Once in a while a Brother who has had visitors in the Guest House on the hill will tell you about the family of another Brother who happened to be there at the same time: "You know," he says, with an element of surprise in his voice, "you know, Brother so-and-so is just like his father, or just like his mother. Just like him." The wonder is, of course, his surprise. But the surprise is not in the obvious but in finding how true the obvious is. When you know a man well, over many years, you more and more come to think of him as in some sense an original. A new creation. You know indeed that all he has is derived, a given, but that does not temper your view if you have never met the source. And one day you do and you see your living original is nothing of the sort. He is a reasonable facsimile of those who begot him. The throw of his head, the quality of his voice, his laugh, his gestures, his walk, yes even his looks are someone else's. Or a modified version, an interesting take-off. But derived. We all know that this is not always the case, but even then one learns to be cautious. If we saw a certain uncle or aunt, one or the other grandparent, we might be surprised.

All of which leads to mercy. For if the Brother inherited visible qualities and good ones, it is likely that frailties and oddities and strange quirks may be derived too. That faults of character are often inherited. And it strikes you that the man was given this collection of possibilities to see what he could make of it. And sometimes spends a lifetime coping with it all, not to say what has been inflicted on him by unwitting or knowing abuse. And so mercy rises in your heart toward him.

And mercy must rise in my heart and yours toward those who gave us life, all that made up our beginnings. For no family save one is all blessed. All are blemished, some more, some less. And you and I and all of us bear the results. Mercy is the only answer to all that. Forgive. Which means we must accept the truth and deny no reality. You cannot forgive what you are not willing to see, what you cannot bring yourself to acknowledge.

It seems to me that this is what family is all about. The mutuality that ties me to all who went before me, all who are my forebears — that uncounted number who in some way unknown to me are yet very much a part of me. In our humanity we are tied to multitudes in the most profound way. I am a Celt and the syndrome that constitutes a Celt constitutes me, wholly individual, wholly original, totally derived. The family of man, the human family.

It surely cannot do to think of the Holy Family as a model for us in the usual sense. A virginal mother, a virginal father, a divine child, hardly constitute a norm that any family could align itself with. And even if the patriarchal family of Jesus' people has changed much, if still somewhat patriarchal, any one who has been out of Nelson county or North America knows the variety of human family is wide indeed. The American family is not typical, if there be a typical American family. And even so, the family in the widest sense or the most specific is not a Christian invention nor is Christ's teaching on the family something that could not apply anywhere in the world, any time.

The family today is in much of the world thought to be under attack, or changing, or disintegrating, your view perhaps revealing your base. And many developments are not acceptable to Christians who are Catholic. Apparently, cultures, like people, are at times subject to influences of destruction and can choose to drift into habits, modes, ways that lead to disaster. People can do this in a few years. Cultures take longer. Do we have a tendency to destroy and then rebuild? We live in a destructive time, a difficult time for families. There is not a great deal of support for traditional ways. And good people are often willing to abandon the traditional for something that looks as good if not better. One hopes they are not deceived.

The Church it seems to me in a word is courageous in standing by the fundamentals and indeed tries earnestly to be compassionate and merciful. It is not easy, dear Brothers, for Church or family. Count your brothers and your sisters, your nephews and your nieces, to go no further, and see for yourself how many are at odds with much we take for granted.

So mercy is called for. But hope too. The end of the world is not coming because patterns shift and ways change. The perduring values will emerge and grow strong again because the creative urge is too great, too powerful in the human. But it will still take much pain and suffering. Tearing down is easy. Rebuilding is not. So this is no time to condemn and find fault, wring hands because things are not what they were or should be. There are good people everywhere doing the best they can. They deserve our mercy and the inspiration of our hope. All you have and all I have you got and I got from others before me, before you. Who loved as they could, and did as they could manage. I look in mercy on you even if you are not all you could be and I hope you do as much for me. And we look with mercy on all from whom we come and with mercy on all with whom we live this day and age on earth, our contemporaries now and for all eternity. This great family in which Christ has immersed Himself and given a divine dimension it never had before. The divine that was in the Holy Family is the divine that is in ours. And this is true now and at any time, true anywhere in the world. And the wild confusion of our own times will not make us blind to that. We are not strangers to chaos and we partake of the Holy Body and the Holy Blood every day. We know the divine family very well and we know the human family too. One hand in the one, one hand in the other. And we will not let either go.

There is something divine in every human and in every human family. Christ came to release that divine and He does it by mercy. Be a monk of mercy if you would be a monk at all. Let no one say of us: "They have it good, these monks do. They build themselves a heavenly city on earth, look forward with confidence to an eternal one and have not much use for the likes of us who have a poor city here below and not much hope for a better one to come."

No, sweet brother. You and I bear within not only what father and mother gave, but through them a communion with all humankind. And in Christ one with all in a communion of God-kind. We are family, holy family. Even so? Even so.  Amen.

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