Happy Families?

The Gospel at Mass this morning was from St Luke 8:19-21:

Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.” But he said to them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

Is our regular concept of “family” too narrow for the gospel? These words challenge many assumptions of anyone who has invested heavily in the concept of the 2·4 kids nuclear family as an ideal. Investing in anything as an ideal can make it harder to enjoy it as a reality, too. The "family” with all its possibilities for heaven or hell is no less in need of redemption than any other human community.

It's interesting to encounter Luke 8 whilst staying away from my family. It's more than interesting to hear them in a religious community, whose very setup cuts across the saccharine assumptions of the Mothercare catalogue. What scope is there for Christian covenanted community living apart from the nuclear family?

The way we relate to other people is a major expression, like it or not, of how we relate to God. If we approach all life as alternative, nobody can be taken for granted, every relationship is a gift, a field to be sown, tended and harvested if it is to be fruitful. Early Christians transformed the world by thinking different and living different, not by complaining about everybody else's morals.