Some years ago social scientists discovered the term "dysfunctional" and began applying it to the family. The family is made of different parts- mother, father, children – and if one of the parts didn’t function correctly, that affected the well being of the other parts. It threw them off and made them malfunction as well.

It didn’t take social scientists too long to discover that 99.9 percent of us come from dysfunctional families. Daddy has a bad tamper, sometimes gets violent, drinks too much. Mother is very nervous and fearful. Dad’s drinking and temper make her hysterical. The children who grow up in this environment are going to have their own difficulties and personality problems.

In lots of cases, one of the parents isn’t there at all, and the remaining one has to try and do double duty, acting as father and mother for the family.

I don’t want to down play the fact that families are dysfunctional, but I don’t want it to come as a surprise (excuse) to us either. Human nature is defective. Human nature is wounded by original sin. And the wounds that we received we tend to pass on to others.

What does bother me quite a bit, is how we will use the wrongs that were done to us to justify our own wrongdoing: "I was abused – so this entitles me to go out and abuse others." "My parents drank, so it’s not my fault if I’m a drunk." "My father was a violent man that’s why I beat up my kids."

Somebody made a study of the lives of famous criminals, and discovered that 85% of them came from broken homes. But that doesn’t excuse their being criminals. If you made a study of the saints, you’d discover that 85% of them came from broken homes and dysfunctional families too. St. Augustine tells us what a positive influence his mother Monica was on him. But he doesn’t tell you that about his father. St Francis’ father was so controlling and domineering that Francis had to renounce him in order to go ahead with his own life.

Our family of origin shapes and forms us, true enough. But we still have personal freedom and God’s grace working in our lives. I’m sure many of you know people who were horribly mistreated in their childhood, and they turned out well. They resolved never to treat anyone they way they had been treated. And they became good parents, faithful husband and wives as a result.

Jesus leaves his family of origin, Joseph and Mary, when he becomes a man. And he goes out and he forms another family around himself. Those are the twelve apostles. He shares his life with them, eats, lives, sleeps with them, day in and day out for the three years of his public life. In some ways he is a father figure, a teacher, instructing them, showing them how to behave, correcting them, teaching them how to forgive one another. Mostly he’s big brother, humbly using love and goodness, not power or authority to get his point across.

Why does he form this second family of disciples around him? So that he can send them out and they can go and form family with others. The family of origin is not enough. You also need the spiritual family, the church, to show you how to live and love and relate to others, to strengthen and support you and heal the wounds you suffer in the course of living.

The family of origin, and the spiritual family. There is something in us that makes us want to build family. It’s in our blood. We’re programmed to do it. If there were some better alternative to the family, after so many centuries, humanity would have found what that alternative is. But it doesn’t exist.

You know why we have such a deep need and desire for family in us? You know why our natural family and our spiritual family is never good enough, is never an end in itself? Because God is family (Father, Son and Spirit) and we were made for God. God is three persons sharing life and love with each other, and we were made to join one day in God’s embrace. It’s by sharing in the family life of God that all of us wounded people, (parents, grandparents children aunts and uncles and cousins,) will find the wholeness, the happiness, the life and love we’ve always been hungry for.

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