Family, Become What You Are

“Each family finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its dignity and its responsibility: family, become what you are” (Familiaris Consortio [FC], 17).

What are we? St. John Paul II continues, “The family, which is founded and given life by love, is a community of persons: of husband and wife, of parents and children, of relatives” (FC, 18). Most fundamentally, we are a communion of persons created in the image and likeness of the Blessed Trinity.

My family recently attended a day for families at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine. It was an entire afternoon of talks for parents, catechetical sessions for children of all ages, adoration and benediction, Mass with Cardinal Wuerl, and a dinner reception that included a beautiful harp performance and a raffle for the largest balloon lions I’d ever seen. Someone commented that the Mass had been quite lively, considering the large number of families with young children. My husband smiled and whispered to me, “Haven’t these people ever been to a Spanish Mass?”

            We had to split up and attend different events. While my husband went to the presentation for parents, I stayed with our children for the catechesis offered by the Sister Servants of the Lord. After plenty of games and fun, the sisters sat the children down for a short catechesis about the Blessed Trinity and the Holy Family. They began with a lesson about the Blessed Trinity, using the catchy tune of Frère Jacques. “God the Father, God the Father, God the Son, God the Son. God the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit, Three in One!” Who is God? He is love. He loves so much that His love is shared within the three Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. His love is so immense that it pours forth and creates life. All life is a gift, and all creatures reflect the grandeur of God. Of the many noble creatures God made, He crowned man and woman with glory and honor (Psalm 8:5).

            Yet we receive more than glory and honor. “For God so loved the world that he gave us His only Son, that all who believe in him should not perish by have eternal life” (John 3:16).  That is why Christmas is so glorious—it is a celebration of the birth of the Son of God into a human family at a specific time in history. The beautiful image of the Holy Family reminds us that family life is at the heart of God’s plan to share his love with us. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph show us what Christian families are: the home of Christ, where love is made flesh and dwells among us.

            But if your family is anything like mine, we fall short of being a dwelling-place of Christ. We make plenty of mistakes every day. What makes it possible for us to get back on track? God’s mercy and grace, although it is always available, requires us to discipline our minds and hearts so that we can receive it with greater freedom. Something that has helped me in this is to examine my conscience every day. I like to follow the Examen, a prayer given to us by St. Ignatius of Loyola. It is described by Fr. Michael Gaitley as “the most effective tool for being formed into a contemplative-in-action, that is, a person who can easily find God in all things, even amid the hustle and bustle of the world” (Consoling the Heart of Jesus, 178). This prayer is a great nightly routine for individuals or married couples to practice together. It also helps prepare us to go to Confession to receive the sacramental graces of God’s mercy and healing. Fr. Gaitley uses the acronym “BAKER” to describe the elements of the Examen:

Blessings. This is the first and most important element of the Examen, because we review our day so as to praise and thank God for His many blessings. While we do not go over each blessing individually, we focus on specific moments of joy, which St. Ignatius calls “consolations.”

Ask. We ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and hearts so we can recognize our sins of the day.

Kill. We look at our sins, weaknesses, and attachments closely at this time, what St. Ignatius calls “desolations.” Fr. Gaitley describes these desolations as moments when our “hearts dropped.”  Instead of letting those desolations bring us down, we take them to Jesus in the next step.

Embrace. This is the moment when we let Jesus embrace us with his mercy and love. Fr. Gaitley recommends thinking of the image of Divine Mercy, and staying on this part of the Examen slightly longer.

Resolution. Here we use the reflections during the earlier part of our Examen to make resolutions for tomorrow.

Will I Marry Me? Part II

In our last reflection, we encountered the phenomenon of “self-marriage” that is trending in some circles today. We looked at two distinct analyses by critics of self-marriage, and noted that their emphases lacked mention of the universal desire to experience real love.  Just as it would be absurd to reduce the love of God to one Person of the Trinity (such as the Father only loving the Father), it follows that people are also making a profound mistake when they claim to marry themselves to experience real love. As Timothy George rightly observed, self-marriage is a spiritual disorder, being “twisted back into oneself.” The challenge remains: how do we “un-twist” the lie that a person can only find real love in himself or herself?

            Contrary to popular culture’s notion of love as subjective and “evolving,” for Christians, love is rooted in the abiding love God has for each of us. In the Old Testament we find the Psalmist meditating on this in terms of a loving Father with “everlasting love” toward his children (see Psalm 103). In the New Testament we see how Christ’s words and actions reveal the depth of God’s love for us, which is ultimately a self-sacrifice. God’s love is truly powerful, and can transform even the most hardened hearts. The numerous accounts of conversions based on personal experiences of God’s love attest to this.

Secondly, God created us as male and female in his image and likeness (Gen. 1:26-27), which is the basis of God’s plan for marriage. Man and woman, as St. John Paul II explains, have equal dignity, and together show the full meaning of personhood. Their unique gifts greatly enhance their marriage. We refer to this as “sexual difference and complementarity,” a concept that in my opinion, needs to be part of our new vocabulary to explain marriage as the life-long union between a man and woman. In a “self-marriage,” where bringing unique and complementary gifts is not even a possibility, it seems that a struggle with loneliness and isolation would arise.

Finally, married love is profoundly joyful. From the vivid imagery in the Song of Songs, to St. Augustine’s On the Good of Marriage, to John Paul II’s reflections in Love and Responsibility and the Theology of the Body, and more recently Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia, we find a common thread: married love, as God intended it, is meant to be a joyful gift of self between a man and a woman. This includes vulnerability and therefore, the possibility of suffering with and for each other. With God’s blessing in the sacrament of marriage, we find the full flowering of married love because God’s grace (his very life) is present and active in marriage. 

Will I Marry Me? Part I

             Reading about the phenomenon of people deciding to marry themselves, it strikes me that this idea might make it into a Saturday Night Live skit. I can picture a soliloquy by a mid-thirties woman (adorned with a ring, bouquet of flowers, and, of course, a bridal gown):

            Female actress: “Do I promise to love myself until death do we part?”

            (Crickets chirping.)

            Female actress: “Um, I guess until death, since it’s only me instead of ‘we.’”

            Sadly, in the United States, marriage has been redefined into whatever two consenting people wish it to mean. Consequently, the legalization of “self”-marriage, or possibly “marriage” between more than two consenting parties, would not be surprising. At its core, marriage in secular culture seems to emphasize the choice of the individual to be in a “committed relationship,” and receive the traditional legal recognition.      

            It seems that in a twisted way, self-marriage could mimic traditional marriage: a promise to love and be faithful till death, and the possibility to procreate. A woman conceivably could “marry” herself, decide to become a mother (through adoption, or through Artificial Reproductive Techniques), and convince herself she is content.

            A question arises: does the choice to be in a “committed relationship” with oneself stem from an inflated self-love, or something else? Recently, Cosmo magazine published a piece extolling the rise of self-marriages. Julia Duin critiques this flowery portrayal of self-marriage, noting, “I think [self-marriage] is more about the revenge of single women going after the one institution that shuts them out more than a deconstruction of marriage itself. Marriage these days has been so re-defined and squeezed into structures it was never meant to occupy, that it’s no surprise that a certain class of people are choosing themselves as their sole priority and creating a ritual for it.” 

            Is this just about the revenge of single women? I disagree with Duin’s analysis that the choice to marry oneself is fueled by frustrated women whose “fairy-tail ending” never occurred. I think there is something much deeper happening when someone rejects traditional marriage. 

Timothy George, writing in First Things, believes the choice to marry oneself stems from an inflated self-love, yet it has a far more sinister root.  He writes, “Narcissism is more than modern rugged individualism gone to seed. At its heart is a spiritual disorder, what Martin Luther (borrowing a phrase from Augustine) described as incurvatus in se, ‘twisted back into one’s self.’” George notes how the breakdown of the family is partly to blame for this spiritual disorder, since people no longer have their own flesh and blood as their primary support system.

George’s analysis of a rampant spiritual disorder does not fully grasp the heart of the issue, however. I think that the desire to marry oneself stems from a desire to experience authentic love.  This desire is a good thing.  In fact, it’s been placed on our hearts by God.  

           How can we experience authentic love in a fallen world? 

           We will continue our reflection in Part II.