CALL TO FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND PARTICIPATION

 

 

(“We for our part, love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘My love is fixed on God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. One who has no love for the brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” 1 John 4:19-21

 

The Second Theme of Catholic Social teaching is: “The Call to Family, Community, and Participation.”  Each person is not only sacred but also social. Human dignity is affected by how we structure our society, our economy, our political system, our judicial system. Our society must be structured in a way that allows the each person to grow to his or her potential. This begins with the family. Society must not only safe guard the family unit but also put forth policies that protect and strengthen the family. Each person, regardless of economic status or education has right to participate in society.

 

“The family is thus an agent of pastoral activity through its explicit proclamation of the Gospel and its legacy of varied forms of witness, namely solidarity with the poor, openness to a diversity of people, the protection of creation, moral and material solidarity with other families, including those most in need, commitment to the promotion of the common good and the transformation of unjust social structures, beginning in the territory in which the family lives, through the practice of the corporal works of mercy.” (On Love in the Family, Pope Francis)

 

In other words, our working toward the Common Good motivates our call to community and participation. The Church insists that our faith requires our commitment to building just structures and our focus on the corporal works of mercy; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, welcoming the stranger. The family unit is the place to begin this novitiate of service when we learn as children that we are called to be people of service, especially to those who do not have enough of the world’s goods to take care of themselves.  “Insofar as it is a ‘small-scale Church,’ the Christian family is called upon, like the ‘large-scale Church,’ to be a sign of unity for the world and in this way to exercise its prophetic role by bearing witness to the Kingdom and peace of Christ, towards which the whole world is journeying. Christian families can do this through their educational activity – that is to say by presenting to their children a model of life based on the values of truth, freedom, justice and love – both through active and responsible involvement in the authentically human growth of society  and its institutions, and by supporting in various ways the associations specifically devoted to international issues.” St. John Paul II Familiaris Consorto.