St.Teresa of Calcutta used to say that loneliness is the worst poverty in the United States. Families that support one another—and their neighbors and friends—respond to this spiritual poverty in important ways. 

Did not Jesus intend that the celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ should draw families together, and that the family should be the place of our salvation against the chaos and the confusion that is still so much a part of our world?

In a world of broken families, surely Jesus wanted us, his Church, to be family, a community of faith. And surely Jesus intended that our homes should be the cells which form the family that is the Church. And so every time we receive the holy Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ and the sacrament of unity and charity, we participate in a celebration of the one family of God.

From Surprised by Grace: Memories and Reflections on Twenty-Five Years of Episcopal Ministry by Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein, OSB, who returned to the Lord, January 25, 2018, following a long illness.