What about divorced households? What about single-parent households? Or singles? Or grandparents? What about all the other household arrangements that exist?
The first-century Christian idea of family represented a radical departure from the pagan Roman understanding. In Roman culture, the family was a tribe based on blood.
You were either in or you were out. One of the many reasons Christianity was viewed with suspicion by Roman society was that it challenged this tribalistic view of family. In fact, for Christians, ties of grace were even more binding than ties of blood. Through the waters of baptism, people from every walk of life were now united through grace.
All the baptised were brothers and sisters in Christ, and those ties were meant to supersede all other earthly connections. Read more from our Domestic Church series here. In fact, it was this understanding of family that gave rise to religious and monastic life.
Religious brothers and sisters are not quasi-clergy. Like every other Christian family is called to be, monasteries and convents are households of persons united to God and each other through the sacramental life of the church. In both cases, the people who are gathered together have to be intentional about serving a particular mission. At its core, being a Christian disciple means living a life that promotes a uniquely Christian vision of love. For Christians, loving another person means: 1 working to be in intimate communion with them โ like the Trinity is; and 2 giving everything we have to help each other become everything God created us to be โ like Jesus did.
