Families Need Families

Among the fruits that ripen if the law of God be resolutely obeyed, the most precious is certainly this, that married couples themselves will often desire to communicate their own experience to others. Thus it comes about that in the fullness of the lay vocation will be included a novel and outstanding form of the apostolate by which, like ministering to like, married couples themselves by the leadership they offer will become apostles to other married couples. And surely among all the forms of the Christian apostolate it is hard to think of one more opportune for the present time.

Likewise we hold in the highest esteem those doctors and members of the nursing profession who, in the exercise of their calling, endeavor to fulfill the demands of their Christian vocation before any merely human interest. Let them therefore continue constant in their resolution always to support those lines of action which accord with faith and with right reason. And let them strive to win agreement and support for these policies among their professional colleagues. Moreover, they should regard it as an essential part of their skill to make themselves fully proficient in this difficult field of medical knowledge. For then, when married couples ask for their advice, they may be in a position to give them right counsel and to point them in the proper direction. Married couples have a right to expect this much from them.

Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae 26-7

Reflection – I would like to focus on the first of these two paragraphs, the one on the family apostolate. This is for the simple reason that I am neither a doctor nor a nurse nor a patient nor a married person trying to find decent medical care from a health care professional who respects Catholic values, which I understand can be quite a challenge.

On the other hand, I have almost twenty years experience working in the family apostolate, both in the Cana Colony run by Madonna House for well over fifty years now and in the Nazareth family apostolate currently operating a week long summer vacation retreat for four weeks each year out of a camp in Quebec. Incidentally, they still have openings for this year, especially for the first week, July 13-19.

Both of these camps, which are quite similar in their essential structure, are very much in the model of like-to-like apostolate in which married couples minister to each other out of their shared experience of the struggles and joys of marriage. The priest in these situations is there for sacramental ministry—daily Eucharist and availability for confession—and simple presence and friendship which is itself a beautiful thing. But the core of it is family-to-family ministry. Families need families; married couples need other couples to encourage, support, advise, and simply befriend one another.

We got into the family camp business in MH due to a papal mandate to Catherine Doherty, believe it or not. She went to Rome in 1951 for an international congress of the lay apostolates in the Church, and had a private audience with Pope Pius XII. She also had a meeting with Cardinal Montini, who later became Paul VI. It was Montini in particular who encouraged her to have MH become a permanent committed vocation with simple promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience, a major change in our communal life that gave a solidity to our apostolate. The Holy Father enjoined her to remember the family in our apostolate and always do something for families.

And so we do—for six weeks of the year, we host eight or nine families for a week-long experience of Christian community, recreation, and spiritual renewal. It has been a fantastically spiritually fruitful apostolate, in part (I believe) because it is the one thing we do that actually was at the request of the pope, but also because it is such a vitally needed and rich field for apostolic work. Nazareth has been equally fruitful in its years, and is just a wonderful place—fun, spiritually refreshing, and very beautiful. Both are in rustic settings, which is part of the experience—get out of the city, away from the noise, and into the silence of nature.

One of our priests was lamenting at a recent meeting that, while all that is true and all of us MH priests experience to greater and lesser degrees the blessings of family ministry… it really is too bad that there aren’t a dozen such camps, or a hundred. Cana can accommodate at most around 50 families; Nazareth, more or less the same. So that’s a hundred families a year… and there aren’t too many more such apostolates that we know of on the whole North American continent. Cana has a long waiting list each year. And of course, families can only travel so far for these things, so we are limited mostly to Ontario and the north-eastern part of the USA.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every diocese ran a camp like this, if there were family camps where this kind of like-to-like apostolate could occur in every province of Canada, every state? MH sets up and keeps Cana maintained, but the families who run Nazareth are just good ordinary people who somehow manage to do it in the middle of their own family lives, and are themselves deeply blessed by the experience.

So I’m just throwing it out there—our experience has proved that there is an incredible thirst for solid formation and spiritual enrichment among married couples, and that the whole family is genuinely blessed by camps such as the ones we are involved in. So… how about it? Anyone want to start a family camp? Try it, just for a week? Why not? E-mail me, and we’ll talk about it—hey, I’ve got twenty years experience!

Breaking Good

We have no wish at all to pass over in silence the difficulties, at times very great, which beset the lives of Christian married couples. For them, as indeed for every one of us, "the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life." Nevertheless it is precisely the hope of that life which, like a brightly burning torch, lights up their journey, as, strong in spirit, they strive to live "sober, upright and godly lives in this world," knowing for sure that "the form of this world is passing away."

For this reason husbands and wives should take up the burden appointed to them, willingly, in the strength of faith and of that hope which "does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Then let them implore the help of God with unremitting prayer and, most of all, let them draw grace and charity from that unfailing fount which is the Eucharist.

If, however, sin still exercises its hold over them, they are not to lose heart. Rather must they, humble and persevering, have recourse to the mercy of God, abundantly bestowed in the Sacrament of Penance. In this way, for sure, they will be able to reach that perfection of married life which the Apostle sets out in these words: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church. . . Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church. . . This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."

Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae 25

Reflection – So we continue to make our way through these last paragraphs of HV, and we see here the Pope acknowledging the fact that is pretty well known to everyone, and certainly to anyone married. Namely, marriage is really hard. It is a very challenging vocation, even in the best and most compatible, mature, harmonious marriages.

Even before children come along and raise it to the next level of difficulty and challenge (and joy and richness, too) there is an intrinsic difficulty in the profound intimacy and union that is the heart of marriage. Two human beings, wildly different in temperament, background, expectations, communication styles, each with his or her own set of wounds and weaknesses, vulnerabilities and challenges along with strength, beauty, and gifts, bind themselves to each other for life, to forge an unbreakable bond of unity, oneness of mind and heart. It is no easy thing, and many do fall short of the ideal or struggle for years to attain it, often with great pain and at great cost.

The secular world, faced with the challenge of marriage, wants to change marriage so that it is less challenging. Make it temporary, not permanent, for example. Make it almost as easy to end a marriage as it is to begin one. Remove children from the equation, or at least make them extremely optional. Even, in some extreme circles, make marital fidelity optional, the so-called ‘open marriage’.

The Church, looking at the same difficulties and challenges of marriage, but recognizing that the thing itself is a divine creation which we have no authority to change for any reason, says, essentially, ‘Turn to Christ.’ The grace of God meets us in the difficulties and stresses of whatever our life is. The Eucharist is the strength of our soul. Reconciliation is the healing of our soul of the wound of sin. Christ is with us always, through the graces of baptism, confirmation, and the special sacramental grace of marriage itself.

We can look at the difficulties of Christian marriage and easily say that it’s just too much, the Church or God is asking too much of people, and it’s just completely unreasonable, even deeply unkind, to expect people to rise to such a level of greatness of spirit.

Or we can look at those same difficulties and say that God must simply expect every married couple to really live by faith, to really learn to pray, to turn to Him, to receive from Him the strength and the grace to do what they themselves cannot do.

It really is that way with any truly difficult situation in life. We can be faced with any challenge in which to apply the Gospel and the moral law requires from us great sacrifice or generosity or suffering. We can say, ‘It is the Gospel and the moral law that are wrong. I’m going to do something else.’ Or we can say, ‘Jesus, have mercy on me. Help me, Lord, for I cannot do this by my own power. Thank you for giving me your grace to do this.’

Two different answers, two different attitudes, but what a difference in outcome. One leaves us in our own limited, mediocre selves, defining the whole world and God too by the terms of our own subjectivity. The other breaks us open to the abiding presence of God with us, God within us, Christ behind, beneath, above, beside me, the kingdom of God which is alive and active and in which we grow to the full stature of Christ. This is what the Lord, and His Church, are offering to all of us, but here in HV, to married couples specifically—a chance to become saints. Isn’t that good news?

God Does Not Contracept

And now We turn in a special way to Our own sons and daughters, to those most of all whom God calls to serve Him in the state of marriage. While the Church does indeed hand on to her children the inviolable conditions laid down by God's law, she is also the herald of salvation and through the sacraments she flings wide open the channels of grace through which man is made a new creature responding in charity and true freedom to the design of his Creator and Savior, experiencing too the sweetness of the yoke of Christ.

In humble obedience then to her voice, let Christian husbands and wives be mindful of their vocation to the Christian life, a vocation which, deriving from their Baptism, has been confirmed anew and made more explicit by the Sacrament of Matrimony. For by this sacrament they are strengthened and, one might almost say, consecrated to the faithful fulfillment of their duties. Thus will they realize to the full their calling and bear witness as becomes them, to Christ before the world. For the Lord has entrusted to them the task of making visible to men and women the holiness and joy of the law which united inseparably their love for one another and the cooperation they give to God's love, God who is the Author of human life.

Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae 25

Reflection – I have been lagging a bit with the Humanae Vitae series, so thought I would just spend a few days this week wrapping up these final paragraphs. This is only the first half of p. 25, which is quite long. The second half acknowledges the fact that marriage is a very hard vocation, one with many struggles and obstacles in it.

But this first part truly does Christian husbands and wives to the greatness and majesty of their calling, a greatness and majesty that is inextricably bound up with obeying its inherent structures and the strictures that come with it—everything that HV has been about, in other words.

It is good to highlight the Pope’s summary of that structure and the law that it engenders, “that law which united inseparably their love for one another and the cooperation they give to God’s love, God who is the Author of human life.” This is beautiful—human love is united by the moral laws around fertility to the love of God which is always life-giving, always saying yes to life, yes to humanity, yes to you and to me. There is a terrible tragic deformity in a love into which the word ‘no’ has been introduced by the practice of contraception.

God does not love contraceptively. God does not love in a fashion that is fruitless, lifeless, contained within itself. The very love of the Trinity, that mystery beyond mysteries which none of us understand much, spills over into the creation of the universe. This is the nature of perfect love—it always spills over into a life-giving, creative act. We are finite human beings and cannot always create a new life with every act of nuptial love—indeed the woman’s body is specifically made not to do this—but to render the marital act a sterile, lifeless thing is to separate it, and the couple engaged in it, from the very heart of Love in God.

Of course the key thing here in this paragraph is that God is not absent, not remote from us and our struggles to do what He asks of us, indeed commands of us. His grace is continually pouring out on us, above all through the channels of the sacraments, the permanent fountain of grace which is baptism and confirmation, the steady flow of grace which is the sacrament of marriage, the banquet of grace above all graces which is the Eucharist, and the field hospital of grace which is the confessional. All of which, in a sense, flows out to the Church through the sacrament of the priesthood.

‘Grace’ is one of those strange mystery words that our religion is cluttered up with. What is grace? Can you taste it? Smell it? Feel it? Weigh it? Not really, not usually. But it is the core of our religion that God’s grace is a constant flow upon the whole world, that help from heaven and from Him is continually offered, continually given, continually pouring out like a heavy rain upon the earth, and wherever it finds an opening, entering. And wherever it enters, giving life, newness, strength, healing, encouragement.

If this is not true, there is nothing left of the Christian religion—the very heart and soul of it has been removed. We are not a people of the book, essentially, or a people of the institution or a people of the law. We are a people of the gift, the ongoing presence and work of God in our midst.

 If it is true, then our whole life, the life of every baptized person, is configured around this heavenly presence and gift, and we cannot really understand, discuss, or live the demands of the Gospel without this configuration. God is the absolute center of our lives, or our lives are badly off kilter. And if our lives are so off-kilter and disordered, is it any wonder we find it so hard to obey Him and follow His laws?

This Week in Madonna House - June 15-21

This week in Madonna House was dominated, of course, by yesterday’s event of the ordination of Michael Weitl to the ministerial priesthood of Jesus Christ, by Bishop Michael Mulhall, ordinary of the Pembroke diocese.

It really is hard to know what to say about this event. The chapel was packed with the MH community, Michael’s large extended family from Iowa, his and our friends from all over and next door. The schola cantorum outdid themselves with the music, the handicraft department with the decorations, the kitchen with the food. One of our women made a tapestry reproducing a painting (the artist’s name escapes me) of Christ washing the feet of Peter which hung over the head table. It was also a gloriously beautiful day—Combermere at its very best with bright sun, sparkling river, and a horde of dragonflies eating up all the mosquitoes on our behalf.

All of which is wonderful, but of course extraneous to the heart of the matter, which is this strange and mysterious gift of the priesthood of Jesus Christ conferred on a weak and lowly man. The ceremony is so simple—one man kneels before another man, hands are placed on his head, a prayer is said. And yet in that ceremony so much happens: a radical reconfiguration of the inner being of that man, sacred powers to celebrate the banquet of the Eucharist and wash away sins from the soul. Commissioning to preach and pray and serve God’s people. And in all that, a depth of intimate encounter with Christ that is wholly divine, wholly mystical, utterly mysterious. What is there to say about such things?

A beautiful moment came at the end when the new Fr. Michael, in an old custom, presented his mother with the cloth he had used to wipe the sacred oils from his hands, and received from his father a violet stole that he would use (later that day!) to hear his first confessions, and then return to him. Both of them will keep those items and ultimately be buried with them. Fr. Mike’s dad was heard to joke later that it’s a good thing his son had given them advance notice that this was going to happen, or that might have happened right then and there.

So around all this awe and wonder and holy mystery, we just had a grand good time yesterday, in the good old Catholic way. Fun and frolic and laughter and kids running around everywhere and lots of good food and drink. Today, of course, Fr. Michael will celebrate his first Mass of thanksgiving, suitably on the feast of Corpus Christi. We will have Adoration of the Eucharist all day, as is our custom on this feast, and the traditional Corpus Christi procession and Benediction at the end of the afternoon led, of course, by our brand new priest.

Beyond that (and of course much of the work of the week revolved around that one way or another) it was a fairly ordinary week in MH. The farm continues to be the place of intense activity, with planting of cabbages being one of the big jobs this week. We have our usual international crowd of guests, which means that the FIFA World Cup is a major point of discussion and intense interest here. No fistfights have broken out yet, but it’s still in the first round.

So that’s about it, really—much joy and gratitude in this little corner of God’s Church, as we watch one of our own receive the gift and mystery of the priesthood and begin his new life of service to God’s people in that gift. And that’s what happened this week in Madonna House.