By Gwen Manickam
SHAH ALAM — To celebrate World Family Day, the Family Life Ministry of the Church of the Divine Mercy (CDM) arranged an online session with Martin Jalleh titled Family, Faith, Friendship and Fortitude in the Face of the Pandemic.
In the two-hour session, Jalleh defined family as the immediate family, the church and its parishioners, the human family, and the family during the current pandemic.
Some secular definitions of the family include: Family is humanity’s oldest and most natural institution; it is a miniature version of life itself and Family is the first and most vital cell of society.
During Pope St John Paul II’s 27-year reign over the Catholic Church, he always talked about family. He felt society was crumbling because the family institution was crumbling.
St John Paul II called the family the primary educational community and the means for humanising society. St John Paul II said, “The family becomes not only the basic cell of society but also of the Church herself, as testified by the (Church’s) Fathers when they gave it the significant title of ‘domestic church’.
Jalleh explained that in the words of St John Paul II, loving one’s family means identifying the dangers and evils that menace it, and overcoming them. It also means appreciating one’s family values and capabilities and fostering them, and thirdly, endeavouring to create a favourable environment for its development.
It seems that BECs are not working because the smaller units (individual families) themselves are self-absorbed and or broken, so they cannot see the bigger picture and the importance of that community relationship.
Pope Francis mirrors St John Paul II in saying that the family is the foundation of society. He said, “It is worthwhile to live as a family, so that a society grows strong, grows in goodness, grows in beauty and truly grows if it is built on the foundation of the family.”
This pandemic has caused a detrimental, disruptive, and devastating impact on families across the world. Pope Francis, in his message last Easter, said that while he understands and is at one with all those facing adversities at this time — the homeless, the unemployed, the sick and dying, struggling parents — he hoped families may use this time to discover new expressions of love and affection in the family.
Jalleh then shared a Comcast Newsmaker video which discussed the additional roles parents/ families have had to take on since the onset of this pandemic. Parents are stressed and stretched. Roles that were previously taken care of by people in other fields for children, like coaches, doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, and teachers, now rest on the shoulders of parents and / or guardians. It is recommended that families have access to mental health support in their communities.
The parish also had several families record snippets of their lives during these trying times.
Summing up, Jalleh said this pandemic had also made people see the importance of mental health and helped reduce the stigma of needing help to cope with issues.
The pandemic made us realise that the Church is the family, and the family is the Church. Just as the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No 1666) states — the family home is rightly called the ‘domestic church’, a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity, Pope Francis too affirms that the pandemic highlighted the central role of the family as the domestic Church.
To build a resilient family during this darkness, Jalleh proposed seven points: compassion, choice, creativity, communication, cooperation, commitment and Christ-centredness.
Amidst Coronavirus rattling the world, technology helps keep us connected. We have not slowed down and we remain connected with WiFi. It has made us realise that “each and every member of our families can be God’s radiant light, shining and giving hope in the darkness.”
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