Saint John Chyrsostom called the family a “little church”. “The layman’s mission is to turn his family into a small church, a cell of the great Church, that is, into a family-church.” These words are quoted by James R. Jones and Gabriel Meyer in the last section of principles for Living the Gospel as a Way of Life. And so, we come to the end of our reflections on these principles. Thanks for making it this far!
The family is a little church, a cell of the great Church. What does this mean? I guess it all depends on what we think the Church is, on what is called “ecclesiology”. Ecclesiology is the study of the Church, and it is getting a lot of publicity right now as the Church prepares for Part 2 of the Synod on Synodality.
The Second Vatican Council took up this question about the nature of the Church, particularly in the document Lumen Gentium. The American Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote a book after the Council entitled Models of the Church. Vatican II does not just have one model of the Church. In fact, the Council’s vision of the Church is kaleidoscopic: the Sacrament of communion with God and the unity of humankind, the Body of Christ, the People of God, to name a few. The Council stayed away from the Tridentine formula of the Church as “perfect society” in order to put the focus more on the centrality of Christ and the journey that God’s people are making through history. The Church declares that she has not yet reached her homeland, and while she might be perfect in the mind of God, that perfection has yet to be realized on earth.
So, again, what does it mean to the say that the family is a little church? If we understand the Church to be a place of oppressive rules, maybe we will think of the family in this way. If we understand the Church as a bundle of doctrines, maybe we will think of the family as just an idea. If, a little more positively, we think of the Church as the People of God journeying through history, maybe we will think of the family as a people with a story to share, a past and a future.
But one way for us to think about the Church, and thus about the family, is by asking when the Church is most herself. When is the Church “doing” Church the most intensely? And then it becomes clear that the Church is most herself when she is celebrating the liturgy. Of all the things the Church does, it is this thing that is most typical and most enduring. In fact, the Church celebrates the sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, as the “source and summit” of her life, as the Second Vatican Council states. In fact, the Church will continue to celebrate the heavenly liturgy long after this world passes away. The liturgy happens on earth but also in heaven; on earth in the signs of bread and wine and water and oil, in heaven in the reality of which these signs are only a shadow. In heaven, that is, we will feed on and be immersed and shine with the glory of God.
A lot of my reading these days has focused on this celebratory character of the Church. I went back to Scott Hahn’s The Lamb’s Supper a couple weeks ago, which is all about the fact that the liturgy we celebrate here on earth is an echo of the worship and adoration of God that goes on eternally in heaven. I recently discovered, through Father Fernando Camou, the incredible works by David Fagerberg, who writes on the liturgy as “primary theology”; the liturgy is the place to go for true knowledge of God, a knowledge that does not just remain in our heads but transforms our whole life.
The Church, therefore, is most Church when she is celebrating the works of God, and when the love of God becomes truly present in our midst, in flesh and blood. This celebration pulls us up to heaven, as we say at every Mass: “Life up your hearts! / We lift them up to the Lord!” And so, if the family is a little church, then the family is most the family when it celebrates. By that round about way, I arrive at the last section of Jones and Meyer, on “Celebration and Family”. They write:
If the family is the heart of Christian culture, if the Church itself is a family of families, then one of the essential aspects of building Christian brotherhood and sisterhood in our world is to restore families and family life—to reinvest in the family. A major part of this process has to do with restoring the traditional functions of the family—particularly the family as the center of life, culture, piety, training and education, and the cultural transmission of Christian life. Obviously, this is a large and daunting, and I might add, multi-generational task. But if efforts aren’t made to effectively restore and refresh family life, then, in my experience, efforts to build community will ultimately fall short.
The family is the place where a spiritual culture is passed on in a personal way. The transmission of the faith, for me and for many of us, takes the form of mothers and fathers and grandmas (especially so in my case) and grandpas. The faith becomes concrete not only in the family, but usually it becomes concrete first in the family. The family home, then, can be the place of love and forgiveness and joy where the love of God takes flesh and takes root.
Now, there are a couple of ways that this can go wrong. The first is if the family home looks just like every other home, if there is no praying going on, if there is only the sound of the television, or these days, of individual devices in individual rooms, if meals are not celebrations and consolations but drudgeries to be gotten through. The second is if the family home cuts itself off from other families and the larger Church. I fear that we don’t pay enough attention to this latter case. We lament that Christian families are just as secular as other families, but then we just transfer the secular individualism to the family unit.
What are some ways to deal with both of these dangers?
The first and foremost celebration of the family does not happen within the four walls of the family home. It is the celebration of the Mass, which, every week, “interrupts” our normal routines and puts us in touch with the larger family of God. The Mass does not substitute for other prayerful moments in the home, of course, but no amount of praying in the home can substitute for the Mass.
Family prayer, in the home, should include the concerns of the larger world. Ask your children which of their friends or their friends’ families need prayer. Remember those families who are suffering in places throughout the world from hunger and violence.
Celebrate the liturgical seasons with special prayers and colors and symbols. We do Christmas pretty well, I think, but maybe not Advent and Lent. Or Pentecost! Or the feasts of Our Lady! Our the patron saints of our family!
Sunday in the home can be the Lord’s Day. Are there special ways to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus in our homes? Jones and Meyer speak about the Lord’s Day supper, which many families do as a way of celebrating Sunday. They write, “If you asked a visitor to our community to describe one of its most characteristic and striking aspects, nine times out of ten that visitor would cite our Lord’s Day celebration.” For those at Saints Simon and Jude Cathedral, stay tuned: we are trying to do a parish Lord’s Day supper in the spring.
What do you notice about all these suggestions? They are ways to make our home more of a sacred space and our family life more about the Lord, but they do not isolate the family from other families and from the Church. Of course, each family has its own flavor, but it is also important to stress that spiritual culture in the home is not just something we make up. If we want to pass on the faith, that means we will have received it from outside ourselves. This give and take, adding our own spices to the recipe, is what tradition is all about. And tradition happens not just in theological schools but also at the dinner table.
Okay, I think this is a good place to stop. Thank you for reflecting with me on the principles Jones and Meyer give for living the Gospel in our world. I hope it has been a blessing for you as it has been for me.
I’d like to ask you to consider subscribing to this blog or sharing it with someone who might be blessed by it. I look forward to writing about once a week now that school is starting again and parish life is getting even busier. God bless!