FAMILIES IN EVANGELISM: God’s Plan for Families
When God created the world, his purpose was to create a home, a dwelling and to extend himself as a family (Cfr. Is. 45:18).
In the beginning, before the eons began
and before His creative act, God was existing in the unitary mode of existence
as the single monad or unit of life (Cfr. Gn. 1:1a; Is. 42:14, 43:10f., 44:24;
Acts 17:26). God was pre-existing in
eternity as a pure spirit, “whose home is in inaccessible light”, all by
Himself as a Godhead, a triune or uni-plural God (Cfr. 1 Tim. 6:15f).
Although the Godhead is intrinsically a family, a unity of three personalities of the Father who is the “Ruler of all, the King of kings and the Lord of lords” (Cfr. 1 Tim. 6:15), of the Christ or Logos as the only-begotten Son (Cfr. Jn. 1:1,14), and of the Holy Spirit as the “Sophia” or Wisdom (Cfr. Ws. 8:25f), indeed they were a happy family in unity and love, yet God wanted to extend Himself eternally by generation and to enter into time and space by an act of creation.
He created the “heavens and the earth” (Cfr. Gn. 1:1b), and everything that is in them “with all their array” *(Cfr. Gn. 2:1).
By means of Wisdom (Sir. 1:9), God made Mother Nature (=Latin “nascor”, meaning “birth, originate, generate, engender”) to be His bride and spouse (Is. 54:5, 62:5) to be the mother of all created things and beings (Cfr. Ws. 7:12; Sir 15:2), and through her to beget God’s children by the Law of Hierarchy both in the realms of the heavens (angels and spirits) and on earth (mankind) (Cfr. Ws. 7:27-8:4, 1 Jn. 2:29).
God and Mother Nature make a single body in an eternal marriage made by God Himself, binding Himself to her in an everlasting and perpetual covenant of unity and dignity, to fruitfully bring forth children for Himself, and thus a family of his own, with God as the head of all creation (Cfr. Ep. 1:23), as the Father without end (Cfr. Is. 64:7; Tb. 13:4), and as husband to Mother Nature (Cfr. Is. 54:5).
Thus, in the very beginning, God has created his own family in an extended and expanded dominion to be his home, his dwelling and his kingdom forever. And because He is God, He must be very happy living in a single unified body with the rest of His creation, with Mother Nature as His spouse by his Holy Spirit, as a fruitful and virgin mother to all God’s children.
By his irrevocable will, God ordained the marriage covenant to be seen in the context of a single body or organic unity, as he exemplified it in his divine marriage with Mother Nature, for the perpetuity, endurance and happiness of all marriages.
2.
The first human couple
Setting himself up as an example of a happy and fruitful marriage, God
put the
first man and woman whom he created to be the first human couple and married them with these words: “Man shall leave father and mother and joins himself to his wife and they shall become one body” (Cfr. Gn. 2:24; Mt. 19:5; Ep. 5:31) as a perpetual and unbreakable law for all marriages under God.
This marriage between man and wife as forming one body has been deeply emphasized by Jesus Christ when he said: “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body. They are no longer two, these form one body” (Mk. 10:6-8).
To further clarify this one body in marriage, the Apostle Paul used the phrase “one flesh” to denote human marriages (Cfr. 1 Cor. 6:16).
3. Christ and His Church
In order to restore the unhappy state of all human marriages which were not done “in the Lord” (Cfr. 1 Cor 7:10,39), Christ, the Son of God, came to realize for us a marriage which is spiritual and divine in nature, which is no other than His marriage with the Church, copying the “one body, one flesh” principle both embodied in the divine and human law for marriages (Cfr. Ep. 5:21-33).
The Church is Christ’s bride (Apo. 19:8, 21:2), and she is being symbolized by the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven for the wedding with the Lamb, Jesus Christ, her spouse. She is the new Eve who will fulfill the ancient prophecy regarding the woman whose offspring shall crush the head of the serpent and whose heel it shall strike in retaliation (Cfr. Gn. 3:15; Apo. 12).
Since we are members of the Church, we are Christ’s virgin bride who had been given to him in marriage (Cfr. 2 Co. 11:2).
To be an effective marriage therefore, this marriage of the Church with Christ has been compared by the Apostle Paul in the analogy of the one body of Christ: “Now therefore you together are Christ’s body: but each of you is a different part of it” (1 Co. 12:27f).
In other words, Christ’s body, which is the Church, must function in a teleological relationship just like any organic body (=one part exists because and for the sake of the others and therefore each must always look into the well-being and welfare of the other parts in the spirit of love and unity).
Christ has set in a most certain and clear way this teleological relationship as functional also within his own body, the Church, as His spouse. That is why the Apostle Paul said: “Christ’s love for the Church is realized when, as her head, he saved the whole body and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy” (Cfr. Ep. 5:23-25). Therefore, the Church reciprocates Christ’s love by submitting herself to Christ in everything (Cfr. Ep. 5:24).
4. The Church as Mother
For the sake of understanding the role of the Christian families in evangelism (i.e., the belief that evangelization work and effort is the only solution to all the problems and situations besetting man and his society), we have to understand the role of the Church as Mother.
The Church, as the new Eve and Bride of Christ, is to become, by God’s will and plan, the mother for the redeemed children of God, as adopted sons of God through Jesus Christ (Cfr. Ep. 1:5). These are the Christians who submitted themselves to the will of Christ and became his brothers in the spirit (Cfr. Rom. 8:29).
Through the work of evangelizatiion, the Word of God (=the pre-existing Logos), is announced and implanted like a human seed that is being implanted in a mother’s womb (Cfr. 1 P. 1:23), on the hearts of those people who accept it in complete faith and trust in the God who speaks and proposes to them.
The message of the evangelizer (= “angel”, messenger) is that God’s son, namely the Christian, is going to be born in the hearts of those people. Those who accept the announcement (= “kerygma”, proclamation) will be implanted in and gestated by the Church in her womb, and for some period of time, several long years depending upon their openness and cooperation to God’s grace, will be formed (=initiated slowly into the Christian mysteries, cfr. Ep. 1:9f), like a natural mother forming a baby in her womb, or like the Virgin Mary forming Jesus Christ in her womb, for a period of nine long months.
This gestation of the Christian took place in a school of faith, called by the primitive Church as “catechumenate”, with its several steps and periods of initiation, marked by entrances into three doors, viz., the Entrance, the Martyrium, and the Anastasis, to which the candidates are conducted and led through long and systematic catechesis and rites at the end of every major period.
When the time has come that one is ready to receive the Sacrament of Faith, which is Baptism (=the water of rebirth and regeneration, cfr. Jn. 3:4-5; Ep. 5:26; Tt. 3:5; 1 P. 3:21), after being formed in the school of faith, the man who entered before with all his natural defects, having now been formed after the character of Christ, will be born again as a child of God, who is the Christian, a new creature with a transformed heart in the likeness of Christ.
This child will be born by Holy Mother Church through the water of Baptism, and the baptismal font will serve as her womb. This child is now a new creature, from a sinful man full of the defects and bad habits of the old Adam, to a new man “no longer of flesh and blood, but born from above through water and the Spirit” (Cfr. Jn. 3:3), patterned unto the new Adam, Jesus Christ.
This is what Jesus was explaining to the learned Nicodemus regarding a sinful man being “born again” by God, how an old creature of the flesh with a heart full of lust, greed and hate is being transformed into a new creature of the spirit with a heart full of peace, joy and love through the power of the resurrected spirit of Jesus Christ risen and alive in the Church.
This transformation of man happens every time the Church does and accepts her role as Mother for those people who are called by God through his Word to accept baptism as a new birth and to nourish them later with the “milk of spiritual honesty” (Cfr. 1 P. 2:2) through the Eucharistic life, a life of continuing praise and daily worship to God. Thus, the Church becomes mother to all Christians, as a result of being the spiritual spouse and bride of Christ.
5. The Holy Family of Nazareth
In her role as mother to Christians, Holy Mother Church takes the lead from the Holy Family of Nazareth, composed by the family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, who lived in complete faith and trust in God’s word and exemplified the spirit of humility, simplicity and praise in their family life.
Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, is the servant of God’s word and the model of complete faith and trust in God when he accepted his foster-fatherhood to Jesus Christ, by accepting Mary when she was already with child through the Holy Spirit (Cfr. Mt. 1:18). He made this sacrifice on his honor and reputation in order for the Son of God to be born in a normal human family through a virgin birth as prophesied in the Scriptures long time ago, “And the virgin shall conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel” (Mt. 1:19, 23). When the newly-born child was threatened with imminent death, Joseph took his family to Egypt and then back to the land of Israel, again in fulfillment of an ancient prophecy about this child (Mt. 2:15; Cfr. Ho.11:1). Obedient to the Jewish Law, Joseph and Mary went to Jerusalem for the yearly feast of Passover with the boy Jesus to show complete submission to the injunctions of an old religion (Lk. 2:42). And when Jesus was growing up, Joseph fulfilled his fatherhood by providing for his stepson an honest trade and decent livelihood by employing him in his carpentry shop (Mt. 13:55, Mk. 6:3; Jn. 6:42).
Mary accepted in faith the announcement of the angel that she will bear and be a mother to a son of God through the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit, and that for nine months to gestate him in her womb until she is given to birth Jesus Christ, the son of God. By God’s plan, Mary became a mother to Jesus Christ up to the time of his ministry (Cfr. Mt. 12:46), at the foot of the cross while he hanged crucified (Cfr. Jn. 19:26), and at the meetings and at the inauguration of the Church at Pentecost (Cfr. Acts 1:14).
Jesus lived under the authority of his parents, until he increased in wisdom, in stature and in the favor of God and men in complete submission and dedication to them as a devout family member (Lk. 2:51-52).
6. Mary, figure of the Church
The role of Mary in the work of salvation is to be the mother of the Saviour, Jesus Christ, and to be the prototype of the Church as Mother to all that would come to Jesus Christ as Christians. Mary, as the mother of Jesus Christ, therefore is the figure, the icon and the image of the Church in her role as Mother in the work of salvation.
Mary’s role in relation to her
Jesus Christ and the Church’s role in relation to the Christians, according to
the understanding of the Church has the same, though parallel, meaning. For
this reason, the primitive Church used one and the same icon to portray Mary
and the Church as that of a mother carrying a child in her arm (Madonna and
child) in order to teach the distinctive role of both in the dispensation
of salvation to the world, namely the formation of the child of God, through
the work of evangelization.
The obligation of the Church to all her children is to give herself completely as a mother. This involves the idea of conceiving, gestating, nurturing and feeding in an atmosphere of a spiritual family.
The Church conceives and implants in her womb (=the baptismal font) her prospective members (aspirants) through evangelization, where she announces the message of salvation in a kerygmatic way.
The Church gestates her initiates (novices or catechumens) through baptismal process, where she forms and teaches them the mysteries of faith through catechesis and the celebration of the liturgy.
The Church nurtures her new members (neophytes), after having been reborn and washed in the baptismal waters, through the Eucharist where she feeds them into the Christian life with the bread of instruction into the word of God and the celebration of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ in the context of a Eucharistic meal.
All these works of the Church is in keeping with the Lord’s injunction to her before he returned back to the Father, “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you” (Cfr. Mt. 28:19-20).
8. The nature of Christian families
By reason of their incorporation into the Body of Christ, all Christians had been admitted into the family of God with Christ as the head of the body, the Church (Cfr. 1 Co. 11:3) through the Eucharistic life. Hence, the sacrament of marriage which the Christian couple received at the beginning of their family life proclaims this incorporation into the body of the Church whose head is Christ. The sacrament of marriage is its symbol for the couple, where they proclaim to the Christian assembly present at the marriage ceremony that they are going to pattern their married life according to the spirit of Christ in His marriage with the Church. This willingness of the Christian couple to live the same spirit in their own marriage is called by the Apostle Paul as marriage “in the Lord”, meaning, a marriage conducted and lived according to the spirit and teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ in regard to family life which the couple pledges to keep as a personal covenant between them for as long as they live.
a. The
father of the family and husband:
What is his stature and his responsibilities in life as both husband and father of the family, according to Jesus Christ?
In Matthew 19:5f., we read: “A man shall leave his father and mother, and cling to his wife, and the two become one flesh.” Are we not aware that all divorces and the separation of spouses, with the resulting delinquency problem among children, are the direct result of the infraction of this teaching about the man not leaving his father and mother in order to cling to his wife?
When a man takes his wife to stay and live with his own parents or at his in-law’s house, he directly violates this particular injunction. As a result, one of the couple will experience enormous difficulties in adjusting to the original family members as these exert more influence to their own member than to his or her own spouse. Parents in this set-up are always tempted to favor their own child than their in-law and thus they cause the eventual break of the couple, and the marriage asundered.
In First Peter 3:7, it says: “in the same way, husbands must always treat their wives with consideration in their life together, respecting a woman as one who, though she may be the weaker partner, is equally an heir to the life of grace.”
There are two important points which we must underline in this text.
First, the apostle Peter used the phrase “in their life together” in order to clarify the gospel injunction which says “(man) must cling to his wife and the two become one body” (Cfr. Mt. 19:8), or the original injunction in the book of Genesis which says: “(man) joins himself to his wife, and they become one body” (Cfr. Gn. 2:24; Ep. 5:31).
It is clear what is important in this phrase. It is always the preservation of the unity and the life of togetherness between husband and wife.
A husband must carefully consider the disastrous effect of living a separate life, with his own separate interests, hobbies, leisure, friends and acquaintances from his wife and family.
Married life entails a life of togetherness and unity for the couple and the children because they are forming just one single organic body. An organic body cannot exist if all its parts are living separately or apart from each other.
The husband is responsible for protecting and preserving the unity of the family because he is its head, whose function is to decide which is good or bad for his family.
The two consequences of separation, of the husband and wife living separately, are: 1. juvenile delinquency and 2. infidelity.
Delinquent children are the result when the parents are unable to provide guidance and close supervision to their children.
Infidelity on the part of the couple is the result when both partners are no longer happy being with each other and they try to seek enjoyment with other partners apart from each other.
In order to prevent separation, here is the advice of the Apostle Paul: “A husband must not send his wife away” (1 Cor. 7:11c).
The second point being raised by the Apostle Peter in this text is that of husbands treating their wife with consideration. This point may also be considered in the light of what the Apostle Paul said: “Husbands, love your wives and treat them with gentleness” (cfr. Col. 3:19).
Consideration and gentleness are the marks of a true gentleman husband. Women in general should be treated like breakable crystals. The situation of all women and of a wife in particular, must be understood in the light of God’s word found in Genesis 3:16: “I will multiply your pains in childbearing, you shall give birth to your children in pain. Your yearning must be for your husband, yet he will lord it over you.”
A gentle husband must indeed consider the seriousness and gravity of God’s sentence to the woman. Being considerate and gentle with her wife’s condition all the time, especially when she is with child, is likewise a mark of a true Christian husband. He must remember that the woman was given to him with the original intention that she is his helpmate (Cfr. Gn. 2:18,20) or as to be his help and support (Cfr. Tob.8:6).
The woman, with the help and support of her husband, will be able to “save herself by childbearing” (Cfr. 1 Tim. 2:15) and thus she will attain salvation and righteousness from God.
The Apostle Paul was specific about this point when he said: “In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies; for a man to love his wife is for him to love himself. A man never hates his own body, but he feeds it and looks after it” (Ep. 5:28f).
In Ep. 5:23 the Apostle Paul stated that, “since as Christ is head of the Church and saves the whole body, so is a husband the head of his wife.”
The Apostle Paul was talking here about the headship of the husband over his wife. Headship of the husband means the office of presiding over his family, his wife included, with two specific responsibilities: 1. deciding (decision-making) and, 2. providing (for the needs of his family).
The wisdom of both these unity
of togetherness and the dignity of headship, if attained by the husband, will
guarantee him salvation and the righteousness from God as it will “deliver man
from his fault” (Ws. 10:1).
Even the stature of older men in the family is found included in the gospel as found in the advice of the Apostle Paul to Titus that says: “Older man should be reserved, dignified, moderate, and sound in faith and love and constancy” (Tt. 2:2).
This list of traits for older men was meant by the Apostle Paul as to mean the following: to be reserved includes the idea of “to be cautious, prudent, wary or to learn to wait a while before acting.”; to be dignified means to be honorable and respectable in speech and bearing; to be moderate means to be neutral, staying at the middle, to be virtuous and judicious; and to be sound means to be without fault or defect. And, hence, to be sound in faith and love and constancy means to be without fault or defect in the matter of faith, of love and constancy.
b. Mother of
the family and wife:
The responsibilities of the wife and mother of the family includes the following: 1. To regard and respect her husband (Ep. 5:21,33b); 2. She must not leave her husband (1 Cor. 7:10), 3. She must give way to her husband. (Col. 3:18), 4. She must be obedient to her husband ( Tt. 2:5; 1 P. 3:1), 5. She must recognize the husband’s authority over her by wearing her hair long as a head cover (1 Co. 11:3); 5. She must wear suitable clothes and dress moderately (1 Tm. 2:9ff.; 1 P. 3:3f), 6. She must not teach or tell a man what to do ( 1 Tm. 2:12), and lastly, 7. Women must remain quiet at meetings, and must ask their husbands at home for any questions to ask. (1 Co. 14:34-35).
Elder women, as advised by the Apostle Paul, are supposed to be teachers of right behavior and show younger women how to love their husbands and love their children, to be sensible and chaste, to work in their homes, to be gentle, and to do as their husbands tell them (Cfr. Tt. 2:3-5).
Widows who are left without anybody can give themselves to God and consecrate all their days and nights to petitions and prayer by enrolling themselves into the Church’s Order of Widows (Cfr. 1 Tm. 5:5,9).
c. Parents and children:
The duties and responsibilities of parents in relation to their children and vice versa are outlined in the following texts:
1. 2 Co. 12:14 – “Children
are not expected to save up for their parents, but
parents for children.”
2. Col. 3:20f .--
“Children, be obedient to your parents always, because that is
what pleases the Lord.”
3. 1 Tim. 5:4,8 – “(Children
and grandchildren) are to learn first of all to do
their duty to their own families and repay their debt to their
parents, because this is what pleases God”
4. Ep. 6:1-3
- “Children, be obedient to your
parents in the Lord—that is your
duty. The first commandment that has a promise attached to it
is: Honour your father and mother,
and the promise is: and
you
shall prosper and have long life in the land. And parents,
never drive your children to resentment but in bringing them
up
correct them and guide them as the Lord does.”
d. Marital act between husband and wife.
Since sex is always a danger, husband and wife must give to each other what each one has the right to expect in terms of affection and the marital act and never to refuse except by mutual consent and this for a time only in order to give way for the time of prayer (Cfr. 1 Co. 7:3f.).
10. The Mission for Families in the
modern world
It is God’s plan
for the world that his gifts of fruitful life and love and unity be shared by
all his creatures, and that this sharing should occur in the context of the
family and for it to serve the principal purposes for its existence in the
human society, which are the following:
- To
socialize the young;
- To prepare
them to live in the existing culture.
- To
continue that culture;
- To
transmit in turn the culture to their offspring.
Although the effects of sin have not destroyed the institution of the family during the flood (Cfr. Gn. 7:13-16), yet Christ came to restore the original dignity of headship between husband and wife and the unity of togetherness with their children that should characterize all families by the obedience of the woman to man, by man to Christ, and by Christ to God (Cfr. 1 Co. 11:3). This obedience to God’s will is clearly exemplified by the submission of Holy Mother Church to Christ, the head of His Body, in everything.
Hence, these gifts should also be shared in whatever social context and condition the family should find itself in, whether in an extended family of the agricultural society, or the atomic type of family of the industrial mode of production, or the expanded form of family we find in our present cyber space civilization, and that the teachings of the gospel on families should be propagated, taught and be held in primacy.
This is pure evangelism within and for families. By God’s original design and plan, the continuous birth and rebirth of creation will occur when all families under God will have the strength to live up to its mission and vocation as willing cooperators of the creative and re-creative action of God and to restore the peace and stability of the family through a renewed evangelism among communities of families and nations.
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