The Apostolate of the Home

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.

“In the countryside close by there were shepherds out in the fields keeping [guard] over their sheep during the watches of the night. An angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them.

“They were terrified, but the angel said, ‘Do not be afraid. Look, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. And here is a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’ And all at once with the angel there was a great throng of the hosts of heaven, praising God with the words, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace for those he favors.’

“Now it happened when the angels had gone from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go to Bethlehem and see this event which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they hurried away and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger.

“When they saw the child they repeated what they had been told about him, and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds said to them” (Luke 2:8-18).

So the shepherds “hurried away,” we’re told, “and they found Mary and Joseph and the babe, lying in the manger.” They found a home, they found a family.

We have the privilege these days, with the grace of Advent, to accompany the Holy Family along their journey to Bethlehem, and also to find that home and that family.

This meditation is about the Apostolate of the Home. It is a particular apostolate that we are called to do.

It is the first apostolate that we do in our family, creating that family environment and that family atmosphere. And over the course of our life, Our Lord wants us to become more and more effective in doing that—to become real experts.

These days and hours as we come close to the great mystery of the Incarnation, it is a time for us to go a little deeper, a little more spiritual, into those scenes of the Gospel.

John Paul II liked to say that in Christ we find the meaning and the purpose of our life (cf. Pope John Paul II, Homily, World Youth Day, August 14, 1993).

We could say very especially that we find the meaning and the purpose of our life in Christ, in Bethlehem. Divine beauty incarnate.

Every year we have new graces to see new things, to look at these events from a new optical angle, to learn from them how to be a better person, a better Christian, a better mother, a better family maker, a better parent, so that we grow also in the effectiveness of that Apostolate in the Home.

St. Josemaría said, “Every Christian home should be a place of peace and serenity. In spite of the small frustrations of daily life, an atmosphere of profound and sincere affection should reign there together with a deep-rooted calm, which is the result of authentic faith that is put into practice” (Josemaría Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 22).

When St. Josemaría speaks about “peace and serenity,” he also talks about “the small frustrations of daily life.” Every day, every hour, we have such things. Those are a given. It's par for the course.

But in spite of all those things, we have to try and bring about that “atmosphere of profound and sincere affection.”

He's encouraged us to enter deeply into the scenes of Bethlehem. We find a home there. We find a family there. But that's not always how the stable in Bethlehem was.

We’re in the last days of the Year of St. Joseph [December 8, 2020 to December 8, 2021]. It's finishing on December 8^th^.

We could especially ask him to help us to see, a little more deeply these days, all the details that he went to, to create that family atmosphere when there was nothing, and to make that place a focal point of family warmth for all eternity, so that every single mother and father and children and every family all over the world for all time can look in on the stable in Bethlehem, and be inspired, and be formed, and be moved, and be attracted, and have a great desire to fulfill the same goals that St. Joseph had in changing that atmosphere, changing that place into that focal point of peace and warmth and serenity, which is something that we have to try and do in the whole world.

We have to try and bring the world to Bethlehem. We can ask Our Lord in our prayer this morning that we might learn how to create that peace and that joy and that family fun, and to put our heart into things, and create that warmth and that place of rest and of peace that people need.

All that, in spite of the cross and of the struggle of our work and our contradictions, so that there’s the spirit of self-denial and of fortitude there—fortitude to solve the problems.

St. Josemaría, in his homily on St. Joseph, said, “St. Joseph was in no way frightened or shy of life. He faced up to problems, he dealt with difficult situations, and showed initiative and responsibility in everything that he was asked to do” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 40). Beautiful words.

After their long journey from Nazareth, tired, weary, Joseph finds that there's no room at the inn. They’re refused hospitality.

But he doesn't lose his cool. He thinks, “If this is the situation, there must be another solution. God must have something else in mind for us.”

So, he begins to look for the solution. He's solution-oriented. He's a problem solver. He keeps his peace. And then he finds that stable and he converts it into the place where God wants to be born.

Lord, give me that initiative, that responsibility, that spirit of beginning again, of perhaps thinking out of the box, of creating that family atmosphere.

Help me to thank you for my vocation frequently—my vocation as a home-builder; my vocation to do apostolate in my home and from my home, with my words, with my example of virtue.

Thank you for that vocation you've given to me to try and live like a great human being. That doesn't mean that we are great human beings, but that we try to live like a great human being, so that our children grow up seeing what that means: leaders of followers.

You're aware that a few days ago, Father Cormac Burke passed away [1927-2021]. One memory that came in the last few days was that he brought a U.S. Cardinal to visit Eastlands College of Technology—sort of a statement of how he saw the great potential of that particular apostolate.

When that Cardinal was there at Eastlands, he had a get-together with 15 or 20 young kids, local kids, who asked him very frank questions. One of them said to him, “Now that you're a Cardinal, can you be demoted?” Not the sort of question that he would get asked in the Curia.

He was quite amused by the frankness of these local kids. He said to me afterward, “It was a great time we had there. Fantastic kids.”

One of them asked him, “Why did you become a priest?” So, all sorts of really piercing, deep questions were asked.

He told a story that was rather moving. He said, “I was the youngest of five children, and my father was dying of cancer. The priest would come every week to bring him Holy Communion. My mother would line us all up at the hall door, the main door of the house, with lighted candles, and we would have a procession through the house, up the stairs, to the bedroom where my father was.”

Thinking about this, it's rather moving. Beautiful scene of a young family.

Father Jobab Andraer, who after twenty-two years of being the chaplain of Strathmore School and altar servers and ceremonies, said one of the things he learned over 25 years was that kids love fire.

Well, this mother gives her five-year-old son a lighted candle. He could have burnt down the whole house.

But she organizes this Eucharistic procession in her home. Now, think a little bit about that young mother, her husband dying of cancer, who organizes this Eucharistic procession—the faith and the piety that is contained there.

This Cardinal said, “You know, I thought at that stage, what a beautiful thing it is to bring Jesus to sick people.” He said, “I think that's why I had my first desire to be a priest.”

Now, if you think about that young mother, she has no idea that this young five-year-old, who might burn down the house, is going to become a Cardinal, Prince of the Church, and that one day he would come to Eastlands College of Technology, the high point in his whole existence, and tell this beautiful story to all these kids, and here we are repeating it, because of that mother.

This is the power of mothers, the power of the formation of the home and the power of the Apostolate of the Home to reach so many people, to reach deep into hearts.

There was a British Lord at an ethics conference at Strathmore University a few years ago, Lord Alton, who said that only Christianity is capable of changing the hearts of men. NGOs can't. Governments can't. Only Christianity can.

And so, the Christian home has the great power to do these things, and we are there at the very center, the vanguard of this power.

We can ask Our Lord to harness all that power, all that potential that our Christian home has, and that we have, as the leader of that Christian home.

James Stenson likes to say the mother is the queen of the home, and John Paul II has written beautiful phrases about the family, about the Apostolate of the Home.

He says it's “the school of deeper humanity” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, November 22, 1981 and Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, December 7, 1965).

He says that mothers, first and foremost, teach their children how to love. They teach them what it means to be human. This is the role of the woman. That's why, he says, every man coming into the world is entrusted to the care of a woman (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Mulieris dignitatem, Point 30, August 15, 1988).

James Stenson says that every baby comes into the world as a self-satisfying, hedonistic gorilla. ‘I want my maziwa [milk in Swahili] and I want it now. And I'm going to scream and scream and scream until I get my maziwa. And I don't care if it's three in the morning. You jolly well get up out of bed and give me what I want.’

Well, he says, the role of parents is to convert this little gorilla into an adult, and an adult is not somebody who can take care of themselves, because a cat or a dog or a house plant can take care of themselves.

An adult is somebody who can take care of others. An adult is somebody who can forget about themselves, and that's what love means.

John Paul II says it's very specifically the role of the mother. The father has a role to play also, but the mother has a much more important role in teaching the child what love means.

When we look in on Bethlehem these days, we can try to learn those lessons a little more. St. Josemaría liked to say, “In Bethlehem, nobody reserves anything for themselves” (J. Escrivá, Letter, November 14, 1974).

They give themselves completely. They hold nothing back. It doesn't matter what the difficulties are, what we lack. We give everything. We put our hearts there.

One time St. Josemaría went to visit the first center in Paris when they were starting. They had something like three or four or five cups. One of them had no handle. One of them was chipped. Four of them had saucers, but one of them didn't have a saucer.

Our Father was going to stay to lunch or to tea or something. So they arranged the cups in such a way that our Father would sit at the head of the table and that he would have a cup, a saucer, and that the cup would be fully integral.

But as soon as he came into the room, he had a quick look, and with the speed that he had, he noticed immediately that things were organized in such a way that he would have the best of everything. He immediately sat down at the place where there was no saucer and the cup had no handle, and it was chipped a little bit.

During that thing, he said, “This is the trend of Opus Dei. We start with nothing. This is how we're starting this whole country of France, with nothing.”

As far as I know, I think that cup is now in the, whatever you call it, the place where they keep all the historical things in Rome. A very beautiful little thing.

We create our family atmosphere with very little. Pope John Paul II says, “The future of humanity passes through the family” (Pope St. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris consortio, November 22, 1981).

From our virtues that we try to put into practice, our children learn and relearn. They have a constant example, hopefully, of what it means to be a person of faith, a person of hope, a person of love.

Hopefully, they learn what real charity is, real forgiveness, real patience, so that little by little, they begin to acquire these virtues.

In these very special weeks coming to Christmas, it's a very good time to stimulate the social consciousness and the spirit of the detachment of your children.

You see, sometimes, people can have a great social consciousness, but they may have no spirit of poverty. It’s a sin of the first world and of the upper echelons of all societies.

They can spend a lot of money on the poor, but when it comes to spending money on themselves, the sky's the limit. It's a really good time to stimulate that social consciousness, that spirit of poverty, that generosity.

The children go through the toys they got for Christmas last year, books that they don't need, or items of clothing, and try to give away a maximum amount of things.

When we give away what we don't need, that's not generosity; that's justice. St. Mother Teresa says, “Give until it hurts” (Mother Teresa, Address, February 3, 1994).

When we teach children to give until it hurts, we're teaching them how to be happy, because happiness in this world comes from giving, from helping, from serving—not from getting, from having, and from spending, which is what the world and the culture will be teaching people.

Often in these days and these times, we help people to be oriented in that direction, to learn from Bethlehem, and to see that these are virtues that we have to try and put into practice in a concrete way.

We've been chosen to put these virtues into practice, to show them in concrete ways.

We can thank God that we have this vocation as a mother, as a homebuilder, and this Apostolate of the Home to do. This has no limits.

There's no limit to the amount of virtue we can teach our children, or to the level of virtue that they can acquire from the atmosphere of our home, from our example, from our prayer.

We can thank Our Lord for our vocation, to have a great sense of treasure, a great sense of bargain, a great sense of calling.

We see the star of our vocation. This is why I've been created. This is why I'm here.

God has placed me in these particular circumstances, to give this type of example, to show people what holiness means, or what this virtue means. We're called to enjoy our vocation, to love our home, and to draw love from the Source of love.

The Apostolate of the Home also means to talk about our family, to be happy to be with our family, so that other people see that it's the best place for us to be. Our best time should be at home and with our family.

Remember also that we are forming future families. The way that our children learn how to create that atmosphere is exactly what they will transmit to their children and the homes that they will build.

With our calling, God gives us all the grace that's necessary to carry out our mission that he's given to us, in spite of the difficulties, in spite of our faults.

John Paul II liked to say, “The future of humanity passes through the family.” The family is the school of the soul, the school of virtue, the school of love, “the sanctuary of life” (Pope St. John Paul II, Encyclical, Centesimus annus, May 1, 1991). We have to promote a culture of life.

First and foremost, we have to try and live all these things in the particular home that God has given to us, cooperating generously in the plans of God, sacrificing ourselves, realizing that everyone has a heart.

Everyone needs affection, encouragement. We know that St. Josemaría used to say, you've got to treat your husband like your biggest baby. Then you'll press all the right buttons.

And to know the words and the gestures that only those who love know are important. The right thing to do at the right moment.

Sometimes we have to be silent. Sometimes we need to be a good listener. Sometimes we have to put more effort into communication.

I know a couple in another country who sit down for half an hour every week or every month, and they write down all the things that have bugged them in the life of their spouse in the last few days or weeks—things that may be difficult to say verbally but can be easier to write—and then they swap papers, and then they apologize, and then they begin again.

We also have to know how to begin again, so that our families can be, and our home can be, centers that radiate the Gospel message.

People should notice there's something different about our home. You find that the friends of your children like to be in your home. You may find that a bit trying at times, but it can be a wonderful compliment. There's something there that we don't have.

We should try and live a certain sense of family values—family values which ultimately mean family priorities. Families come first, and that means my children, my spouse.

My extended family, my parents—those sometimes have to wait, to be in second place, because in Christianity, the family that you found is more important than the family that you come from.

Having those priorities right is part of the Apostolate of the Home. When Jesus comes to Bethlehem, He gives great dignity to family life.

We may have to be a little bit careful and aware of what our Father called “mystical, wishful thinking” (J. Escrivá, Conversations, Points 88, 116). “If only this. If only that.”

Part of the Apostolate of the Home is that we learn to be content with what we have, thanking God for all our blessings. Where we have been placed is where God wants us to be, and He wants us there, giving importance to our family life.

As we look in on Bethlehem, we see the great example of St. Joseph: his silence, his service, his faithfulness, his acceptance of the will of God. Even in the midst all the contradictions, he's very focused, stays in the background, forgets himself.

He's like a pillar. He's humble. He's full of faith and trust. He's available. He's full of fortitude. All sorts of wonderful things there.

St. Josemaría says in The Forge, “My daughter, you have set up a home. I'd like to remind you that women—as you well know—have a great strength, which you know how to unfold within a special gentleness, so that it is not noticed. With that strength, you can make your husband and children instruments of God, or demons. —You will always make them instruments of God. He is counting on your help” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 690).

We go to Bethlehem to ask Our Lord for new lights. Where can I begin again? How can I lift up the atmosphere of this family?

It may be that you've done all those things in the past, and have been very successful, and now is the time for maybe a greater spiritual input: to pray more for people, to reflect that peace and serenity that God wants us to have, and to help people around us also to appreciate the beauty of the family, to thank God that I have this family, and I have this home, and I have these material things. But also, I have love in my family, which is the most important thing.

“And I also tell them:” said St. Josemaría, “you Christian mothers and fathers are a great spiritual motor, sending the strength of God to your own ones, strength for that struggle, strength to win, strength to be saints. Don't let them down!” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 692).

We can try to encourage and accompany each family member, helping them to improve, helping them to have a positive influence on their environment, helping them to see that they have a mission, that they have an apostolate to do, that they have to try and lift up the spiritual temperature around them and give good example with their virtue of poverty, of generosity, of family values.

It's part of the formation that we give them. We try to help them to practice a certain order in their life, with their material things, and to see the great fruits that have to come from the family and from marriage.

Somebody once said that the family is destroyed by destroying its foundation—stable marriage—and the devil, we can see and we know, has declared war on the family and on marriage. So it's not surprising that we see all the attacks that we see.

But we have the answers. We have the solutions. God is with us. We know the way forward. We have all the graces that God wants to give us. Each of us has experienced that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here.

The spirit of Opus Dei is a great motor for the future and all the family formation that we need.

We can ask Our Lady, Queen of the Family, Queen of our home, that she might help us to be more effective in this business of this particular apostolate that God has given us to do, and that we might use these particular days and hours very effectively to be a greater motor in that whole apostolate.

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.

MVF