Just the other day, right after Mother Teresa passed away, I think it was NHK, but they aired a documentary about the religious order she led and her activities. The people who gathered in that order had their own reasons for joining and their backgrounds were all different. Nevertheless, when I saw them, I felt, "Ah, they're a family."
Although they are a Christian group, the targets of their relief activities are not limited to Christians. They salvage people of any faith, while acknowledging their difference. In a sense, their activities can be said to be salvation that goes beyond the "exclusion of difference" of secular religions.
In fact, I think that this may be the reason why they were able to see themselves as a "family."
Every person is fundamentally an "individual" and cannot fully understand themselves, much less others. Much unjust discrimination stems from not acknowledging this "difference" and instead measuring others by one's own "unique" values that one mistakenly believes to be "universal." This often results in being harsh on "others" and not acknowledging their values. This is evident in colonial and racial discrimination policies, but this tendency seems to be seen in everyone, to a greater or lesser extent. Everyone is harsh on others.
Although this structure is essentially the same, it shows a slightly different aspect among blood relatives. This is because there is an unconscious forgiveness, backed by tradition, that in the end, most things must be forgiven because you are "family."
This may be why Mother Teresa's religious order seemed like a family. In other words, it was a relationship of mutual forgiveness. It was forgiveness that was based on an understanding of each other's differences, and it was conscious forgiveness. In other words, the essence of a family is "forgiveness," and in that sense, the religious order was intuitively felt to be a higher-level "family" based on "reason."
Even if people are not related by blood or come from different backgrounds, they can become a family if they have the spirit of forgiveness. This can be in school or in the wider society. And only when the world becomes one family will there be a society without war or hunger.