By DONALD DeMARCO
The arrival of a newborn child in the world provokes a wide range of responses. The range extends from “it’s a blessing, a gift, a bundle of joy,” to “it’s an inconvenience, a burden, and utterly unwanted.” The child, of course, is not responsible for his parents’ reactions. The context or spiritual environment in which the child is born is completely determined by the relationship that exists between the husband and wife.
In a Letter to the Family, Pope St. John Paul II states: “In the newborn child is realized the common good of the family” (1994, The Year of the Family, Gratissimam Sane). This statement does not apply uniformly in every case in which a child comes into the world. But it needs to be stated and restated, not because it is an ideal which is difficult or impossible to achieve, but because it is a norm. And precisely as a norm, it describes an occurrence that is natural, something that ought to happen because of the way in which human beings are created.
As St. Thomas Aquinas writes, “What comes from God is well ordered. Now the order of things consists in this, that they are led to God each one by the others.”
As images of a loving God, human beings are made to love one another. Husband and wife, according to Genesis, have a special two-in-one flesh conjugal intimacy, a union of body and soul that Pope St. John Paul II refers to as a “communion of persons.” The newborn child is formed and proceeds from a context of marital love that is specially designed for its loving reception. The Second Vatican Council states that the family originates in a marital communion described by as a “covenant,” in which man and woman “give themselves to each other and accept each other.” The polar opposite of this was well described by Pope Paul VI when he referred to a sham marriage as “a juxtaposition of two solitudes.” In a humorous vein, a husband once said that his wife’s favorite relative is himself.
John Paul is not naive. He understands the problems that parents face when a child comes into their lives. “It is true,” he writes, that for some parents “the birth of a child means more work, new financial burdens and further inconveniences, all of which can lead to the temptation not to want another birth. In some social and cultural contexts this temptation can become very strong. Does this mean that a child is not a gift?”
As a gift, the newborn child intensifies the parents’ awareness of the common good that the family shares. The child enters the world in an atmosphere of love, one that was established by the love between husband and wife. This realization of a common good strengthens the unity of the family and offers the world an image of how human beings can form a unifying example of love.
This explains why John Paul can say that among the many paths that human beings follow, “the family is the first and the most important. It is a path common to all, yet one which is particular, unique and unrepeatable, just as every individual is unrepeatable; it is a path from which man cannot withdraw.”
The health of society is wholly dependent on the family, which is its fundamental and irreplaceable source of vitality. A society cannot be unified when the family is in disarray, experimenting with new forms of marriage, establishing abortion as a “right,” and according “equality” to same-sex arrangements. The unity of society is based on the unity of the family. The newborn child, innocent and relatively undeveloped as it is, nonetheless brings into the world an almost irresistible opportunity for expressing love within an intimate and unified framework.
John Paul comments that when a person comes into the world without a family, he often “develops an anguished sense of pain and loss, one which will subsequently burden his whole life.”
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas agrees with and amplifies Pope St. John Paul’s comment when he makes the following statement: “. . . The family is morally essential for our existence as the only means we have to bind time. Without the family, and the intergenerational ties involved, we have no way to know what it means to be historic beings. As a result, we become determined by rather than determining our histories. Set out in the world with no family, without a story of and for the self, we will simply be captured by the reigning ideologies of the day.”
We may reduce the “reigning ideologies” to three: individualism, materialism, and technology. The newborn child brings into the world the gifts of love, unity, and the realization of a common good.
On a personal note, my wife and I had a most heartfelt and gratifying experience recently. The time had come for one of our three sons and his wife to announce that they are expecting their first child. And so, with glowing pride, they informed my son’s four siblings, twelves nieces and nephews, and brothers-and-sisters-in-laws of the blessed event. Their own joy was echoed in all the family responses. My wife and I were experiencing how this yet-to-be-born child has occasioned such an eruption of happy responses. It was also an intergenerational experience radiating from one family to another along with the promise of more families to come.
My wife and I were basking in the announcement and in its happy acceptance as we reflected on the power of an unborn babe to bring such gladness to so many.
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