Traditions About Visiting Relatives

Help your relatives, even if you give them a drink of water. The best form of helping relatives is not to bother them. [Bihar al-Anwar, v.74, p.103].

The relatives' feelings get injured when they are ignored or belittled. That is why the best form of helping relatives is not to injure their feelings. He also said: Visit your relatives in this world even if you just say hello. [Bihar al-Anwar, v.74, p.104]

The Prophet (Pbuh) has been narrated as saying: Walk one year to visit your relatives. He also has said the following in an important tradition: To the society at this time and the times to come, and those who are in their father's loin or their mother's womb, I advise you all to visit your relatives even if it takes a whole year. Indeed visiting your relatives is a part of your religion. [Ibid].

There are many important traditions which outline the benefits of visiting relatives. [Bihar al-Anwar, v.74, pp.111-126]. We will cite a few of these traditions here. Imam Baqir said:

Visiting relatives will purify your deeds, increase your wealth, remove any catastrophes, and delay the time of your death.

Imam Sadiq said:

Visiting relatives and doing good deeds will ease the accounting for our deeds in the Hereafter, and will protect us from committing sins. Then visit your relatives and be kind with your brethren, even if it is just limited to warm greetings.

The Prophet (Pbuh) said:Visiting relatives will prolong your life and eliminate poverty. Visiting relatives will expand towns, and prolong the lives, even if those you visit are not good people. God shall grant the reward of one hundred martyrs to the one who visits his relatives and helps them with his life and property. For each step that you take to visit your relatives, God will record four thousand good deeds, and remove four thousand evil deeds, and provide four thousand raises in your status. It is just as if you have sincerely worshipped God for one-hundred years.

The Prophet (Pbuh) said:

There is a heavenly status that only those who are just leaders, visit their relatives, or patiently take care of their wife and children shall attain. He told Abuzar to go to visit his relatives, even if they go mad when seeing him. He said if they did not accept you, go again. Finally you will succeed. If they do not follow God's orders, don't follow suit.

A man told the Prophet (Pbuh) that he visited his relatives, but some of them bothered him, and he wanted to cut off his relations with them. The Prophet (Pbuh) told him that if he did that, God would abandon all of them. He asked what he should do. The Prophet (Pbuh) told him to visit those who cut off their relations, and forgive those who mistreated him. Then God will raise him higher in status over them.

Adopted from the book: "The Islamic Family Structure" by: "Husayn Ansarian"