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Families are holy, even in the midst of crisis,
tension, and difficulty concluded participants at Releasing Formidable
Energy, a symposium to explore the spirituality of marriage and family
life, held between October 20th – 22nd at St Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw,
near Durham.
David Thomas, lay advisor to the US Bishops at the 1980 World Synod on
the Family, told the symposium that homes are holy places because the
whole of God’s creation is filled with God’s presence. "Awareness is the
starting point for all spirituality. There is a clear challenge here for
families because they are so busy, yet busy people can still be
spiritual because they have developed practices for remaining aware,
being present to God, to each other. The ordinary things families do -
the way for example that they care for and serve one another - are holy
and important to God. Families are all the time bringing forth God's
life more fully into creation."
The challenge of seeing God in the midst of family
difficulties was addressed by Kathleen Chesto, another of the keynote
speakers. It’s not the mess that is holy of itself, she said, but the
people we become through the especially poignant challenges often faced
in our family lives. "There are two lasting bequests we give our
children: the first is roots and the second is wings. We root them in
our love, our tradition, our faith, our family and then we give them the
greatest gift of all: we let them go. They are free to make their own
choices and they often choose other than we would have them choose."
"We are not good parents if they turn out well – we
are good parents if we turn out well through the process of parenting.
God gave us this for our sanctification; are we becoming less selfish,
more spiritual, more in touch, more aware of the greatness of creation?
Through the process of parenting are we becoming holy? It’s through the
pain and the chaos, through the cracks in our lives, that God’s light
enters deeply within us."
Thomas Knieps-Porte le Roi, holder of the INTAMS
chair in Marital Spirituality at the University of Leuven, Belgium
called for new theological models for conjugal and family spirituality.
It was vital, he said, to differentiate between marital and family
spirituality. "In the past conjugal and family experience coincided.
Parents died much younger 100 years ago, often as their last child was
reaching maturity. That is no longer the case. Now we need to pay
attention to the spirituality of couples both before marriage and after
the children have left home."
As a new theological model, Mr Knieps – Porte le Roi
suggested a “covenant” spirituality for spouses and families, rooted in
the notion that "first of all we are brothers and sisters of Christ and
thus brother and sister to each other, before we are husband and wife or
son and daughter of our father and mother."
More than 120 delegates including married couples,
single people, priests, and theologians attended Releasing Formidable
Energy which was organised by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales
as part of their Celebrating Family: Blessed, Broken, Living Love
initiative, the response to Listening 2004: My Family, My Church, a
conversation in which 15,000 Catholic families shared their experiences
of life and faith.
"Families actually live a great deal of holiness in
the love they live but they have never named it and claimed it as such,"
said Bishop John Hine, Chairman of the Committee for Marriage & Family
Life of the Bishops’ Conference. "When you read the Listening 2004
report the generous self-giving of time, attention, love, forgiveness,
affirmation, support and so on jump out of the pages. But none of this
was identified as family spirituality! We clearly need to do more to
identify and celebrate God’s presence at home."
The symposium ended with delegates devising new
strategies for promoting marital and family spirituality in the parish.
These included the writing of new resources for priests and catechists
to help them identify and affirm the value of family at key contact
points such as sacramental preparation. Also suggested was a greater
emphasis on family-centred vocations of marriage and parenting, and
identification of volunteers within parishes who, with appropriate
support and training, could animate a greater awareness of marital and
family spirituality.
"We have a great deal of material to work with now in
preparing for the launch of Home is a Holy Place in 2007", said
Elizabeth Davies, Marriage and Family Life project officer for the
Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. "The symposium has not only
highlighted key themes in the spirituality of the home but also a number
of areas where we must focus more attention."
HOME IS A HOLY PLACE
A challenging theme for the 21st Century
A young woman sat nursing her sick child. It was Maundy Thursday. The
child had been frequently sick and each time this necessitated a major
clean up. The tired and distraught Mother had an additional reason for
feeling dispirited today, for she had never before missed the Mass of
the Last Supper and loved the liturgy, especially the Washing of the
Feet.
As she cleaned up her little girl for the umpteenth
time, she came to the child’s feet ….. and then the connection was made!
She herself was washing the feet of ‘one of the least of my little
ones’. Her spirits were raised as she realised that she didn’t have
to be in Church to celebrate the liturgy. Her home was literally a
holy place; it was a place of prayer.
This story was told by Bishop John Hine, Auxiliary
Bishop of Southwark and Chairman of the Marriage and Family Life
Committee of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, at the
conclusion of the 3-day International Symposium, entitled ‘Releasing
Formidable Energy’, held at Ushaw College, Durham in the last days
of October and attended by 3 delegates from Menevia, among the 130+
total.
It was Pope John Paul II who first coined the term
‘releasing formidable energy’ in his great encyclical, ‘Familiaris
Consortio’, when he said that ‘the family possesses and continues to
release formidable energies!’ He loved the family and knew that families
formed the bedrock of the church and of society. He wanted to affirm
parents in their everyday task of looking after and raising the next
generation of Catholic Christians in what has become, certainly in
Western Europe, a secular society where governments seem intent on
undermining all that the family stands for.
‘Home is a holy place’ was the latest stage in
the development of the Bishops’ 3-year initiative, ‘Celebrating
family’ and was called to launch discussion and planning of Year
Two. In their report on ‘Listening 2004’, entitled ‘Not easy
but full of meaning’, the Bishops had said that ‘a broader
understanding of marital and family spirituality among both clergy
and laity will be fundamental to the success of any future work by
the church in support of family life’. They had not found much
evidence if this in the ‘Listening 2004’ responses. They wanted ‘Home is
a holy place’ to be the starting point for such a renewal. Hence the
Symposium.
The year-long project aims to develop among families,
parishes and the wider Catholic community a vision of the holiness of
the home as a place of life, love, service, teaching, fellowship,
witness and prayer and to underline the presence of God as love in all
loving family relationships.
Peter Macpherson
INTRODUCTION
“ There was so much to ponder upon in this Symposium.
So many aspects of our Catholic heritage to look at again, so many fresh
insights into the foundations of Christian Family Life to be discovered.
The American, Kathleen Chesto, who described herself
a ‘a woman of faith, a wife, mother and a storyteller’, electrified all
parents present with her opening remark that ‘parenting is a terminal
illness!’; once embarked upon, the task is with us until we die.
Yes, home is indeed a holy place, even in all its
messiness and often chaos. ‘There’s a crack in everything’, she
said, ‘but that’s how the light gets in!’ Through the dark and
difficult times, parents who are challenged and stretched grow in grace,
goodness and holiness through the act of parenting, not just by
producing ‘good’ offspring.
All committed Catholic couples begin with some ideal
for their own family. Then life intervenes! Traumas, tragedies,
disillusionment and the quicksand of modern life see their offspring
drifting in other directions. And still, … and still …. the family must
remain the safe harbour to which the prodigals can return, the oasis in
the midst of modern aridity where they can find love and peace. Whether
they accept the open door or not does not diminish our role.
Our faith is meant to be a bridge between the here
and the hereafter. But, too often, our Church has been so concerned with
the details of the bridge and the rules for crossing many of our
youngsters choose to abandon it, dive in and swim for the other bank,
under their own steam, as best they can.
Holiness in family life is not the sum of family
prayers or church attendance. Holiness is letting God in, living by the
example Jesus taught us, putting ‘skin’ in God’. In holiness, we strive
to be like God and God is not a church, but a family. That is why we
bless ourselves ‘in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit’!
But it was Thomas Knieps-Port le Roi, holder of the
INTAMS (International Academy for the Study of Marital Spirituality)
Chair at the Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium, who challenged
us most, both intellectually and theologically, with new insights into
the interpersonal relationships of domestic life ‘as a genuine and
authentic place of faith-life and spirituality. He drew a distinction
between conjugal love and family love. Only when the spouses’ love for
each other truly reflects Christ’s love for His church, or God’s love
for his creation can this then become the source from which all family
relationships, both human and spiritual are nurtured, can grow into the
family model of spirituality.
Perhaps we have always known this intuitively. The
deep love of husband and wife for each other becomes the bedrock and
source of love of all members of the family for each other. God so loved
His creation that God the Son become one of us. ‘Love one another as I
have loved you’ was Christ’s parting message to His nearest and dearest
around him. And that is what they did. ‘Se how they love one another’,
an astonished heathen world said of the early Christians. And they
flooded to join them. A light had been lit and its glow spread like
wildfire. That’s why the Family must be and is a holy place, too.
‘Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I
am amongst them’ (Matt. 18.30). Yes, there was real sense at Ushaw of
the Holy Spirit moving in mysterious ways amongst us. It was a very
special, privileged time for all participants, a time of prayer and
reflection, a time of searching and discovery, a time of grace.
Gislinde
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