THIS BOOK RINGS with great ideas, drawn from Scripture, from the Fathers, and from the lived faith of the Church, to help us know how great and good God is, by seeing how He has created small human families and the great family of faith as images of the deepest and dearest mystery, the mystery of God Himself.

God is great, and He is full of love. He is not a solitary God. He does not tower above heaven and earth as one entirely alone. He is a Father, and He has an eternal Son, to Whom He is united with dearest closeness by the love that is the Holy Spirit. He is a family.

Because He is great, God wishes His children to be great and to be filled with love. As the eternal Father is forever a member of the divine family we call the Trinity, He is not alone, and He cries out from the beginning of mankind that "it is not good that the man should be alone" (Gn 2:18). We are to live in love and in families -- in our own little families, in the family of faith, and in the family of the Trinity.

Human persons are called to live in great love, in families. A man and a woman are called to find the love that overcomes the deep loneliness and selfishness our flesh can be heir to, by giving themselves entirely to each other in the love that creates marriage and homes and calls into being children more dear to parents than all else.

Human love is weak, and human families need to be caught into the great family of God to become what they long to be. Even before God taught us fully the mystery of the Trinity, He called the first man to find God as his Father, to live as God's son, and to do for his Father the familial tasks of tilling the earth and guarding it.

The first head of the human family failed, so God made known and sent to us His eternal Son, to bring to us in a more sublime way the gifts of love and unity He wished us to have. Cardinal Newman speaks of how what failed in Adam most surely did not fail in Christ.

This book begins with the story of that first Adam and returns to his story again and again, in a spiral fashion, examining the Genesis narrative in light of the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In Christ, our small human families are to be caught into the sublime family of God and know with the warmth of faith that God is indeed their Father. But our families are to be caught also into the great family visible about us, more blessed and saving than any of the "trustee families" of antiquity (see chapter 2). Our families are to be caught into the family of the Church. For the Church both mirrors that Family of God, which is the Trinity, and is on earth the Family of God, which gives constant encouragement and gifts of life to small families.

Astonishingly striking are the ways in which the mystery of the human family and the mightier mystery of the Family of God are brought into unity by Jesus, the eternal Son. The place of the Eucharist is spoken of with great fire here (chapter 7). When Adam failed to show the love God enabled him to share, and led his human family into sin, the eternal Son became our very brother and the new head and founder of our human family, and He did not fail. He gave us, and all in our families, kinship with God. As Dr. Hahn puts it: "Our kinship with God is so real that His very blood courses through our bodies.... In the New Covenant meal, the Family of God eats the body of Christ and so becomes the body of Christ.... 'The children share in flesh and blood' (Heb 2:14)."

The book draws to a close with a treasury of "Sources and References," whose riches I urge you to consult.

In the visible family of the Church, as in the family of the Trinity that is God, every person, however broken his or her home and hopes may have been, can find a most dear family. The Church offers strength and light to every small family -- that it may with gladness and greatness become what it is made to be: a place of love, shining with the gifts of the God Who enables the family and each of its members to acquire varying and wonderful kinds of greatness.

Every family, even the weakest and most suffering family, is called to greatness. And it can come to greatness, for it is meant to be, and can be, caught into the great Family of God Himself, Who is the source and joy of greatness for all.