Once, during a homily, I asked a primary student teacher: “What makes you a primary teacher?” The student, bluntly and boldly, incidentally two characteristics of her personality, replied: “Repetition!” She was 100 per cent correct. Can you fathom a primary teacher who does not constantly repeat what she is teaching to her pupils? Can a seven-year-old boy ever learn instantly what his teacher is trying to teach him? Patience is really needed to help him digest what his teacher is teaching him. That is why the Latins wisely coined the phrase ‘Repetita iuvant!’ Repetition helps!

A perfect parallel can be drawn to the Maltese and Gozitan people after the experience of the referendum on divorce legislation. The 53 per cent win for those who voted for divorce drove home an important message to us all, especially the pastors of Christ’s flock. We need to keep stressing on the dire need of enforcing and empowering the family against so many present day threats! It is already consoling that both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition reached a common consensus that more should be done so that the family is properly supported to face its problems with renewed vigour and a refreshed vision.

The Church, in her own way, is trying to do her best to help families on their troubling life journey. Let me be clear. The Church, as the People of God, can never dispense herself from taking care of the family unit. In fact, when addressing the need that the Church accompanies the Christian family on its itinerary through life, the post-synodal exhortation concerning ‘The role of the Christian family in the modern world’, ‘Familiaris Consortio’, clearly expresses this position since it states: “Therefore, it must be emphasised once more that the pastoral intervention of the Church in support of the family is a matter of urgency. Every effort should be made to strengthen and develop pastoral care for the family, which should be treated as a real matter of priority, in the certainty that future evangelisation depends largely on the domestic Church. The Church’s pastoral concern will not be limited only to the Christian families closest at hand; it will extend its horizons in harmony with the Heart of Christ, and will show itself to be even more lively for families in general and for those families in particular which are in difficult or irregular situations. For all of them the Church will have a word of truth, goodness, understanding, hope and deep with their sometimes-tragic difficulties. To all of them she will offer her disinterested help so that they can come closer to that model of a family which the Creator intended from ‘the beginning’ and which Christ has renewed with His redeeming grace. The Church’s pastoral action must be progressive, also in the sense that it must follow the family, accompanying it step by step in the different stages of its formation and development” (§ 65).

The result of last Sunday’s referendum offers an excellent opportunity for us, Church pastors, to resort to the gospel as the most inspiring and reliable model for adopting the most effective and transformative pastoral attitudes that will surely bring hope to those having serious difficulties in their marriages. I have always been fascinated by the open and loving approach Jesus adopted with those who were considered “sinners” in his day. It comes spontaneously to my mind that beautiful episode which recounts how Matthew, the tax collector, was called by Jesus and the dinner the former prepared for him at his home. Thus, the gospel story goes on: “And as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ But when he heard it, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick do. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’” (Matt 9, 9-13). Jesus confronted those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others” (Luke 18, 9). He did so because he knew that they were judging people from the outside. Only God knows what a person goes through in his/her marital journey. Who are we to judge them? Why not offer these people our sacerdotal support by our prayers and spiritual guidance instead of condemning them out of hand? Was this not Jesus’ behaviour with the sinners of his day? Was he not successful by warmly making them feel at home in his presence?

When tackling what pastoral approach we priests should adopt when we deal with divorced people who have remarried, Blessed John Paul II was wise enough not to exclude these brothers and sisters from the Christian community. Rather, he gave tips in Familiaris Consortio on how to help them: “Together with the Synod, I earnestly call upon pastors and the whole community of the faithful to help the divorced, and with solicitous care to make sure that they do not consider themselves as separated from the Church, for as baptized persons they can, and indeed must, share in her life. They should be encouraged to listen to the word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of the Mass, to persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity and to community efforts in favour of justice, to bring up their children in the Christian faith, to cultivate the spirit and practice of penance and thus implore, day by day, God’s grace. Let the Church pray for them, encourage them and show herself a merciful mother, and thus sustain them in faith and hope” (§ 84). Such a pastoral solicitude loving delivered by her pastors will unquestionably present a Church who, like a caring mother, never tires from gathering her children together as a hen would gather her brood under her wings (see Luke 13, 34)!

In his book The Holy Grail and the Eucharist, the Russian Orthodox theologian, philosopher and economist, Sergius Bulgakov wrote: “The whole world is the Holy Grail, for it received into itself and contains Christ’s precious blood and water [John 19:34]. The whole world is the chalice of Christ’s blood and water; the whole world partook of them in communion in the hour of Christ’s death. And the whole world hides the blood and water within itself. A drop of Christ’s blood dripped upon Adam’s head and redeemed Adam, but also all the blood and water of Christ that flowed forth into the world sanctified the world. This blood and water made the world a place of the presence of Christ’s power, prepared the world for its future transfiguration, for the meeting with Christ come in glory.” If we change the word world for family can we not deduce that, in a certain sense, the family too is the Holy Grail of Christ’s precious blood and water? Was Jesus, God Incarnate, not born and reared up humanly in a family? Was not the family likewise redeemed by Christ’s eternal sacrifice on the cross? If all this is true why then not strengthen the family since it continues to be God’s Holy Grail in the world, particularly by the coming of children, our country’s future citizens?

Can we not concur that the family is indeed our future both as a nation and as a Church?

Mario Attard OFM Cap