R AS RECOGNITION

“Please, Thank You, Sorry”—these must truly be important words if Pope Francis never misses an opportunity to repeat them and recommend them! In fact, they are the basic words of love, the words learned in the family, the words that preserve and make family love grow, and from there must radiate throughout all of society. We speak about them because they are simple words but not easy to practice. In any case, they are decisive words for the health of the family and of society.

Family Vocabulary and Social Bond

Yes, because the family is the first cell of society, and where family bonds weaken, social bonds also fall ill. Pope Francis expressed this with great clarity: “There is a close link between the hope of a people and harmony between generations… The virtuous bond between generations is a guarantee of the future, and a guarantee of a truly human history!” If social bonds are not inspired by the order of gift that is learned in the family, generation becomes mere reproduction and falls into the order of commercial exchange: sperm banks, rented wombs, frozen embryos, the business of adoptions. It is therefore necessary to start again from family generation in order to avoid social degeneration: “We must start from the family,” says Pope Francis again, “to rethink and change the model of development, for the good of the whole human family.” It would not even be so difficult: in the end, society and politics do not need to save the family or save themselves from the family, but simply to recognize and protect it, to support it and not disadvantage it.

Recognition, Gratitude, Reconciliation

Let us now consider the three words of family love. Let us take them together first. Why precisely these three words? Fundamentally because family relationships live according to the logic of gift and freedom, and holding gift and freedom together is never easy. The word “thank you” is certainly the most important, because to give thanks is to recognize gifts—and in a family there are many gifts; people give themselves, they are gifts.

But when it comes to freedom, we know well that there are burdensome gifts and invisible gifts. The former are intrusive and unpleasant; therefore, one must ask “please,” acknowledging others in their way of being and acting, in their tastes and desires. The latter are unexpressed, ill timed, or misguided, and for this reason one must learn to say “sorry.” In short, gifts often appear promising but then prove to be poisoned—they become emotional or material blackmail, suffocate freedom, give rise to manipulation and resentment, to quarrels or silence. Instead of nurturing bonds, they damage them. Thus gratitude (expressed in saying “thank you”) is protected by recognition (expressed in asking “please”) and is restored through reconciliation (sometimes it is enough simply to say “sorry”).

Saying Thank You

In a family, goods are shared and affection is exchanged. Parents give their children an inheritance—or better, the inheritance of a marriage. And since gifts such as life, love, education, and faith are priceless, children cannot repay their parents except with gratitude, also because parents do not wish to be paid; they desire only to be loved in return. It is the same with God: He loves us and asks in exchange only our love!

Moreover, gratitude is shown not only by considering the gifts received but even more by making them bear fruit: every parent desires that their children be better than they are. And every spouse rejoices in the beauty and success of the other. In particular, the balance between gift and freedom in parent child love lies in passing on an inheritance and receiving it, offering liberating gifts and responding with grateful freedom.

For this reason Scripture teaches “do not provoke your children,” and “children, obey your parents” (Col 3:20–21), because the exchange of family gifts presents specific challenges that vary from time to time: it is never the same, it changes with age, with seasons, in form, in manner, in quantity and intensity. Gratitude is so essential in gifts of love that the Pope goes so far as to say that in this area, within the family, we must be more than demanding, also for the social consequences that follow:

“We must become uncompromising in educating to gratitude, to thankfulness: the dignity of the person and social justice both pass through this. If family life neglects this way of being, social life will lose it as well.”

Asking Permission

The exchange of gifts in a family is so beautiful and delicate that it requires constant care—the first of which is responding to needs and desires, knowing how to distinguish and unite them, and remembering that the greatest desire of every human being belongs to the realm of recognition, not that of mere satisfaction. No wealth, ease, or comfort in this world can fill the desire to be important for the desire of another. No satisfaction of needs can compensate for a lack of love.

Psychologists, philosophers, and theologians now all agree: one learns to say “I” only through the grace of a “you” and a “we” who love us, make us feel that we are good, and teach us to love. This is why the fourth commandment exists: “Honor your father and your mother.” To honor is to recognize the other for who they are, to recognize them as a gift, to recognize them as loved. And in the appropriate ways: spouses need to be recognized in their worth, wives want to feel loved, children must be welcomed without conditions, parents must be respected unconditionally.

Beautiful is Pope Francis’s commentary, which stresses the social impact of family love:

“Children must be recognized in their value, and parents must always be honored… A society of children who do not honor their parents is a society without honor; when parents are not honored, one loses one’s own honor! Such a society is destined to fill itself with arid and greedy youth. But a society that is stingy in generating children, that does not love to surround itself with children, that considers them above all a burden, a worry, a risk, is a depressed society.”

The respect required in a family is so important—where the daily risk is to treat one another hastily and superficially—that the Pope notes how God Himself teaches us this: “God always knocks at the doors of hearts. He likes to do this. It comes from within Him. But do you know what He likes the most? To knock at the doors of families. And to find families united, families that love one another, families that raise and educate their children, that help them grow, and that create a society of goodness, truth, and beauty.”

Saying Sorry

It is paradoxical but inevitable: precisely because we are close to one another, in the family we irritate and wound one another. The people we do the most good to and the most harm to are precisely our loved ones, because they are the most sensitive to the impact and consequences of our behaviors, attitudes, even moods.

It is difficult to live well, in peace, without quarrels, when insensitivity or hypersensitivity leads to laziness or touchiness, to absence or intrusion. And here is the balm of the word “sorry,” through which we acknowledge that we are poor and in need of mercy. In this simple word many good things are expressed: humility and honesty, understanding and patience, forgiveness and reconciliation. Without this truly “magic” word, relationships become strained and paralyzed, they bleed and break. And precisely where the investment has been greatest, the collapse is most painful.

Thus St. Paul’s advice is precious: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph 4:26), because otherwise one gives space and opportunity to the enemy, who in every way seeks to divide, to ruin bonds, to extinguish love. It is truly incredible how a simple word like “sorry”—which can also be expressed through a silent caress—is capable of restoring harmony and peace.

Don Roberto Carelli, SDB

(Source: Roberto Carelli – Alfabeto Famigliare)