Ask any parent who launched their child only to have them return home or encouraged them through rehab only to watch them relapse. Ask any adult child who has welcomed their parent into their home as aging, illness or disability demands. Ask couples who have blended families after divorce or death of a spouse. Ask families who have weathered unexpected and devastating medical complexities.
Family life is no straight line soaring upward to success. It rises and falls, dips and doubles back, twists and turns in directions we never saw coming. But family is the way that we learn to love, serve and humble ourselves over and over again to care for Christ in our midst.
In families we are constantly called to rearrange our lives around the ones who need the most help: a newborn baby, a sick child, a broken leg, a stomach flu, a broken heart, a job loss, a new diagnosis or a mental health crisis.
But the school of love that is family life is not simply meant to produce a “finished product,” especially if we hold up able-bodied, successful, healthy and independent adults as the only goal. Instead, we are called to care for the least among us all life long.
In the Old Testament, God keeps calling the people to care for the widow, the orphan and the foreigner. These three categories were the weakest, the overlooked and the powerless: the least among us. Through the prophets and leaders, God reminds the people over and over again to show special attention, love and mercy to the ones who lack status, influence or resources: “For the Lord, your God, is the God of gods…who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and loves the resident alien, giving them food and clothing. So you too should love the resident alien” (Dt 10:17-19).
Jesus makes the call to care for the vulnerable ever clearer in the Gospels, when he identifies himself with the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and imprisoned: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Mt 25:40).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church also teaches that families were created to care for the vulnerable — and also to call societies in turn to care for those in need: “The family should live in such a way that its members learn to care and take responsibility for the young, the old, the sick, the handicapped, and the poor. There are many families who are at times incapable of providing this help. It devolves then on other persons, other families, and, in a subsidiary way, society to provide for their needs: ‘Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world'” (CCC 2208).
This is how families work toward the kingdom of God. We clean up when kids get sick, and we teach our children to care for creation. We make dinner every night, and we share what we can with those who need help. We fold laundry, and we show our children how to vote and contact our representatives. We cheer for each other, and we talk about the daily news in the light of faith. We pray for one another, and we pray for those who have no one to pray for them.
Families embody what it means that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. We cannot ignore the call to serve the least within our walls — and within our world. The kingdom of God demands both.
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