We Catholics are supposed to be uniquely communitarian, a sacramental people. The Church itself is THE sacrament of Jesus Christ. The Eucharist (a.k.a., the Mass, the Lord’s Supper and the Sacred Liturgy) is our most important sacramental activity while earth-bound. Thus, as it can be that we have bigger and broader definitions of what “family” is, the “Church as family” is fittingly said. We inherit a priority of hospitality toward those who seem to be strangers. The Mass is the perfect time for that. We are already family and we become more so through the Mass. We meet Jesus who is the center of it all.
As he entered his ministry and “left home” to do so, he told his followers as he responded to Peter in the Gospel, Peter said, “we have given up everything and followed you.” Jesus responded: “there is no one who has given up house or… (family members) or lands for my sake and the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in the present age… (houses and family and lands to share) (Mark:10). And when Jesus was teaching in a home surrounded by disciples, the Gospel tells us His mother and relatives came there to see Him and He responded: “who are my mother and my brother and my sisters, and stretching out his hand toward those present, he said: those who do the will of my Father in Heaven are mother and brother and sister to me.”
Those who are our brothers and sisters in the Lord are our family in Christ and we need to have constant kindness toward them. We are to also seek to attract Christians back to Jesus, and those who are not churched, to make them a part of the family. Baptism gets the family started, the Eucharist is the shared sacrificial meal of learning and becoming Christ to each other, the greatest enhancement of humans that ever was and ever will be.
