No more orphans

Christmas is a family holiday, but the family is under attack. Not just today. In the fourth century after the birth of Christ in the Holy Family, there was in Cappadocia, in central Turkey, a movement of Christians who were enemies of the family that was headed by an ascetic named Eustatius. They had such a horror of marriage that they did not enter the homes of married couples, whom they treated with contempt because they were unworthy of the kingdom of God.

They did not participate in the divine liturgy if it was celebrated by a married priest. They wore around dressed with a cloak thrown over one shoulder and "unsewn leather shoes", a sign of contempt for society that escapes us today, because we have become illiterate about the symbol. They were angry with every form of institution, but the worst scandal was the women of the group, dressed in the same way as the men: a glimpse from which, however, one can guess the positive aspect of the movement, the aspiration to equality of the sexes and to the spiritual freedom of "there is no longer either man or woman" in St Paul's letter to the Galatians.

We know it well: yes, the family can be a place of violence, where love is denied by blood, flesh, possession, passion, the reduction of the other to one's will. But the eternal Word that created everything took a communicable form, an image accessible to man precisely in the human family.

The born Son does not come to earth in perfect form, to demonstrate the absolute perfection of God's love. No, he comes in a story of fragility, of tragedy, where his family is tossed around by the massive administrative structure of the Roman Empire. , finds place only in a cave, a symbol of the world immersed in darkness, but also a uterine cave, a symbol of the fertility of the earth which is finally free to express itself in the Son. It is warmed by the breath of an ox and a donkey, because only the "speechless" are able to recognize who the Lord really is.

The Holy Family tells us that man cannot give his life to himself, that he is existentially someone who depends on relationships with others, a continuous opportunity to get out of our selfishness: and the family is the first place where man can to experience that to love means to choose the other instead of oneself. It tells us that it is not blood that is the criterion of family unity, it is not genealogy, but love put into practice, the daily spiritual struggle to go beyond ourselves, beyond our own will. The Son tells us that we are born into a family to become as he is: children of God.

At Christmas we are no longer orphans. We discover that the family can truly be the sacrament of love. It can be the place of the irruption of transcendence. He can celebrate the daily liturgy in every humble act, he can celebrate his Eucharist every day: the hidden sacrifice for unity in communion.

Flaminia Morandi
NP December 2019