Taipei, 25 November 2004

INTRODUCTION

The East has always been the cradle of wisdom. We have a lot to learn from these people of a millenary culture, who live up to deep ideals. Among others, the oriental culture calls our attention to the accent into serenity, benevolence, complementarity, and equilibrium, in a word, into harmony.

This popular experience, which through patient reflection, assessment and constancy goes beyond the sensible world and arrives at contemplation, expresses itself in diverse religions and philosophical thoughts. It tries to solve the problem of opposites: one and many, appearance and truth, transitory and eternal, action and contemplation. In the process, one arrives at different formulations that express a state of deliverance such as the extinction of passion as an egoistic anxiety, the equilibrium between contrary forces or opposite elements, which for example in ancient expressions as Taoism are personified in “Yin” and “Yan”, the male and female elements.

When we examine the ideal of health where harmony is the basic element, then we are not far from this thought. Moreover, when we later on speak of family health, we also proceed in the same direction.

For us Christians, this is the right direction. We believe that it is the reflection of God in man. God is harmony and so is life as well. The original intuition of the eastern culture is completed by Christianity in two ways: receiving Revelation as a gift from God, which tells us that God in His intimate being is a fecund harmony; and knowing that He gives us the power to reproduce this harmony in creation, specially in man.

In my discussion of the topic “Health and the Family, I intend to proceed as follows: first of all we shall see how God is harmony, and how health in the family consists in this divine harmony. Secondly, we shall move on to see how God is the family harmony and how the true health of the family consists in this harmony.

I. God: Fecund Family Harmony

In the apostolic Exhortation “Familiaris Consortio,” Pope John Paul II makes an important affirmation that is the key to our task. He says God is love and in Himself He lives a mystery of personal loving communion. He is not a solitude but a family of three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This Trinitarian communion is a life of complete self-giving, which is also infinitely fecund.

1. The Life in the Trinity

In fact, the Father contemplates Himself, and His thought is his personal infinite intelligibility that consists in His Word, the Son of God. In Him was poured, as we may say, all that the Father is, except being Father. The infinite un-containable outpouring of the Father is the Son. This constitutes the true generation that coexists in the same eternity of the Father. And this infinite fecund self-giving is nothing else but the infinite love of God Father to God Son, and of God Son to God Father, which is the infinite Love that constitutes the Holy Spirit in the loving and full equality with the Father and the Son.

This is our God: One and only God in the infinite mystery of three distinct equal persons. Here is the source of all life: the intelligent force that loves. This intelligent force that loves inscribes itself in the infinite model of the divine nature. This donation is infinitely fecund because it is infinitely intelligent and infinitely loving. This donation generates an infinite integration because it does not result into three gods; something that is impossible because it would be a serious contradiction, since God is infinite and as such He cannot but be one, one God who subsists in three personal relations that are: thinking, being contemplated and being loved.

2. Communication of the Divine Life to the Creation.

These divine operations, do not refer just to a part of the original reality, they concern the totality. God is the total original reality. The existence of that which is not God is only possible by means of the voluntary participation of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who communicate all the energy that constitutes what we call Creation. Creation comes into existence only by the free love of God who communicates his power, his thought and his love, limiting this participation according to his will, and the measure of the donation He would like to give.

This vital process is the norm for all vital expansion. So God creates the participative life according to this infinite model. This participation increases according to the given degree and reaches to its maximum expression in the human creatures, in which the reproduction of the model is so close that it produces the image of the same God.

This image is realised when the received power to exist becomes intelligence and love, reassumed in a loving donation. In this way, God creates freedom that goes together with Love. By creating freedom, God creates history that is precisely the free development of love in which man is the protagonist, and without however hindering man’s freedom God himself directs history.

In history man changes love into hatred and in this way tries to destroy the same life that is precisely love of donation. This hatred leads to death, till God Father himself through his Son, touches this death with infinite love in the Holy Spirit, and in a new creation reaffirms his loving donation as source of life for man. In the Incarnation, life, passion and death of his Son, he gives the strength of the resurrection, making him excel as the only Truth, and the Spirit as the unique true love that can exist and redirect his Truth and Love to man with indescribable power, in such an imaginable way: making him adoptive son of God.

At the centre of everything is life. The life which is always a donation, and as a donation and amorous donation it is really life that persists and not just ephemeral, because it follows the way of its model who is God, and projects itself into the eternity without end.

II. Health in the Family as a Divine and Fecund Harmony

When we look at the family as the cradle of life, this is the model that we have to think about. The family is the only authentic abode for life. Any other means used today to produce life is fictitious and distorted. Life is authentic only when it is a full donation of love, and authentic fecundity is realised only when power and intelligence unite in a love filled with total donation. This is the reason why the family can only have its origin in the exclusive and total self-giving of man and woman, because the fecund love requires everything without reservations, and thus the unique and indissoluble marriage is founded. The father, the mother and the son emulate the Trinitarian ideal. The father and the mother submit themselves to each other in a complete and amorous knowledge, just as God Father submits Himself to His Son through this complete and amorous knowledge, and from them proceeds the fruit of love that is the Holy Spirit. So from the gift of the father to the mother and of the mother to the father proceeds the amorous fruit that is the son. This is a gift that is often very painful and difficult, because such is the gift of God that implies the cross of Christ. However, in the end one always finds triumph and victory, the glorious resurrection of the Lord, the great force that vivifies the whole universe, the only and true happiness that lasts forever.

Health identifies itself with life. Therefore, health in the family must be the full development of this donation of love. For this vital donation God is full harmony, and health consists in the tendency towards the amorous image of the full harmony that is God, One and Triune. The unity in God that realizes the Holy Spirit is precisely the unity of love, the divine communion. If this unity, this donation, this harmony is realised in the family, then one can speak of a healthy family, a family that has health.

So human health consists in the search for harmony, or rather, in the dynamic tension toward the harmony of an endless life, possessed in perfect fullness. The way toward harmony is the way to health. It involves fighting against diseases, as they counter the progress towards the gradual realisation of harmony, the harmony of body and soul. This journey entails phases that are stages of man’s age, the age of the family, and in each phase harmony is realised to a certain measure. Depending on the measure to which this harmony is achieved, we can say whether this phase of the family’s life is healthy or not.

So we can say with Pope John Paul II that health is the dynamic tension toward the physical, psychological, social and spiritual harmony and not just the absence of illness. This tension differs according to the different life stages and must conform to the distinct mission that God entrusts to everyone, to every family.

1. Physical Health

The tension towards physical harmony in the family indeed implies the fight against diseases and ensuring physical health for every family. The first aspect to be considered here is s the so-called “reproductive health”.

Officially “reproductive health,” without covered euphemisms, means to annihilate human reproduction, especially in the poor countries of the World. It thus means the abortive and contraceptive practices. It is clear from this meaning that its interest is not health but death, which is directed to the destruction of the origin of the family itself. From the point of view of health considered as harmony, this is the greatest disharmony to the family, closed in an egoistic sterility.

True reproductive health must be a fecund donation. This fecundity of life must regulate itself by the harmony expressed in the virtue of chastity, which does not directly aim at abstinence from the reproductive function, but seeks its regulation so as to have a healthy human reproduction. This is the meaning of responsible maternity and paternity. It is in this context that we must understand the authentic meaning of sexuality, as the sincere sensible expression of the fecundity, which proceeds from a loving total donation.

In the present society, especially through the mass media, the authentic reproductive health is being threatened by the distortion of the meaning of sex. Sex and sexuality are proposed merely as egoistic source of pleasure, and most times with no connection to fecundity. In turn, fecundity is understood as a right and not as a gift from God. God, who intervenes directly in every new human life, because He is the creator of the individual soul of everyone.

From the perspective of sexuality as authentic and unique expression of the full, fecund and amorous donation, that is to be realised only through the unique and indissoluble matrimonial union between a man and a woman, one sees the illegitimacy of the biogenetic experiments such as FIVET and human clonation, the production of embryos for use and research on stem cells, as well as every manipulation of the human genome that involves its destruction or serious damage.

From a correct interpretation and education on sexuality, the family will be the key to avoiding the sexually transmitted diseases, which are very common today. We refer here especially to AIDS, which though also transmitted by blood and mother to child infection, its most frequent transmission remains the improper use of sexuality.

This fecund donation of the physical health also includes the whole sector of prevention and treatment of illness, which involves all the hygienic education that is learned from the family.

2. Mental Health

Mental health refers to the internal harmony of the person, in a transparent perception of everything that the person is and what he claims to be. It is a self-consciousness that implies self-control, which means knowing how to conduct oneself on the way to the total harmony.

It means the harmony of thinking and willing, mental lucidity and the capacity to discern goodness and go for it. The mental health entails understanding and exercising freedom as an attribute of the will that seeks the good and avoids evil.

It means the transparency of all the feelings through reason and their subjection to the guidance of the will. It means the intellectual, volitional and sentimental harmony. Mental health also involves the full affective development, enlightened by the intellect and guided by the will. When a family is mentally healthy, then we have a family in which the emotion of the mutual fecund donation is the strength that sustains it in the most intelligent and resolute way.

3. Social Health

Social health means the harmony with others. The social health of the family means the harmony of a family with other families. It is the establishment of a complementary relationship among all. Now, socialization begins in the family, it then develops in relationship with others in accordance with ones social sphere. The norm for a vital relationship is always donation. Donation goes away from selfishness and propels itself towards others in order to complement and be complemented. Without an internally harmonious family, it is impossible to build social health; it is also impossible to build a true society. In this sense, the family is the core of the starting point of society; it is its first cell of growth. The family is prior to society, and a society that destroys the family is a society that ruins itself.

Unfortunately, in the present society there are serious attacks that want to destroy the family and therefore are suicidal even against the same society that perpetrates them. One of those very clear attacks that is the so-called “gender culture”. According to this culture there are no distinctions between the human genders because it eliminate fecundity as an essential element of genders. Even in the case of accepting the human mutual loving donation, one essentially removes fecundity as such or as a capacity.

It is said that fatherhood and motherhood are merely “cultural”. That means that they are not constitutive of the gender as such, but are inventions of an old fashioned machismo that has up to now discriminated the woman considering her as mother. By destroying the family social harmony as loving and fecund donation one accepts any type of cohabitation under the concept of the family: be it heterosexual or homosexual, with or without permanence, with or without indissolubility; such that the family is defined just as those who live under the same roof. This is the suicide way, in which attacks are made against the family’s social health and existence. The Pope has many times qualified it as the culture of death.

4. Spiritual Health

The spiritual health of the family is the peak of the harmony. It consists in what we can call the family project. All is unified by an approved and shared objective for all members of the family. All dispersion is eliminated. The spiritual harmony of the family is then qualified according the consistency of the project. There are immediate, mediate, and definitive projects. The mutual and fecund donation becomes concrete in the different ways of life, and in the intention to arrive to this goal and aspiration. This harmony is where the image of God as the intelligent force of fecund love that constitutes the life, is better manifested.

The spiritual health of the western post modern society is serious jeopardized, when according to the opinions of some people man is considered as a moral stranger, who walks towards an unknown destiny. With no helm, compass or goal. This spiritual illness is so serious that in certain countries, depression is the major cause of death.

In reality, spiritual harmony does not only mean some kind of life plan, because human beings and the family are always projected towards horizons and overcoming limits, and these projects are always improving. The spiritual health of the family consists in the capacity to listen.

Listen and accept being led. Listen to the wise omnipotence of Love, that is God, One and Triune. And accept the plan that He determines. This is the individual and family vocation that one must follow. But it is not only knowing how to listen, one must also open himself to the divine call and accept to be led by the great power of Love, that is, the Holy Spirit. It is not a matter of an unproductive passivism; rather it is a question of the divine human synergy. All the great family capacity united with the Wise Omnipotence of Love that leads to unexpected horizons.

This is the spiritual health of the family. It is not just a beautiful theory; on the contrary it is an all-inclusive power of the embrace of divine and human, individual, family and social love. This is the true tension toward the harmony. This is the true family health.

CONCLUSION

We have tried to consider the health of the family from the point of view of harmony. This is not only to associate our reflections with the eastern cultures, but certainly because harmony is an essential component of the intimate life of God.

In the first topic, which you had asked me to develop, you proposed the discussion of the family from another perspective, but I think that the difference with my reflections here is only apparent. You asked me to treat faith, hope and charity in the family life. I do believe that my reflection was exactly placing the family under the light of those theological virtues.

It is impossible to understand the health of the family without faith. You have seen how in our exposition we started from the life in the Holy Trinity. It is only with a profound faith that we can build an understanding of the health of the family, which starts as an image of the Holy Trinity. Furthermore, when we considered physical health and spoke of the transparent perception of the self, this self-control is also impossible without faith, because it is only by understanding man as son of God that we can reach his profound being.

When we speak of the spiritual health as a project that means moving toward a goal, which goal is not different from the resurrection of Christ and our own resurrection, then it is also impossible to proceed without the virtue of hope.

And when we speak of health as the loving fecund donation, it is also impossible to understand this donation in God and in the family without an abundance of love, which is the virtue of charity. This is also true when we speak especially of the social health as a donation to others within and outside the family.

We therefore end these considerations affirming that the very essence of the family health are the virtues: the theological virtues of course, but certainly the cardinal virtues as well. Only with the practice of these virtues is it possible to proceed toward the divine harmony, in which the reality of health consists.

Thank you for your attention

Vatican City, November 2004

+ Javier Cardinal Lozano Barragán ,
President of the Pontifical Council
for Health Pastoral Care.