Heart in the Family

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“He went down with them and came to Nazareth and lived under their authority. His mother treasured up all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and with people” (Luke 2:51-52).

The first thing that Our Lord wanted to sanctify by His presence on earth was the family. It's the primary environment in which to sow the seeds of the Gospel.

Our Lord advises us not to store up treasures on earth because they don't last long. They're fragile and perishable. “Moth and rust consume, and thieves break in and steal” (cf. Matt. 6:19-20).

However much we manage to accumulate in life, there's little point to it. Nothing on earth is worth putting our heart into in an absolute way.

Our heart is made for God and for the noble things of this earth in Him.

It's useful for all of us to ask ourselves frequently: To what do I give my heart? Exactly what is my treasure? What do I think about in a regular way? What is the focal point of my most intimate concern?

Often St. Josemaría would address a question to people that he met on a corridor or at other moments: ¿En qué piensas, hijo mío?-“What are you thinking about, my son?”

It was a little like inviting the answer to these same questions: Is it God, present in the tabernacle, perhaps a short distance from where I live or sleep or from the office where I work? Is that where my heart is?

Or, on the contrary, is my heart in my business, my study, or is it my work that occupies the foremost place? Or could my heart be on unsatisfied selfish dreams or hungry desires to have more?

If people were honest, perhaps they'd have to say: ‘I think a lot about myself, only about myself, and about people and things to do with my own personal interests.’

But we need to keep our heart fixed on God and on His things, on the mission that we've received from Him.

All baptized persons are missionaries: missionaries in the domestic Church, missionaries in civil society, missionaries in our profession. We have to keep our heart on that mission, that job that He's given us to do, and on things for God's sake.

Our Lord, with His infinite wisdom, advises us: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:20-21).

Our heart is placed in Our Lord because He is the one real and absolute treasure. Not in our health, or in our prestige, or any feeling of well-being. Only Christ.

For His sake, in an ordered way, our treasure subsumes all the other noble aspirations and duties of an ordinary Christian life, the life of a Christian who, by divine vocation, finds himself situated precisely here in the world.

In a special way, Our Lord wishes us to put our heart into serving the persons of the particular human or supernatural family we have, those who, ordinarily, are the ones we have to lead to God in the first place, and who constitute for us the first object we ought to sanctify.

Cardinal König, Archbishop of Vienna, in a Pastoral Letter a number of years ago, said: “Concern for others helps man to break free from his selfishness, to grow in generosity, and in consequence to find true joy.

“He who knows he has been called by Our Lord to follow him closely no longer regards himself as the center of the universe, because he has found many to serve in whom he sees Christ in need” (cf. Franz König, Pastoral Letter about the family, March 23, 1977).

The example of parents or of brothers and sisters in the home is on many occasions of real value for the other members of the family who, from it, learn to see the world from a Christian viewpoint.

The family is of such importance, by the Divine Will, that in it, John Paul II said in an address in Mexico, “the evangelizing action of the Church has its beginning” (John Paul II, Address, January 30, 1979).

It is “the first appropriate environment for sowing the seed of the Gospel and the one in which parents and children, like living cells, go on assimilating the Christian ideal of serving God and the brethren” (John Paul II, Address, September 15, 1979).

It's a splendid place for apostolate.

We can bring to our prayer frequently that evangelizing action in our home, how we’re living the virtues, how we can transmit more formation, how we can pray for each one of our children, for their mission that God has for them, and also about the apostolate of the home.

There's a story told about Bernard Nathanson, who was the founder of the first abortion clinic in New York, founder of the National Abortion League way back in the 1960s and 1970s, big leader of the abortion movement in the States, a non-practicing Jew.

One time he was going to give a talk on family matters. He changed his whole outlook after seeing an ultrasound, after seeing the baby in the womb. He saw that this was not just a bunch of cells, so he changed his whole outlook.

He began to be completely anti-abortion and became one of the leaders of the pro-life movement in the United States.

One time he was giving a talk in a Central American country, and he was invited to dinner in the house of a supernumerary couple of Opus Dei. On the sideboard in the dining room, he saw a prayer card of St. Josemaría, and he asked, “What's this all about?”

The parents explained, “That's the founder of Opus Dei, and we're members of Opus Dei, et cetera, et cetera.” And then he sat down to dinner, and he had a very normal evening.

But when he went back to New York, he wrote them a note to thank them for that evening and said, “You know, I was very impressed with your family because, on the one hand, I could see you were such an ordinary, normal family. Everything was so normal and so balanced.

“But at the same time, I could see there was a deep faith in this home, deep faith in each of the family members. And that, coupled with that normality and that balance, that ordinariness, I found very impressive.”

And he said, “I've come to the conclusion that any faith that can bring such normality and such balance must be the one true faith. And so, I have decided to seek instruction as a Catholic.”

Eventually, he converted, and he died Catholic. He has a wonderful book, one of the greatest books of the 20th century, one of the greatest conversion stories of the 20th century (Bernard Nathanson, The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind).

And so, the apostolate of the home. Home is a splendid place to do apostolate.

We have to try and see: Is my family like this? Are we truly like a leaven which, day by day, goes on transforming, little by little, those who live with us?

I see our struggle for holiness, our putting little things into practice: charity, order, industriousness, temperance, justice, social consciousness.

We can ask Our Lord that we might constantly be asking Him for the people around us, our brothers and sisters, the vocations of our children, the vocations of our parents, that they may move towards a complete dedication to God.

That vocation can be the greatest grace that God could give them, the real and precious treasure that with our help many of them can find.

Where our own treasure is, there we have love, self-surrender, and the best of sacrifices.

For this reason, we should value greatly the particular call that each one of us has received, and the vocation of those we live with, since they are to be the immediate beneficiaries of this treasure of ours.

It’s hard to love what is regarded as having little value. And Our Lord would not want a kind of charity that denied priority to those He has placed in our care, whether by a natural or supernatural kinship, because this would not be ordered and true.

The family is the basic and most important unit of society, the one God looks upon as its firmest support.

And it's perhaps the part of society that is most insidiously and ruthlessly being attacked from all sides: taxes are levied that ignore the social importance and the value of the family; certain ideological and politically motivated trends in education militate against the proper formation of children; materialism and hedonism distort the vision of parents and teachers, and promote, for demographic and social reasons, a campaign against life itself, striking in this way at the very heart of the family; a false sense of freedom and independence is inculcated in young people; and advanced social programs leave mothers with insufficient time to look after their children.

It's a very good thing to watch and be careful of the textbooks that your children are using, the ideas that are there behind them, sometimes subtle ideas.

Check everything. Ask questions in the school where your children go. Remember that “the teacher is the curriculum.”

Many have lost sight of the fact that parents have the right to educate their own children and, in the face of excessive state intervention, have ended up renouncing an elementary right which by its very nature cannot be given up.

Sometimes they have imposed upon them certain kinds of teaching dominated by a materialistic view of man. In such methods, the pedagogical and didactic approaches, textbooks used, schemes of work, curricular programs, and school materials deliberately set aside the spiritual nature of the human soul.

All the great religions of the world have always spoken about the spiritual nature of man: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity. Only modern materialism says that man has no soul; that man is just a thing, so he can be disposed of through abortion or euthanasia.

Parents have to be aware that no earthly power can exempt them from the responsibility that God has given to them in relation to their children.

In different ways, we've all been given by Our Lord the care of others: priests have souls entrusted to them; the teacher has his pupils; the professor, his students. Many others have the responsibility of giving spiritual formation.

No one will respond on our behalf before God when we're asked: ‘Where are those I entrusted to you?’

But each one of us, hopefully, will be able to reply, as we're told in St. John: “Of those you gave me, I lost no one” (John 18:9, 17:2), because, Lord, we know how to use, with your grace, both ordinary and extraordinary means so that no one would stray.

All of us should be able to say with regard to those who have been entrusted to us: Cor meam vigilat–“My heart is vigilant” (Prov. 4:23).

There are many occasions in the Gospel where Our Lord uses these words and exhorts us to vigilance. These words are inscribed on many images of Our Lady in the city of Rome.

Our Lord wants us to have a care for souls, and in the first place, for our own: the soul that He has entrusted to us.

Our Lord asks us for an attentive love, a love capable of realizing that perhaps someone is neglecting his duties towards God, and of then helping him kindly; or of being aware that another is sad and isolated from his fellows, so that we pay him more attention.

With another, it might be that we gently help him to go to Confession, urging more insistently when the opportune moment comes.

The treasures of the home form in a very deep way. I was told a story this week about a fellow who said that there was a sand pit in the back garden where he used to play.

Occasionally his mother would hide a few pennies in the sand, and then put a few big footprints on the sand, and tell the four-year-old that some pirates came during the night and buried treasure.

The four-year-old would spend hours and hours looking for the treasure, occasionally finding some, while the mother was able to have a quiet and peaceful few hours to fulfill all her chores.

There are many treasures in family life. If we have our hearts there, we'll know how to discover those treasures or to implant those treasures in the lives of our children, so that they will really savor those wonderful things.

A vigilant heart is alert to notice when behavior inappropriate to a Christian home has crept in: certain programs on television might be watched without previous selection; or, too often, that conversations touch on banal topics; or that there is little evidence of an atmosphere of hard work or genuine concern for others.

Listen occasionally to the dinner table conversation. Does it often revolve around having, buying, getting? Or is it about helping, serving, looking out for other people?

The vigilant heart is also concerned to give good example without losing patience, with prayer, and with details of affection, asking St. Joseph's intercession that we might live with fortitude and constancy, full of charity and human sympathy.

One educationalist in the States says that parents have to repeat things for their children 500 times. The child only gets it on the 501st. That takes a lot of patience, and charity, and fortitude, and affection.

When somebody is sick, those who are vigilant will redouble their efforts and their compassion because they know that the sick are somehow God's favorites and the one who is suffering now is the treasure of the house.

They are enabled to make an offering of their sickness, to say some prayer, and in doing so, suffer as little as possible, because affection alleviates or even turns the mind from pain, or at least moderates it to something less intolerable.

If we have our heart in our home, in our family, then we devote the necessary time, taking priority over other interests.

I heard of a man once in another country who came in contact with some of the formative activities of Opus Dei for married men. He was a fairly prominent, professional, prestigious person. He had eight children.

He always thought that the most important thing in his life was his work but, from the formation he received, he came to learn that the most important thing in his life was his family.

He began to have a very professional approach to his family. He approached it with the same seriousness with which he approached his professional work.

He installed a filing cabinet in his home. He opened a file on each one of his children. He had a weekly planning session with his wife, setting quarterly goals, monthly goals, yearly goals.

And he had a reporting session each week with each one of his children, where he would sit down for five, ten, fifteen minutes, and listen to them talk about their lives, their school, their sport, their interests.

And the whole of his life changed.

We could try to see in our prayer today whether the family and those in our care occupy the place in our lives desired by God, and see if our heart is truly watchful over them.

Along with our vocation, this is indeed a treasure which lasts up to eternal life.

Other treasures which previously seemed important to us may well now fall into perspective and begin to lose their charm.

Our Lord has said, “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

At each stage of our life, maybe we have to be a little bit like that four-year-old kid in a sandpit, discovering new treasures—treasures we didn't know existed or new treasures that have come overnight.

We might find that a lack of rectitude of intention has corroded some of those treasures, or the treasures that we had or thought we had before were counterfeit treasures, fool’s gold of little value.

Don't give your heart to the things of this world, said the saints.

To live family life properly very often means making use of the opportunity to spend time for the benefit of others: planning weekends, planning outings, planning family fun, having time to celebrate family occasions or get-togethers, time to talk, time to listen, to understand, to pray together.

We organized a father-and-son afternoon one time in a school where I used to work in another country with forty or fifty fathers. At a certain moment, one of the activities was to go off to a far corner of the school compound and just talk.

It was very interesting to see what the fathers said when they came back. They said, “Most of the talking was done by my son.”

Or some said, “I have never talked to my son like that before. I've never listened to him like that before.” You could see it was a very genuine moment that had become a treasure.

It's not enough to have a generally benevolent but invisible affection. Affection has to be demonstrative. We must make it overt and appreciable, and for this we have to make an effort—a conscious effort—and pray, deliberately cultivating and exercising the needed human virtues and forgetfulness of self.

Far from being a waste of time, we ask ourselves the question: For what and for whom do I live? It's very important. What interests fill my heart?

When we see that attacks on the family have multiplied, the best way of defending it is by means of true human affection, taking into account with open eyes our defects and those of others, and making God present in an agreeable way in the home.

We can do this by saying grace at mealtimes, by joining in with the smallest children for their night prayers, by reading a few verses of the Gospel with the older ones, or saying a short prayer for the dead, for the Pope’s and the family's intentions.

I asked an eight-year-old kid once in school, did he say his night prayers. And he said, “Yes, always.” I was a bit surprised. Always? Who always says their night prayers?

I was a bit curious of how confident he was about this. and I asked him, “Well, how so? How do you always, or why do you always, say your night prayers?”

He said, “My Dad comes home late from work. We have dinner before he comes. As soon as he arrives and drives the car into the driveway, he comes straight to our room and prays our night prayers, myself and my little brother. My father was a busy president of a bank but yet, he had a certain priority in his family life.”

So this kid was able to say: I always say my night prayers.

The family rosary is a good custom. The Roman Pontiffs have recommended it so warmly. It draws with it many graces. Sometimes it will be possible to pray while traveling, or make a little visit to the Blessed Sacrament which fits in with the family timetable.

This shouldn't always be left to the initiative of the mother or the grandmother, because the father and the older children can make a wonderful contribution to this pleasant task.

Many families have kept up as a healthy habit that of going to Mass together on Sundays. It's not obligatory. When children get to a certain age, they may like to go on their own. Long live freedom. It's a very good thing that at least sets the tone.

We can ask Our Lady, Queen of the family, if we might learn to have our heart more and more in this family that God has given to us and that He wants us to build up with our prayer and with our effort.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JM