WE ARE FAMILY

We all think our families are important. In fact, if I asked you what the most important things in your life were you would probably say, “My faith, my family, and my friends,” or something like that. I know I would. Most people not only think their own families are important, but that family, as such, is an important ideal or value. However, most of us have a hard time explaining why. Just why are our families so important to us? Why are families important at all?

The Church teaches that the family is “the vital cell of society.” Now, this isn’t just something clever that some priest in the Vatican thought up over espresso one morning. And it’s not something new that they only figured out recently. It turns out that the concept of family is one of the most consistent themes in the whole of the Scriptures. So we’ll start there.

THE OLD TESTAMENT

The Old Testament begins with the story of creation. In fact, there are two creation stories at the beginning of the book of Genesis. They each emphasize different things, but the one thing they have in common is placing the creation of humanity as the crown of creation. The first creation story concludes: Then God said:“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.” God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them, saying: “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:26–28)

So the human person is the high point of creation because the human person, of all creatures, is made in God’s image. But we are created, from the beginning, as male and female. This means that our sexual difference is not only given by God, but is a direct reflection of the divine life. The first commandment that God gives in the Bible is “Be fruitful and multiply,” inviting his new creation to participate in the very godly thing that God does: creating new life. This theme is echoed in the second creation story:

The LORD God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being. Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and he placed there the man whom he had formed. The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.” So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man call