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November 19, 2023Importance of family bonds
Is bond a negative or a positive word?
To understand the importance and beauty of family bonds, we must first discover the positive meaning of the word bond.
According to a certain mentality, the word bond is unfavorable because it would be a word opposite to freedom. If we imagine freedom as the possibility of simply doing what we want and what we like, then bonds are immediately felt as a burden or as a brake that holds back freedom.
If I am tied to you, I cannot move without you, without asking permission. The bond seems to limit my freedom as the capacity for autonomy, that is, to move starting from myself.
For example, I could have the image of a colored balloon that has to fly into the sky, but as long as it has a bond with someone who holds it, it is not free to go to the sky. In this image, the tie and the rope that holds the ball to a person's hand, seems to be an impediment to freedom.
But let's try to think of positive bonds even in everyday life. Let's think of a river: there is water, and there are the banks of the river. If the river did not have banks, it would not be a river, it would not be able to be swollen with water, and would run out in a few minutes. It would remain without water soon.
The river has a crucial connection with its banks that force the waters to stay inside the river. This bond makes the river powerful and strong. Without this bond, all the power of the waters would be dispersed.
Family ties are positive because they enhance everyone's life, like the river's water with its banks. We learn to be ourselves only if we are together with others.
What is the fundamental bound? It is that of being sons and daughters. It is the mystery of our birth. We always receive life from another, which constitutes life's fundamental bond. We enter the world because someone welcomes us. No one can give life to himself or herself. Only God can give life to someone. Therefore, existing always means being a child, being wanted, being loved, being welcomed, and being recognized.
The paternity of God, the source of life, passes through the bond of every child with their parents. Therefore, we become children of God through the love of our parents. So, the bond with its parents introduces it to the bond with God. This is why parents immediately ask for baptism for their children. In this way, they directly place their child in the hands of God.
Here is the fundamental bond between parents and children, through which we learn the essential bond we are all called to experience towards God.
In this sense, we must remember another significant thing: to be a sign of God's paternity towards your children, fathers and mothers must, in turn, live the awareness of being children, not only of having been children but of being even now. Parents must never forget that they are also children. Only if they live as true children will they be witnesses of the fatherhood and love of God for their children.
From here, we understand the beauty and importance of the bond between generations, parents and children, and grandparents and grandchildren. Through these bonds we learn to transmit and receive the gift of life and all our values. In particular, we are called to communicate the Christian faith through the bond between generations.
Finally, I would also like to mention the other two dimensions of the bonds we learn in the family. First, the relationship between man and woman, marriage is a decisive bond. You become a dad and a mom because you are, first and foremost, husband and wife.
From this bond of love, one learns to come out of oneself and to give oneself in such an intense way that new life is generated from the reciprocity of love between man and woman.
True family bonds never close relationships but always open them to new horizons. The marital bond is very precious because it shows us the fundamental decision to give all of oneself to the other person. In marriage, man and woman are called to welcome each other in their diversity. You always love another real person with all his / her characteristics. The other is not my mirror. The other is always a mystery that we never stop knowing and loving.
The bond between man and woman is a good bond because it is a bond of love. And when you genuinely love each other, you desire to love each other forever. True love is forever. For this reason, the marital bond is a sacrament. It is a sign of Jesus' love for the Church, a symbol of God's love for humanity.
Finally, I would like to remember one last bond between brothers and sisters, between siblings. Since we are children of God, we are called to be brothers and sisters since we have a bond with God that passes through the bond with our parents. This brotherhood is learned in the family.
If we learn well in family life to be brothers and sisters, we become protagonists of a new world. We become capable of promoting a more fraternal and human society.
Of course, sometimes it is not easy to always live in harmony in the family, and sometimes there can be tensions because we are truly all different, and each one is unique and unrepeatable.
But only by welcoming each other as we are, with our limits and gifts, can we learn what life is and how to realize our fundamental vocation. The vocation to be children of God, the vocation to holiness by participating in the divine life, in the divine love that Jesus, the son of God, brought us.
We thank the Lord for the gift of family and family bonds. No human being is an island; we belong to a community, and the first community is our family. We are ourselves only if we are for others, as Jesus did, who gave his life to everyone.
