When you have no family, you dream of one. But even those who live within a family suffer when they cannot move past conflict, accept differences, or overcome the comparisons that arise. It would be good if every family paused now and then to take stock—to weigh what has failed and what has succeeded, to examine the joys and sorrows that mark its journey.
Perhaps then we would notice that God is there with us, comforting us in sorrow and putting our small triumphs in their proper place.
The word "family" surely calls to mind a closeness where people help and understand one another—yet it can also divide and create rupture. A true family exists only among those who, embracing the differences within it, enter into genuine communion.
Today many families endure painful misunderstandings, failures, and unexpected situations no one could have foreseen. In a real family, members discover within these struggles a strength they did not know they possessed. We can prove ourselves strong precisely in the face of what threatens to separate or divide us. We long for unity and sameness, yet we are forced to accept difference, separation, and often a confusion that overwhelms our capacity.
Some children idealize their family, never truly knowing it yet speaking of it and imagining it. They claim it as their own, but suffer because they cannot truly experience it.
When a family is suddenly struck by wound—divorce, separation, death, accident—we ask what will happen and how we will bear it. Perhaps it is in that moment that we should look to our children, the youngest ones, to discover what they have to teach us: how a child reacts to money troubles, how a son or daughter responds to separation, how a child's smile after mutual forgiveness compels us to think again.
Today we must rediscover God: the family teaches us how to live in Him.
- Father Roberti, 2001
