity – a quark is the union of several gluons; several quarks form a proton which is one of the three elements of an atom. Gluten is a protein that makes a cereal like wheat look like glue after it is kneaded. I fear that gluten intolerance will start to be equally proportional to individualism in society and as a consequence, the love that makes all humans brothers and sisters will disappear.
Family, the only school of life
Like a human being, family is the result of millions of years of evolution. In evolution, reptiles generally do not need a family, they are born from eggs; while birds and mammals need a family for a few months. In the evolution of species, the closer an animal is to human, the more time coexisting in a family it will need before it can be free, independent and autonomous.
A human being is the living being that needs the most time coexisting in a family; so, the family is the only place where human life can exist. The family is the "habitat" of human life, as the sea is for whales and sharks, the South Pole is for penguins, the North Pole is for polar bears and the savannah is for lions. Since a human being is not born in the adult state, like some living beings, without the family there is no human life.
Human beings are not born, they are made. A child at birth has all the potentials to become a human person. However, these potentials must be cultivated within a family, by the parents and older siblings. Everything in a human being is learned, like walking upright, speaking, loving, most of the things in human life are learned, there is very little that is innate.
A child without contact with people would never learn to walk or talk, as the myth of Tarzan suggests; if a child were raised by chimpanzees, he would be a hairless chimpanzee; if he were raised by a she-wolf, he would be a wolf for all intents and purposes, with a human appearance only.
It takes many years of study to train a doctor, an engineer or an architect; and since the world needs more good parents than these professions, How come there is not even a weekend course to learn how to be a parent?
Education is "aerial" and continuous
"Son you are, father you shall be, as you do so you shall find."
Unlike other schools, where there are lesson periods and break periods, in the school of life, of the family, there are no vacations. All family moments and situations are educational, for better or for worse. Education is "aerial" and continuous; in the school of life, the child is always in the classroom.
Because education is "aerial", the family is a school where children learn not from what they are told, but from what they see; it is the seedbed where growth can be controlled and guided. Making a baby is easy, the difficulty is to turn a child into an authentic human being. It's one thing to be a biological parent, it is another to be a father or a mother.
In the family we learn the main attitudes by which we will live; therefore, parents should keep in mind that a child imitates more readily than learns. A child who sees his drunken father beating his mother, swearing obscenities, engaging in immature, immoral and illegal behaviors, will most likely reproduce these same behaviors in his adult life.
We all remember phrases from our parents that have shaped our lives, some positive, some negative. "He who sows winds reaps storms”, "sow love, and you shall reap love; sow hatred and hatred will be what you will reap", "a child is like a field, he will only produce what is sown in him", or "the son of a fish knows how to swim". No one gives what he does not have; a father cannot pass on to his child what he does not have. The son of a scoundrel will be a scoundrel, just as the son of a thief will be a thief.
Educating a child is an immense responsibility in itself, towards the child and the society. The world improves not so much by revolutions, but by conversions, when men become better; it is our contribution to the world. How many parents take their task lightly? A father should seek to pass on to his child his virtues and not his flaws. If your sons and daughters are like you or worse than you, what is the meaning of your life?
"As the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined "
For children, the family is like a greenhouse, since children are not yet ready to live in the open world; in the greenhouse, we can control their growth, the temperature, the humidity, the pest control, etc.
The world outside the family is an inhospitable place, for which the family prepares us, strengthens or weakens us. The school and the street, good or bad, are the same for everyone: there are bullies, there are drugs, there are potential crimes, and those who succumb to them are those who do not have a strong and meaningful family where love, harmony and peace rule.
In addition to being a greenhouse, the family is also a hospital where adolescents, young people and even adult children recover from the wounds that society inflicts on them. They spend their convalescence within the family, until they can return to society, strengthened and with lessons learned.
"An Englishman's home is his castle". This is a very interesting expression about the dedication that parents should have to the sacred space that is the family. Today, there are many enemies of the family, even the government itself can be an enemy of the family. Parents should not only beware of the enemies from outside: TV, internet, mobile phone or computer can be today like a real Trojan horse that boycotts education and the values that parents want to transmit.
Unconditional love
As the habitat and school of human life, the attitude, the most important value to learn is unconditional love. Only in the family we are loved unconditionally, therefore only in the family can we learn to love unconditionally. Only those who are loved unconditionally by their parents and siblings learn to love unconditionally.
Love is unconditional or it is not love. Family is the only place where you are loved without conditions, whether you are good or bad, beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid. God loves unconditionally, but anyone who is not loved unconditionally by his parents will hardly discover the unconditionality of God's love. Many Christians think that they must be good to be loved by God. Whoever does not learn to love unconditionally can never live fully and be authentically and genuinely human.
I knew a young woman who, as a child, received hugs and kisses from her parents only when she excelled in school. She learned to confuse love with success in school that later turned into professional success. Today, as an adult, she is very successful professionally, but not so successful in her love life, in which she is unhappy. There is nothing more important than love. Those who do not love have never lived, because to live is to love.
Conclusion – The myth of Tarzan reveals to us that, in human life, very little is innate, almost everything is learned within the family which is an irreplaceable school of life.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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