FAMILIES IN EVANGELISM: God’s Plan for Families
1. In the
beginning of time
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.
7.
Obligations of the Church to families
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.
9. Teachings of the Lord regarding family life
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
After considering
and studying seriously the import and gravity of the foregoing statements of
the gospel which have direct bearing on families of every generation of
humanity, the Christian Church
recognizes the important role the families have to perform in order to dedicate themselves to the work of
evangelization and to accept the challenging situation besetting all families
today in the spirit of evangelism.
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.
The work of God in
Mother Nature is to generate, to give birth (as the word nature is
derived from the Latin nascor, which means “birth, generate, originate,
engender”), while the work that God has called Holy Mother Church to do is to
regenerate and to give rebirth to all those who had been deformed and destroyed
by sinfulness due to the strong and overpowering influence of the lower nature
on the weakened will of every person.
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.
