A Families For Life Family Bonds Survey in 2016 revealed that 1-in-10 people spent fewer than six hours a week with their families, while a OnePoll Survey in 2019 noted a staggering 73% of children wanted to spend more time with their parents.

Are these statistics even surprising? Our mobile devices have become appendages that fulfil our insatiable need to be informed and connected all the time. But are we truly connected to the people that matter and to the things that are important?

Too often, we squander our time on the latest trends and breaking news without knowing the current cares of our loved ones, or what is breaking the hearts of those near to us.

Addressing students at the Jesuit Schools of Italy and Albania in 2013, Pope Francis said, “It’s terrible to walk alone – terrible, and tedious. Walking in community, with friends, with those who love us, this helps us. It helps us arrive precisely at the destination where we must arrive.’’

Gillian (centre) on an evening walk along

Marina Bay with her family.

Photo: Gillian Yeong.

For Church of Saint Ignatius parishioner Gillian Yeong, 24, Pope Francis’ words resonated with her and her family during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are a very close bunch, my family, my two uncles’ families and my aunt’s family along with my paternal grandparents. When the Circuit Breaker happened, we hardly got to see each other. From catching up every week to it all being taken away left our weekends feeling oddly empty,” said Gillian.

“That sense of loneliness is real. I think many people could relate to that, especially during the pandemic,” she added. As restrictions were relaxed and the public was allowed to exercise in small groups, Gillian and her family began taking walks together.

“Just walking together was very special. It was a time when we could talk to one another, catch up on how everyone was, and just laugh with (and at) one another. It was a really good bonding experience. It meant a lot to us, especially my Mama (grandmother),” she said.

Walking in synodality

Between 2021 and 2022, the Archdiocese of Singapore embarked on the local Church phase of the Synod on Synodality 2021-2024, a three-year discernment process led by Pope Francis. Synodality is the journeying together as a People of God, calling on them to pray and reflect, then share and listen to what God’s will might be for the Church, going forward.

This synodal journey that we are called to undertake as Church begins with the family, where we open ourselves to each other, listen and speak, reflect and discern, and take the next steps together.

In the same way Pope Francis invites us on this journey as one Church, we must allow the Holy Spirit to guide us on our walk as a family. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we often do not realise that Jesus is walking with us.

“Although I am the only Catholic in my family, I know that the Holy Spirit is present amongst us in this simple bonding moment,” said Gillian. “It also gives me the opportunity to share the joy of my faith with them.”

In the words of the Holy Father, “Let us walk with joy and patience along this path, allowing ourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit.”

Here are three ways we can walk this synodal journey with our families.

1. Communion in the Church is expressed most clearly in the unity of the family. Families are living icons of the Trinity, in which the communion of the Church finds its deep roots: “The triune God is a communion of love, and the family is its living reflection.” (Amoris Laetitia, AL 11)
    
2. Participation in each other’s lives, where parents, children, siblings, and relatives love each other despite their frailties, vulnerabilities, conflicts, and different points of view. Thus, each family pours out God’s love into the world. This leads to fraternising with other families and welcoming each person as a child and brother or sister.
    
3. The family is an active subject of the Church’s mission and synodality (AL 200). The family is thus an agent of pastoral activity through its explicit proclamation of the Gospel and its legacy of varied forms of witness through the practice of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.” (AL 290)