One of the great sufferings of many people in modern society is loneliness. The first reading today makes it clear that this is not what God intended for us. Immediately after he created the first man and placed him in the garden of Eden, he said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” He then created the first woman, so that the man and woman would have someone with whom they could enter into a loving communion of life. This was God’s plan for us all from the beginning: he created us to live in loving relationships, with him and with one another.

Marriage and family life are a clear and beautiful sign of this plan of God. In marriage, man and woman give themselves to each other in a permanent, loving union. From their love comes forth new life. Psalm 128 describes the beautiful reality of family life using images from biblical times. Family members who honor the Lord and who “walk in his ways” experience the joy and the blessings of fruitfulness and prosperity.

This plan of God for marriage is clearly under attack today from many sides. More and more people are regarding marriage as an old-fashioned idea, no longer relevant in our time. It is common for people to simply begin living together, with no long-term commitment. Many who do marry are not committing themselves to a life-long bond. Some couples even work out pre-nuptial agreements, deciding ahead of time what will happen when they inevitably divorce. And worse still, in many countries today, the very definition of marriage is being changed.

Family life also is threatened by many forces in modern society. The influence of modern technologies can be especially destructive if these are not used carefully because they so often bring right into our homes all sorts of messages and images which are contrary to Jesus’ teachings. Popular movies, shows, and music generally do not reflect and encourage Christian values. And the pervasive use of social media, cell phones, computers, and other such gadgets tends to isolate people in their own private “world,” cutting them off from healthy relationships with those around them. This “virtual reality” becomes an obstacle to the building up of a real communion of life and love in the family.

Jesus identifies the root cause of all these problems: the hardness of our hearts. Marriage and family life are meant to be a sign of the most fundamental relationship of all, our communion of life with God. Before all else, we were created to be in union with him. But when we harden our hearts in sin, we tend to separate ourselves from God. We want to follow our own ways, deciding for ourselves what is good or evil, seeking our own pleasures. Pope Francis, in this week’s Spiritual Reflection, describes this tendency as a refusal to accept our littleness. “Awareness of being little, awareness of being in need of salvation, is indispensable in welcoming the Lord. It is the first step in opening ourselves up to him. Often, however, we forget about this. In prosperity, in well-being, we have the illusion of being self-sufficient, that we suffice to ourselves, that we do not need God. Brothers and sisters, this is a deception, because each one of us is a person in need, a little one.”

There can be no true communion, with God or others, if we refuse to accept our littleness, if we set ourselves up as gods. The path to a loving relationship with God and others is through humility. In humility we acknowledge God as God, and ourselves as created by him in his image and likeness. This involves suffering, because we must deny the demands of our disordered self-will. We also experience suffering in our human relationships. Though we try to love those around us, our own weaknesses and sins and the weaknesses and sins of others keep interfering with the loving communion we desire. We hurt the very people we love, and this is a painful experience. The only way we can persevere and grow in our love is with the grace of God. For this reason, Pope Francis urges us to persevere in prayer. “In prayer the Lord draws us close to him, like a father with his child. This is how we grow: not in the illusory pretense of our self-sufficiency — this makes no one grow — but in the strength of placing all our hope in the Father, just like the little ones do.”

Christ has gone before us in the way of suffering to bring about loving communion. This is what the reading from Hebrews describes. Through his suffering, Christ is “bringing many children to glory.” He humbled himself to the point of death on the Cross in order to win for us new life and communion with God. In this he is the model for all of us.

We can take an additional lesson from the end of today’s Gospel, where Jesus tells us that “whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” Children do not question their need to be connected to, and dependent upon, their parents. Like them, we need to learn that we are made to be in loving union with God and one another. God has joined us to himself in a bond of love, and “what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”

How does the “virtual reality” of the present day become an obstacle to my real relationships? What is the quality of my relationships of love with God and with others? How is the Lord calling me to give myself to him and to others?

Excerpt from The Anawim Way, Volume 20, no. 7. More information about The Anawim Way may be found here.