Catholic Center for Family Spirituality

Transcription

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catholic center for
family Spirituality
Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology
Seton hall unIVerSIty
Family Reflections
This publication is dedicated to the memory of
Deacon William J. Toth, Ph.D.
1940-2008
I m mac u lat e conc e pt I on Se mI na ry School of t heol ogy
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catholIc center for famIly SpIrItualIty
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catholic center for
family Spirituality
presents
Family Reflections
k
Editor-in-Chief
Stephen B. Kass
Associate Editors
Dianne M. Traflet
Eilish R. Harrington
Assistant Editors
Kristine Hudak
Kathleen M. Childers
Matthew Higgins
Director of the Catholic Center
for Family Spirituality
Andrew E. Saunders
Public Relations and
Marketing Department
Christine Aromando
Lorraine Joyce
Designer
James Goodwin
k
I m m acu lat e conc e pt I on Se mI na r y School of t heol ogy
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Table of Contents
Introduction
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Stephen B. Kass, m.S., m.a.t.
Foreword
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reverend monsignor robert f. coleman, J.c.D.
Deacon William Toth, Ph.D.:
A Review of a Well-Spent Academic Life
10
reverend John f. russell, o.carm., S.t.D.
Praying the Liturgy of the Hours Together
12
Kathleen toth
Deacon William Toth, Ph.D.: A Eulogy
16
Dianne m. traflet, J.D., S.t.D.
“Building Bridges”
21
Reflections from Vatican II on the Catholic Priest
and his Relationship to the Family
Steven Smith, ph.D.
William J. Toth: “I Want What He Has!”
33
Jennifer Burgoyne
Reflections to Accompany a Rosary Novena
for a Couple Preparing for Marriage
34
Dianne m. traflet, J.D., S.t.D.
The “Yes” Man
40
michele carr
The Gift of Self Through Marriage
42
lesa rossmann, m.a.t.
Valentine to a Little Girl
Karen Boushelle
52
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Covenantal and Vocational Aspects of Marriage
56
Stephen B. Kass, m.S., m.a.t.
Family Spirituality as a Transformation of Love
62
mario coccia, m.a.t., S.t.l.
Learning Latin
68
lt. Joseph toth, uSn, Jag
“You Always Hurt the One You Love:”
Reconciliation and the Family
70
reverend monsignor Joseph r. chapel, S.t.D.
Seeing Things as They Are
76
reverend Stephen toth, m.Div.
The “Goods” of Marriage
78
Stephen nakrosis, m.a.t.
Breaking Bread Together
86
William toth, Jr.
How Papal Teachings on Erotic Love
and Theology of the Body are Applied
Through the Virtue of Modesty
88
reverend W. Jerome Bracken, c.p., ph.D.
A Letter to My Father
101
regina Wackerman
One Family, One Marine, One Lord of All
103
andrew e. Saunders, m.a., m.a.t.
The Man Who Was Sunday
capt. michael toth, uSmc
I m mac u lat e conc e pt I on Se mI nary School of t heol ogy
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Introduction
By Stephen B. Kass, m.S., m.a.t.
mirrors are peculiar gadgets. Some people love them, while others avoid them at all costs.
one truth, however, is universal – and that is that all human beings are created in the
image and likeness of god (gen. 1:27). as members of the same human family, we must
remember that the reflections staring back at us in the mirror are the closest images and
representation of god on the face of the earth. In fact, theologians such as St. augustine
used the love and relationships that bind a human family as a reflection of the vast, ineffable mystery that resides within the persons of the Blessed trinity, who are in eternal
relation to one another.
christians have received the gift of belonging to a unique and special family. this is a
family that is not based on Dna, but on common spiritual genes. I have no brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles or cousins, and my wife and I never were able to have
children. When I was asked to be the editor of Family Reflections, I initially found it to be
a bit daunting and ironic. Dr. William toth, the man to whose name and memory this
volume is dedicated, was associate professor of christian ethics at Immaculate conception Seminary School of theology, a deacon, a husband and a father of eight children.
the apparent dichotomy between Dr. toth’s experiences of family and mine were staggering. In many ways, I didn’t feel particularly qualified to be involved in this project and
its emphasis on the spirituality of the family given my relatively limited experience with
family dynamics. however, during the past several months, I have discovered that my
family and Dr. toth’s family might have more in common than I initially suspected. In
reading the articles from Dr. toth’s family and the articles by the other authors, it became
clear that unconditional love is the common thread braided into the fabric of family life.
the number of people in a family is not as important as the love and faith that solidify
and bind the relationships among its members. Jesus told his disciples, “’Whenever two
or three are gathered together in my name, there I am with them.’” (matt. 18:20 naB)
this statement from our lord reminds us that his love is the origin and basis of all
family life and relationships. last names are not as important as recognizing that we all
are beloved children of the same god Who calls out to each of us by name to love and
serve him.
IntroDuctIon
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this journal contains an array of articles with distinct tones, by a variety of authors. the
reflections written by Dr. toth’s family provide insight into the man to whose memory
this volume is dedicated. the remaining compositions, written by faculty, staff and alumni of Immaculate conception Seminary School of theology, offer spiritual, theological
and scholarly perspectives on various dimensions of the spirituality of family life. the
variety of pieces is intended to appeal to a broad audience. the photographs in this journal were taken by young people ages 13 to 24 who were among the winners of our photo
contest, “Images of god in my family life.”
the title of this journal, Family Reflections, was chosen not only because this volume offers
reflections on the family, but because the family is a reflection of god’s love. I pray that
the contents of this journal will offer some insight into the family life of Dr. toth and
become a mirror through which readers can gaze upon the divine image that is present
in their own families.
Dr. William Toth
I m mac u lat e conc e pt Ion Se mI nary School of t heol ogy
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Foreword
By reverend monsignor robert f. coleman, J.c.D.
on the advent of the Seminary’s sesquicentennial, we continue to be inspired, guided
and protected by the Blessed Virgin mary as we continue our mission of forming priests
for service in the church. Despite changes in culture and the religious climate in our
country and society, the Seminary has remained firm in its founding vision, principles
and goals. as our Seminary motto proclaims, the priests who complete our formation
program will go forth to be “Dispensers of the mysteries of god,” offering people visible
signs of god’s infinite mercy and compassion.
the Seminary also continues to focus on educating the laity, to enable as many people as
possible to have an impact on the life of the church and the world. the creation of the
Institute for christian Spirituality in 2005 and the catholic center for family Spirituality
in 2008 has expanded the Seminary’s diverse programs and has offered new opportunities, particularly for lay students, to experience the best academic offerings in systematic,
moral and pastoral theology. today, numerous lay alumni are devoting their energies to
bringing about the manifestation of god’s Kingdom on earth and sharing the divine life
of the gospel with an increasingly secular society.
It has been nearly 30 years since pope John paul II issued his apostolic exhortation,
Familiaris Consortio. In this document, the holy father reminds the faithful that every
christian family is a reflection of the “church in miniature.” this serves to awaken the
notion that “church” is not necessarily limited to a physical structure. church includes
people who gather together to profess their faith and proclaim their love for god. the
family is a mirror of the church because it serves to remind people that relationships are
at the heart of our faith. the love that binds the persons of the Blessed trinity is reflective of the love that binds christ to his church and the members of a family together.
ours is not a church of individuals, but a family of believers who are unified through a
common baptism.
here at the Seminary, we have established our own family. the priests, seminarians, faculty, staff, clergy and lay people who comprise our beloved institution come from diverse
foreWorD
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cultural and ethnic backgrounds. however, as St. paul states in his letter to the galatians,
“for by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 cor. 12:13). our Seminary family reflects the diverse nature of christ’s family – a family that is bound by the blood that
was shed on calvary for the common salvation of man. It is only fitting, that this volume
is dedicated to the memory of an important member of our Seminary family – Deacon
William J. toth, ph.D.
Bill toth was a member of the Seminary family for nearly 20 years. his untimely death
in 2008 was a shock to us all. he was a pivotal member of the Seminary community, the
archdiocese of newark and a beloved husband and father who is missed by all who had
the privilege of knowing him. Bill will be remembered always for his love and thirst for
god. throughout so many years, he shared this love with others as he lovingly brought
many to drink from the well of eternal life. my hope is that this volume will help readers
to learn more about the man who was an integral part of our Seminary family and grow
closer to god, Who is fully present in their own families as well.
Reverend Monsignor Robert Coleman is Rector and Dean of Immaculate
Conception Seminary School of Theology, where he also teaches Canon Law.
He was ordained to the priesthood in 1978 and holds a J.C.D. from the Pontifical Gregorian University. Monsignor Coleman served as vice-rector/business
manager of Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology from 1996 to
2000, and, in 2000, he was appointed Rector and Dean. In 2005, Monsignor
Coleman was elevated to the rank of Prelate of Honor.
Bill Toth and his Family
I m mac u lat e c onc e pt I on Se mI nary School of t heol ogy
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Review of a Well-Spent Academic Life
By reverend John f. russell, o.carm., S.t.D.
I first met Bill when he was a student for the m.a. in theology at Immaculate conception
Seminary School of theology, located at the time in mahwah, new Jersey. he was industrious, enthusiastic, read everything recommended and showed a strong interest in social
justice, the theology of work and employer-employee relationships.
When Bill moved on to pursue a doctoral degree at union theological Seminary in new
york, he pursued his great interest in social ethics. I attended his doctoral defense at
union and learned that one of his readers was the eminent scholar and labor activist
monsignor george higgins. Bill’s research was received with approval and enthusiasm by
his dissertation board.
Bill was hired by the School of theology, as I remember, not only because of his expertise
in social ethics but also because of the strength of his christian witness. Bill was a devoted family man, and his wife, Kathy, provided all the encouragement and affirmation
he needed.
at the Seminary, Bill displayed enormous energy. his classes provided detailed coverage
of material in fundamental moral theology, christian social teaching and, later, in the
sacrament of christian marriage. he worked with both the Stillman School of Business
and Seton hall university School of law in initiating interdisciplinary courses.
Bill was named as a respondent for the International Symposium on the 40th anniversary
of Gaudium et Spes, sponsored by the peace and Justice commission, held in rome from
march 16-18, 2005.
Deacon Bill toth was in demand as a speaker, focusing in particular on issues in the
work environment and on justice and peace. he served as chair of the peace and Justice
commission of the archdiocese of newark. It simply amazes me how he was able to
accomplish so much. he was focused and kept abreast of the literature in his areas of
interest.
Deacon WIllIam toth, ph.D.: reVIeW of a Well-Spent acaDemIc lIfe
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one of Bill’s wonderful contributions to scholarship was producing course syllabi which
contained exhaustive bibliographies. his familiarity with church documents related to
his field created a great resource for study, reflection and scholarly writing. Bill’s contributions to committee work were always to the point and thoughtful. Since his death,
we have found it necessary to divide his work among several staff because his coverage
of course work was so vast and comprehensive; we continue to miss his wonderful and
helpful presence.
Reverend John Russell, O.Carm., is Professor of Christian Spirituality at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, where he also serves as
Assistant Spiritual Director. Father Russell teaches Christian Anthropology and
a variety of courses in Christian and Carmelite spirituality. He has been a Carmelite friar since 1953, and received his doctorate in Sacred Theology from the
Catholic University of America.
Bill Toth speaking at Immaculate Conception Seminary.
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Praying the Liturgy of
the Hours Together
By Kathleen toth
Bill and I began to pray the liturgy of the hours when he was accepted into the permanent Diaconate. his thinking at the time was that since he was going to be praying it every
day, perhaps I should as well. I was happy to be included. We began very casually, without
particular ceremony or ritual. We prayed the office of the readings and morning prayer
while we drank our morning coffee. We each prayed silently to ourselves and Bill answered my questions about where to place the ribbons for the daily readings. he showed
me how to make the sign of the cross on my lips at the opening (“lord, open my lips.”)
and to make the sign of the cross at the beginning of the Benedictus. We often stopped to
marvel at a beautiful line in the psalms or to discuss the second reading in the office of
the readings. he particularly liked the documents from the Second Vatican council and
frequently would explain to me the significance of the particular passage that had been
selected. at that time, we still had children in the house, so there were often interruptions
either to run someone to the train, or to answer the telephone. In a natural and relaxed
way, we continued our prayers.
one day, Bill said to me, “the liturgy of the hours really is meant to be said aloud and
in community. Why don’t we pray together, saying the psalms aloud, alternating stanzas
and readings?” We were becoming more formal as well (as our home also was becoming
quieter) so that the interruptions were fewer. We were not as nonchalant in our attitude.
We began to plan the night before when we would pray. If Bill had an early class, we determined when he was going to leave and planned to get up earlier so that we had time
for our prayers.
We started adding our own intercessions at the end of the intercessions in morning prayer.
We prayed for events of the day; we prayed for each of our children by name. If there was a
line of Scripture that struck one of us, we would write it on a post-it note and put it somewhere we could re-read it during the day. hence, it was on a Saturday morning in January
2008 that both of us were struck by a line from Deuteronomy. at that time, I was writing
the invitations for my daughter’s wedding scheduled for february 23. I was fretting about
various details in the wedding plans. Bill was impatient with my fretting. Why not be
prayIng the lIturgy of the hourS together
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grateful for god’s blessing of this magnificent celebration? When I came home later in
the day, Bill was eager to show me the line taken, in part, from Deuteronomy chapter 16
that he had printed up on letter-sized pieces of paper and taped to the refrigerator -- plus
three or so other places where he knew I would look:
Since the lord, your god, has blessed you
In all your crops
and in all your undertakings,
you shall do naught but make merry.
When he died suddenly a week later, I understood well that this was his last instruction to me. It was consistent with his attitude in our entire marriage: god invites us to
participate in the banquet that he has prepared for us. every wedding, every birth, every
Baptism, every opportunity to participate in the creative activity of god in this world is a
participation in that banquet. Indeed, just the other day, more than a year later, I read in
the second reading which is from St. athanasius:
If we follow christ closely we shall be allowed,
even on this earth, to stand as it were on the threshold
of the heavenly Jerusalem,
and enjoy the contemplation of that everlasting feast1
In those first days and weeks after Bill died, I was very grateful for the habit we had developed of saying the liturgy of the hours each morning. In the sorrow and confusion of
those first weeks, I knew what to do when I first rose. the psalms were a source of comfort and direction. the morning of the first day, I read, “In the day of my trouble I shall
call upon you, for you will answer me” (ps. 86:7 naS). I continued the habit of writing
meaningful verses on post-it-notes and re-reading them during the day. “god makes a
home for the lonely” (ps. 68:6 naS). I start the day with the liturgy of the hours in the
early hours of darkness before the sun rises.
the liturgy of the hours points to the liturgy of the mass, which is the great sacrament
of the church. each day when I attend mass I meet our eucharistic Savior. as Saint edith
Stein said: “every day is received from his hand and laid back therein; that the day’s happenings are deliberated with him.”2 as the day continues and the morning’s courage fades,
the lord is present in every church in the tabernacle, waiting to give rest and redirection to
the soul. the rosary can be said wherever one is. Its consolations are known to those who
suffer. When I pray the rosary, I sense that our lady is putting her armor on me.
Indeed, I have marveled in the past year at the treasure of prayer that the church offers to
those who mourn. the power in the ordinary prayer of the church is available throughI m mac u lat e c onc e pt I on Se mI nary School of t heol ogy
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Kathleen toth
out the day to each one of us, providing deep sources of grace and strength. We can start
the day with the liturgy of the hours at whatever time we rise. from the moment of
rising to the hour of bedtime, the liturgy of the hours can be reached for in a moment
of need. the mass is also available at different times throughout the day in various locations nearby. the Blessed lord is waiting in churches and chapels all over the world for
visits from those souls who need face to face conversation with him in the hours of the
late afternoon, the same hours of our lord’s passion and death, or in the evening, when
darkness descends and the soul is often desolate. the lord can be visited even in the wee
hours of the night where perpetual eucharistic adoration is available. the rosary gives
to those who pray it reverently and attentively an opportunity to meditate on the life of
christ from the vantage point of their own lives. In the last year, I have said the Sorrowful
mysteries often in an attempt to attach my own suffering to those of christ.
In times of suffering, all of these ordinary, daily prayers of the church offer a great hope
that joy will return. as St. francis de Sales said:
By the means of the continued practice of prayer
the sacraments and confidence in god
our strength will return
and we will live a healthful and happy life.3
Kathleen Toth is the widow of Dr. William Toth. She has eight children, eleven
grandchildren and lives in Wyckoff, New Jersey.
noteS
1. “from an easter letter by Saint athanasius,” http://www.catholicradiodramas.com/
Saints_Works_A/Athanasius_On_the_Incarnation_of_the_Word.htm (accessed october 20,
2009).
2. edith Stein, Essays on Woman, trans. freda m. oben (Washington, D.c.: IcS
publications, 1996), 125.
3. St. francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, trans. and ed. John K. ryan
(new york: Image Books, Doubleday, 1989), 244.
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“God Grant Me Serenity”
by Melissa DaSilva
St. Benedict, Newark, NJ
Benedictine Academy
my picture consists of my mother sitting and praying. I chose this picture because it shows a religious
side to her. I am grateful that god has given me something so beautiful that I treasure so much, because without her help and guidance I wouldn’t be able to accomplish the many things that I have.
god put her here to be my mother because he knew that she would do many things for me and love
me unconditionally. this is why I am proud to say: thank you, god, for this wonderful person you
have put in my life to help me through my times. I love you mom!
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A Eulogy
By Dianne m. traflet, J.D., S.t.D.
Bill toth knew how to craft a perfect sentence, one that was both informative and inspiring with well-chosen and well-placed words, conveying just the right tone and rhythm. my
favorite line consisted of a mere two words offered with a grin and a twinkle in his eyes:
“good stuff!” yes, Bill certainly could be more eloquent, but these words still conveyed
rich meaning. When he first learned, for example, about an idea for a new encyclopedia
devoted to catholic Social thought, he nodded and smiled in appreciation, giving his
endorsement: “good stuff!” Invariably, this was Bill’s way of promising that a project or a
conversation had just begun; there would be more to say on the matter—stay tuned!
It was little surprise, then, that in the months following his endorsement, he would write
13 articles for the encyclopedia, including such topics as refugee policy, preferential
option for the poor, theology of work, the free market economy, and the role of the laity.
Bill just seemed to know it all, yet he never was a “know-it-all.”
Bill could have written numerous books on a wide-range of subjects, but I particularly
would have liked a spin-off of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, a book he knew
almost verbatim. Bill’s book could have been titled, The Seven Habits of Highly Virtuous
People, and it could have been autobiographical, but, of course, he was far too humble for
that. his holy habits? pray, love, listen, read, share, appreciate, and introduce—all words
that paint a portrait of a learned man with a generous heart, a man of many words, as
well as a man of his word—a person to be trusted.
What Bill wrote about, he enjoyed speaking about even more. he spoke with authority,
excitement, often at top speed, as if he couldn’t wait to tell you a piece of information,
as if it were the missing piece of a grand puzzle. there always was a sense of adventure;
he didn’t want to go it alone; he wanted to share the unearthed treasure, and the fun of
finding and beholding it. In one of his last e-mails to me, after I had confessed that I
was tempted to plagiarize him, he wrote, “Steal everything from me. no problem.” on
another occasion, he offered to give me his class notes —“It’s yours—it’s for everyone.”
“good stuff ” needed to be shared.
Deacon WIllIam toth, ph.D.: a eulogy
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Bill delivered countless lectures, homilies, and presentations, enjoying searching, discovering, and sharing information. But, it was not in the lecture hall that many of us will
most remember Bill, but at a table, sitting back, conversing, relishing the camaraderie
(“good stuff ”) more than even a gourmet meal. he was blessed with the gift of conversation, quite unlike the “gift of gab.” It was the type that prompted us to pause later in
awe. With so many interests, talents, hobbies, and passions, Bill moved effortlessly in the
world of ideas, quoting songs, movies, books, and articles.
he moved even more effortlessly and gracefully in the world of individuals—young, elderly, all ages, and at different stages of the spiritual journey. Bill wanted to know their
story, and give moral support where needed. he spoke from his heart to their hearts. his
words were often offerings of compassion. I once overheard him assuring a suffering
friend, “you’re surrounded by love.” his expression and tone of voice reflected supreme
kindness, without even a hint of condescension or awkwardness, just a matter of fact,
hitting the perfect note of love.
those of us who were privileged to know Bill realized that he could speak authentically
about love because he, too, was surrounded by love—certainly a loving family and a wide
circle of friends, and also by love himself. this explains why he never tired of repeating
certain key words: god, family, prayer, and love. these were his heart’s great passions—
four words that defined his life.
Bill loved his family dearly, often speaking about his wife, Kathy, with tender admiration,
convinced that she was a precious gift from god. he also spoke about each of his eight
children with deep affection and understandable pride, pointing to individual talents,
gifts, and personalities. But, there was something unique and humble about Bill’s fatherly pride. he was edified by each child—each one’s love, faith, and virtue. each daughter
and each son inspired him. he credited his wife and children with teaching him more
about the practice of faith. he absolutely enjoyed and cherished conversations at the
dinner table with his family. he loved to hear them all speak about their relationships,
commitments, and spiritual lives.
he listened with eager attention and a sense of joy. perhaps this is a key to his prayer
life, too; he truly knew, to the core of his being, how to converse with god, as if he were
speaking and listening to a dear friend. how he loved to pray! he and Kathy would pray
together every morning, and he continued to pray throughout the day. he often took
time during the workday to pray at the university or Seminary chapels. he prayed at the
beginning of meals and the beginning of class, always with his head reverently bowed.
approximately 10 years ago, I assisted Bill in organizing a major conference at the Seminary. I remember my panic at the eleventh hour when I realized that Bill hadn’t yet writI m mac u lat e conc e pt I on Se mI nary School of t heol ogy
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DIanne m. traflet
ten his opening speech. I directed him to his office to type; yet, he walked to the chapel
to pray. I must have looked quite aghast, for he turned to me and assured me that he
knew what he was doing. I should have known. I’ll never forget watching Bill, a little
while later, walking down the steps from the Seminary chapel; he looked almost radiant.
“I’ve got my speech,” he said, grinning confidently. he calmly walked to his office, typed
his talk, a beautiful introduction to a wonderful conference.
Bill always loved introductions. he thoroughly enjoyed introducing us to good topics,
good books, and even more so, good people: “have you met…?” “I’d like you to meet….”
“this is….” he just relished helping people make connections. ultimately, Bill did more
than introduce us; he gave us opportunities to be friends.
mostly, he desired to introduce us to god. he wanted to help us to become intimate
friends with god, and as he did so, we sensed he was introducing us to his Divine friend.
he wanted, with every fiber of his being, to share that friendship with us, and to help us
meet him on every road we travel.
a year before he died, Bill drove a group of colleagues to a Seminary function in another
part of the state. the car ride was lengthy, but not boring, with conversations (sometimes
simultaneous) spanning various topics and interrupted with laughter. I sat all the way in
the back of his van, and now and then, would ask teasingly: “are we there yet?” I really
didn’t want an answer and certainly not a positive one. I wanted the journey to continue. that’s the way it was with conversations with Bill; they were always adventures that
seemed to have more introductions than conclusions.
that’s what makes a final good-bye all the more difficult. But, pondering his example,
life, and legacy, we’ve been given some great directions on how to keep the conversation
going, and how to find our way to our eternal home. What a gift from someone who
cared deeply about our journey and our destination. more than a map, more than words,
we have been given an image of an inspiring life brimming with “good stuff ” that will
continue to be shared, discussed, and stolen— compliments of a friend.
Dr. Dianne Traflet is Associate Dean, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Theology
and the founder and Co-director of the Institute for Christian Spirituality at
Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology. In collaboration with,
and under the guidance of Dr. Toth, she created the Catholic Center for Family
Spirituality.
reprinted with permission by The Catholic Social Science Review: Vol 13 (2008): 347-349.
19
“God’s Love from Age to Age”
by Christine Miller
Our Lady of the Mount, Warren, NJ
Koinonia Academy
my name is christine miller and I am in a family of 11 children. my parents have raised me as a
catholic, but two people who have had a major impact on my catholic faith are my grandparents,
frank and rose helfrich. they are two very holy people whom I admire and look up to as role models. my grandparents are always there for me and show the love of god to me by encouraging me in
all that I do and helping me to deepen my relationship with god. they have been married for 56
years and are a great example of a strong, holy marriage. they show the love of god not only to me
and my family, but also to all those they come in contact with.
this picture of my grandparents with my 17-year-old brother, Joe, was taken at his high school
graduation dinner last week from the catholic school my family attends, Koinonia academy. this
picture is just one of the many examples where my grandparents have shown god’s love to my family by supporting us. although they have seven children, (one of whom is a catholic priest) and 35
grandchildren, they show each person in my family unique love, which only comes from god. my
grandparents show god’s love to me by helping me to work as hard as I can to be the person god
wants me to be.
20
“God’s Presence on the Ice”
by Stefan Misko
St. Jude, Blairstown, NJ
Kolbe Academy Home School
many people have heard the proverb: “the family that prays together stays together.” But what is also
true is “the family that plays together stays together” and “stays together with god.” for it is god
who desires the family to remain whole and tries to keep it so.
to younger siblings, memories of their older brothers and sisters sacrificing their time and sometimes much more than that, in order to do something special for them, are memories that they will
always treasure. But this self-sacrificing love within a family does not only hold together the family
but also brings them closer to god. for how could god not be present where charity and sacrifice
towards one another are found? that is why I believe that when my family is together, whether it be
while hiking, playing board games, or, as in my picture, skating on the ice, god can be seen among
us….
It is through such shared experiences as these that the bonds of love are strengthened among us, and
god’s fatherly love is made evident in our lives.
21
“Building Bridges”
Reflections from Vatican II on the Catholic
Priest and his Relationship to the Family
By Steven c. Smith, ph.D.
for many american catholics today, there seems to be something of a disconnect between the life of the priest and the life of their own family. In my own experience, this
seems to be the case not only among catholics who are not fully participating in the
church but even among many regulars at mass. too often, we hurry to mass, interacting with our priest only through our responses in the mass itself, concluding with the
exchange, “Go in peace / Thanks be to God.” Soon, we find ourselves filing out as quickly as
we entered, and are on our way. on the way in and out of mass, we may greet our priest
with a “good morning, father,” “great homily,” or another such nicety. too often, our
verbal interactions are brief affairs — and any further thoughts about our priest are more
or less nonexistent. In short, it can feel at times as though we and our priests simply
inhabit different worlds: worlds that briefly coincide and then move again in opposite
directions, back to the parish rectory and to the family living room.
to be sure, many of us are cognizant of the many blessings of our priests with respect to
our own families: they preside at mass and offer Jesus on the altar; they hear confessions,
baptize our children and run our neighborhood parish or catholic school; they are available on a moment’s notice when a crisis happens; and they witness our weddings and
offer final blessings on our souls. yet, if we’re honest, many of us will not set aside any
thought of our own parish priest (or priests in general) until the next Sunday, and then,
it is only a passing thought.
this brief essay is an opportunity to re-examine our relationship with our priests. Specifically, two questions are raised at the outset: first, how are we to understand our relationship
to our priests? and second, how might we appreciate the human and spiritual connections that
do exist between the family and the priest?
Understanding Our Relationship to Our Priests
to answer the first question, we will turn primarily to some of the documents from Vatican II that provide theological clarity and keen human insight on the matter. at Vatican
II, the council reminded us that “christ is the light of the nations”1 and taught us that
22
SteVen c. SmIth
since the church is “like a sacrament”2 before the entire human race, there exists a “very
closely knit union” between god and the church on the one hand and the church and
the world on the other.3
this means, among other things, that the church plays a decisive mediating role between god and the world. We could say that the universal church is, according to
Vatican II, a “bridge” between god and humanity, between christ and the world –
proclaiming his truth and bringing his mercy to a world with so many needs. the
church is indeed that sign of love between god and the world, as are all of her members. certainly, the pope and the bishops, as successors to the apostles themselves, are
crucial pillars in this bridge. In a different sense, as Vatican II rightly emphasized, all
of us as baptized believers, as “the people of god,” are part of this bridge as well: this
bridge between god and man is a living work that we all partake in, fully and actively.4
another document from Vatican II, Presbyterorum Ordinis (“on the mission and life of
priests”), reminds us that “there is no member who does not have a part in the mission
of the whole Body; but each one ought to hallow Jesus in his heart, and in the spirit
of prophecy bear witness to Jesus.”5 this means that we are all part of christ’s mystical
body.6 though we have a distinct role from that of our bishops, all of us as members
of the church join with them in this “supernatural bridge building.” We all have been
given important gifts from god, and we are called to share them with the world as best
as we are able.
this is true whether we serve in some sort of official and more visible role (e.g., as a
deacon or extraordinary minister at mass) or in countless ways that often are less visible,
such as in the clean-up work of a busy parent, the patience of a catholic school teacher
or the attentive presence to a friend in need.
While we rightly esteem and fully support the apostolic work of our bishops and remind
ourselves that each of us plays a role as a support brace in this “supernatural bridge,”
we must never forget the seminal role of our priests. at mass, and out in the everyday
places in the world, catholic priests are the most visible pillars in this bridge, solemnly
entrusted by the bishops to multiply god’s work in the world, proclaiming and teaching
the gospel, administering the Sacraments and shepherding the flock.
Since the priest ministers in a special way to catholic families, the priest and the family share a special and intimate bond. think for a moment of two parents preparing to
baptize their newborn daughter. they joyfully wrap her in fresh white clothes and bring
her to the priest. the priest brings the grace of the sacrament to her, in persona Christi. the
holy Spirit operates in and through the priest, and the daughter of the parents is blessed
with divine life as the priest welcomes her lovingly into the church. later, as the child
grows, perhaps another priest will hear her first confession, and another will offer her
“BuIlDIng BrIDgeS”
23
the Body and Blood of the lord himself at her first communion. If she marries, perhaps
another will serve as the official witness at her wedding. yet another priest will bring the
sacraments to her children, hear her confessions and share in her highs and lows of life,
as she raises her family. eventually, many years later, perhaps another priest will anoint
her head with oil during the final days of a terminal illness, and yet another priest may
preside at the mass before her christian burial. later that same day, the same priest who
saw this daughter of the church pass into the loving hands of the father may get a phone
call from a young married couple asking if he would baptize their baby boy – and the
beautiful cycle continues.
throughout our lives, our priests create a bridge between us, our families and god himself. this is particularly visible in their sacramental work, but in all of their actions, our
priests are the hands and feet of christ, offering his love, his forgiveness and his presence to our families. let us never take for granted the special role god has for our priests
in laying down their lives as bridges between the lord and our families.
Building this bridge between god and our families on behalf of christ is an awesome
responsibility and one that no priest takes lightly. Indeed, the cycle of family life that the
priest participates in — from cradle to grave — is extraordinary in itself. yet, if we reflect
on this dynamic between our priests and our families for a moment longer, we may make
several deeper connections as well and grasp some additional ways that they serve as
bridges between god and the world.
first, our priests unite us as members of one family, and not merely as moms and dads or
as sons and daughters, but as “brothers and sisters” in his family. through our baptism,
we are united with christ7 and with all who seek him and belong to him: those whom
we know (like our own family members) as well as those whom we do not yet know but
with whom we are indeed members of one family, in the communion of saints.8 this is
especially true when we partake of the eucharist: we are “one bread, one body”9 – the
Body of christ. may we better appreciate the special instrument, our priest, among us as
we renew our family bonds in the holy eucharist.10 our priests join us together as one
body, and connected with the bishops, “share the authority by which christ builds up
and sanctifies his body.”11
Second, that young baptized girl, welcomed into the church by the priest (or deacon) is
herself an instrument of grace and a “pillar” in the bridge between god and the world.
as she grows in faith in the lord and throughout the various stages of life, she not only
is ministered to, but through her ongoing conversion, she brings the light of christ to
others: into her living room, her workplace and all of her relationships. Behind the many
bridges that she will build through her own actions, stand the many priests who have
ministered to her, strengthening her for this work.
24
SteVen c. SmIth
How Might We Better Appreciate the Human and Spiritual Connections that
Exist Between the Family and the Priest?
certainly, there are a number of possible answers. We can try to “hurry less” in and out of
mass and even make time to get to know our priests better. perhaps we can invite them
to a family gathering, or more simply, treat them to lunch and spend time in conversation with them. We can show our gratitude in many other ways: in our respect at mass,
through small acts of kindness and by remembering them frequently in our prayers.
In the remainder of this essay, one more connection is raised between our priests and
our families. at first, it may seem to some like an unlikely connection and a peculiar
suggestion. however, after careful reflection, we may come to see it as the most profound
connection between our priests and our marriages and families.
What exactly is this all-important connection? Priestly celibacy. today, priestly celibacy
often is sadly misunderstood and even scorned.12 after the abuse scandals, some critics
and angry individuals proposed that priestly celibacy be “done away with,” as if it were
some sort of abnormality or “suppression” of sexuality. We can empathize with the pain
of those who were violated and certainly understand the anger. yet priestly celibacy is not
the problem; in fact, it is part of the solution. priestly celibacy is a precious and timeless
gift to the church, a “brilliant jewel,”13 that has “retained its value undiminished even
in our time when the outlook of men and the state of the world have undergone such
profound changes.”14 our priests minister to us out of the gift of celibacy. of all of the
promises a priest makes at ordination (e.g., obedience to the bishop and the church,
simplicity of life), this is the one that most distinguishes them from the laity. But at the
same time, it is what unites us and our families with them most profoundly.
priestly celibacy is a great gift to the church! as Vatican II reminded us, “the whole
priestly mission is dedicated to the service of a new humanity which christ, the victor
over death, has aroused through his Spirit in the world and which has its origin not of
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of god.”15 priesthood is not
something “created by the church,” but it is ordained by christ himself,16 is a gift to the
church from the holy Spirit and is from the will of god himself. the gift of celibacy is
not for their sake but for the sake of the union between christ and his church.
Some specific points of connection now are offered with respect to our celibate priests
and our families. In order to deepen our understanding of this great gift and better appreciate the purpose of priestly celibacy in the life of the priest and in the life of our own
families, we turn again to Vatican II, as well as to the thoughts of John paul II.
1) Priestly Celibacy: A Great Gift of Service. first, as Vatican II taught us, celibacy allows our priests to “adhere to [god] more easily with an undivided heart.”17 all of us are
25
called to surrender our whole self to god. yet, as a pillar in the bridge between christ
and his church, this “complete surrender” of the priest to christ is designed by god to
strengthen and purify his commitment to god. this single-mindedness of our priests not
only allows them to serve god more readily but also exemplifies for us that we can go
“further up and further in” in our own relationships with god. may we thank god for the
ongoing work of surrender in the lives of celibate priests and for the immense gift to the
church: for the presence of the church across the world, but also as it plays out locally,
in our own parishes and with our families.
thus, Vatican II is reminding us that priestly celibacy allows our priests to “dedicate
themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of god and men” and to
“more expeditiously minister to his Kingdom and the work of heavenly regeneration.”18
as a professor of Sacred Scripture at mount St. mary’s Seminary, I have the privilege of
training future priests as they prepare to serve the world. I am amazed at the busy life of
a seminarian: up at dawn to pray the liturgy of the hours, then to daily mass, then off to
a battery of intense classes. there is hard work, intellectually speaking, yet there are many
other demands in the daily life of seminarians beyond that of study. Seminarians, like all
of us, are called to grow in holiness. as future priests, however, they are to hold up their
lives before god with greater accountability, seeking to grow not only in their “spiritual
lives” but as integrated human persons. this involves painstaking work, spiritual direction and ongoing interaction with a formation team. In addition to this intense pruning,
there are many hours of pastoral service and sacrifice — and all of this while they are still
seminarians. these demands upon seminarians only multiply once they are ordained
as priests and become immersed in the daily routine at their busy parishes. this gift of
celibacy allows our priests to serve the Bride they are espoused to through christ, namely
us, the members of his church.
2) Priestly Celibacy: A Sign of Life to Come. priestly celibacy offers an all-important gift
to the church and to our families: it reminds us of what we hope for as christians. as
Vatican II reminded us so eloquently, celibate priests offer us “a living sign of the world to
come, by a faith and charity already made present, in which the children of the resurrection neither marry nor take wives.”19 how is this so? Simply put, celibacy is not a “suppression of sexuality”; rather, it is a total gift of the whole person — heart, soul, mind and yes,
sexuality, over to God. In the promise of celibacy, the priest professes his total surrender to
god and his will. christ is the great Bridegroom who loves his Bride, the church, and
gives his whole self up for her20 so that he might present her to himself “in splendor,
without spot or wrinkle”21 so that she is “holy and blameless.”22 Just as christ is espoused
to the Bride and gives his whole self for her, so also the priest, in his vow of celibacy, images christ as Bridegroom, surrendering his whole self for the sake of his love, the Bride.
the celibate priest does not “withhold” his sexuality; he gives it over fully to the purposes
of god — offering it in all of its goodness for an even greater goodness: that the church
26
SteVen c. SmIth
would be present before the true Bridegroom, Jesus, in all of her splendor. and how does
this Bride become this? through renunciation, conversion and seeking god. the priest
forsakes physical marriage – which is good and marvelous in its own right – for this
greater good, namely, the spiritual marriage of the Bride and the Bridegroom. the path
to “splendor” is hard and requires constant effort, trust and cooperation with the holy
Spirit. It is a daily struggle in which all of us are engaged. the priest surrenders himself
fully to god, so that through the priest, the true Bridegroom lovingly guides his Bride
closer and closer to him. this is the mystery of celibacy: as the priest opens himself up
fully to the love of god, the Bride whom he serves with loving devotion is able to open
herself more fully to the love of god, to come closer and closer to the promise he has
given us: to be made present before the lord, holy and blameless.
to be sure, our vocation as married persons is also a sign that points to heaven. god the
father loves the Son and gives his whole self to him; the Son returns that love completely
to the father, and the fruit of that union is the gift of the holy Spirit to the church. as husbands and wives, we are called to “love as god loves,”23 – freely, fully and unconditionally
– giving our whole self to the other. this “gift of self to the other” is the sign of god’s own
self-giving love in the life of the trinity. as John paul II wrote, this “freedom of the gift” of
ourselves to each other in marriage is what reveals our true meaning, our true dignity.24
yet the celibate priest is a special kind of living sign to all of us. our priests make present
the life of the resurrection through their celibate bond with the church. they remind us
that marriage, as beautiful and holy as it is, is not itself the end. In their spousal union
to the church, they are an imminent sign of god’s presence as we await the true Bridegroom. marriage, though it is a great gift from god – and is itself a powerful sign of the
love of god in this world – is not the end. as the apostle paul wrote, the goal of life is
truly that “God may be all in all” (1 cor. 15:28 naB). this is an experience and a hope
beyond any words. and our celibate priests in the here and now are the living signs of what
we hope for and anticipate: life with god. their celibacy meets us, even confronts us, in
the distractions and busyness of everyday life and shouts out joyfully to us, “there is more
to this life… there is heaven!”
our priests are “father” but not only so; they are also “Spouse” – wedded to christ’s
church, for his glory. as such, our priests are witnesses to our families of this blessed
hope – of the reunion of the Bride and the Bridegroom through the redemption won
for us by christ on the cross. this reality points us and our families towards heavenly
hope that awaits us. and precisely because of this, as St. cyprian wrote, our priests are a
“subject of joy” in the here and now.
thus far, we have reflected on two important truths given to us by Vatican II: specifically,
that priestly celibacy is a great gift of service to the church and that it is a powerful sign
27
of our christian hope. now we turn to one final point of connection between the celibate
priest and our families.
3) Priestly Celibacy: A Tremendous Example. as we have just seen, the priest reflects the
love of christ for his Bride. In essence, he becomes the bridegroom for the sake of the Bride;
the priest is wedded to the church. this action on the part of the priest, of giving over his
whole self for the church, is not only a “future hope,” it simultaneously represents a powerful example for families in general and, more particularly, married couples. marriage
requires a total gift of self to the other: love is not offered “until further notice.”25 as the
catechism states, married love is to be characterized by a total self-giving of the husband
to the wife and the wife to the husband:
conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter —
appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the
spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union
in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and
faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility. In a word it is a
question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new
significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the
extent of making them the expression of specifically christian values.26
this “deep personal unity” of married couples that the catechism speaks of is dependent
upon three essential qualities: indissolubility, faithfulness and openness to fertility (and
marital chastity). let us reflect on this passage from the catechism and on how the priest
is an example in the love between a man and a woman in marriage, particularly in regard
to marital chastity.
Since the man and the woman have become “one flesh”27 in their conjugal union, they
are to make themselves as gifts to the other in total fidelity: “the intimate union of marriage, as a mutual giving of two persons, and the good of the children, demand total fidelity from the spouses and require an unbreakable union between them.”28
clearly, one of the hardest dimensions of the catholic wedding ceremony for many couples today is seen in the question, “Will you accept children lovingly from God, and bring
them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?” yet, as a recent statement by the
uSccB well summarizes, any act of contraception harms the unity of the two persons:
When married couples deliberately act to suppress fertility, however, sexual intercourse is no longer fully marital intercourse. It is something less powerful and
intimate, something more ‘casual.’ Suppressing fertility by using contraception
denies part of the inherent meaning of married sexuality and does harm to the
28
SteVen c. SmIth
couple’s unity. the total giving of oneself, body and soul, to one’s beloved is no
time to say: ‘I give you everything I am — except….’ the church’s teaching is not
only about observing a rule but about preserving that total, mutual gift of two
persons in its integrity.”29
We are called in our marriage vows to be open to life and open to the gift of children in
every act of sexuality.30 marriage is by its very definition ordered to the procreation and
education of children31 since the “procreative” element (i.e., children) and the “unitive” element (i.e., the mutual bonding of the spouses) of the marriage act cannot be broken.32
Since marriage involves this giving over of the whole self to the other, we are called not
simply to observe a rule but to preserve this “great mystery:”33 that marriage is a “total,
mutual gift of two persons.”34 this means that as couples, we must integrate the two
through the practice of marital chastity. We must reflect on the meaning of sexuality in
order to fully appreciate who we are to each other in marriage. In our conjugal unions,
we “speak” with our bodies, saying to one another, “I love you freely and totally and give
myself to you without reservation and without barriers.” as the bishops’ statement rightly
puts it, to hold back any part of ourselves in an act of contraception is to say to the other,
“I give you everything I am — except.…”35
here, we can begin to see the connection and the example of the celibate priest to our
marriages: the celibate priest surrenders himself for the good of the Spouse, offering up his
whole self, including his body, for the good of the other. Similarly, as husbands and wives,
we are called to surrender all of ourselves to each other, for the good of our spouse.
It is true that as priests and married persons, we have distinct vocations. yet we are both
called to sanctify our bodies for the sake of the other: for the church, for our spouse. We
are both called to make sacrifices and to see the virtue of marital chastity.36 the priest is
called to a life of continence and purification in keeping with his vow of celibacy. In so
doing, he unites his desires with those of christ, giving them over in an act of sacrificial
love for the Bride. Similarly, married couples are called to a life of sacrificial love and yes,
to periodic abstinence. In the process, married couples are faced with a question: “Will
we love and respect each other enough that we will abstain from intercourse if in this
season god is not calling us to have more children?”
In this way, holy priests exemplify in their vow of celibacy an even greater resolve and selfsurrender to god. think about it: while we are called to respect each other as husbands and
wives in observing times of abstinence, the priest’s call is one that is perpetual and continual. he understands that this sincere and intense gift is for the good of the Bride, that she
continues to grow in holiness. our priests exemplify in their vocation what we are likewise
called to in marriage: self-donation for the good of our spouse and the glory of god.
29
Conclusion
may we never take our priests for granted as they minister to our families and see their
celibacy as a great gift of service to the church and our families, as a powerful sign of our
christian hope in the world to come and lastly, as a beautiful example of self-gift for our
marriages and families. as our priests live out their ministries to our families, may we
always remember that their celibacy is not a “utilitarian” function but a divine gift and
living witness of our hope in christ. as St. cyprian said:
[priests] are the flower of the church, the beauty and ornament of spiritual
grace, a subject of joy, a perfect and unsullied homage of praise and honor,
the image of god corresponding to the sanctity of the lord, the most illustrious portion of christ’s flock. In them the glorious fecundity of our mother, the
church, finds expression and she rejoices; the more the number of [priests]
increases, the greater is this mother’s joy.37
Do we think of the role of our priests in our lives with such wonder? With joy and gladness? Do we
remember them and pray for them? our own priests – each with his own gifts, each with his
personal strengths and limitations – ought to be for us a cause of great joy and celebration:
their work is a great service on our behalf; they are living signs of god’s eternal promises to
us; and they are examples of holiness and joy for all marriages and families today.
reflecting on these connections between our priests and our families ought to strengthen
our resolve to live out our mission as a family and to build the “civilization of love.”38 as
John paul II wrote:
the family finds in the plan of god the creator and redeemer not only its identity, what it is, but also its mission, what it can and should do. the role that god
calls the family to perform in history derives from what the family is; its role
represents the dynamic and existential development of what it is. each family
finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored, and that specifies both its
dignity and its responsibility: family, become what you are.39
In the end, all of this will increase our prayers for priestly vocations. as St. cyprian wrote,
as the number of priests increases, the church’s joy ought to multiply! this is why Vatican
II calls all of us to be united with our priests, and in a sense, to receive their special calling, if only in our hearts: “this holy synod asks not only priests but all the faithful that
they might receive this precious gift of priestly celibacy in their hearts and ask of god that he
will always bestow this gift upon his church.”40 What a statement and a challenge! We
are to be so united with the mission of our priests that we ourselves as catholic families
ought to pray to receive their gift of celibacy into our own hearts, to embrace it as if it
were our own! moreover, the challenge for us is this: that as Vatican II taught us, we
30
SteVen c. SmIth
would continually pray for god to pour out this great gift upon our church. It may be
true that for some of us there is something of a disconnect between the life of the priest
and our own families. But what would it look like if catholic families across our land
thought of and interacted with our priests as Vatican II taught us to? What would it look like
if catholic families across our land prayed for our priests – and for future vocations? and
what impact might all of this have not only on our church, but on the watching world?
let us seek not only to “understand” all of these things in a deeper and more profound
way but to have them change us and our families, for the glory of god.
A Prayer for Priests by St. thérèse of lisieux:
O Jesus, eternal Priest, keep your priests within the shelter of Your Sacred Heart, where none
may touch them.
Keep unstained their anointed hands, which daily touch Your Sacred Body.
Keep unsullied their lips, daily purpled with your Precious Blood.
Keep pure and unearthly their hearts, sealed with the sublime mark of the priesthood.
Let Your holy love surround them and shield them from the world’s contagion.
Bless their labors with abundant fruit and may the souls to whom they minister be their joy and
consolation here and in heaven their beautiful and everlasting crown. Amen.41
Dr. Steven C. Smith is Assistant Professor of Sacred Scripture at Mount St.
Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland and Adjunct Professor at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology. Dr. Smith completed his Ph.D.
in New Testament and Early Christianity at Loyola University of Chicago.
Prior to his work at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, he served in the Family Life
/ Respect Life Office of the Archdiocese of New York, where he led Marriage
Preparation classes for thousands of engaged couples. Dr. Smith and his wife,
Elizabeth, live in rural Maryland, along with their two children.
noteS
1. Second Vatican council, Dogmatic constitution on the church, Lumen Gentium, 1.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. 1 cor. 12:13; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1268 – 9.
5. Second Vatican council, Decree on the ministry and life of priests, Presbyterorum
Ordinis, 2.
6. Ibid. cf. matt. 3:16; lk. 4:18; acts 4:27, 10:38.
7. cf. rom. 3:3-8.
31
8. cf. CCC, 954-57.
9. 1 cor. 10:17.
10. CCC, 1369 – 72.
11. Ibid.
12. cf. paul VI, encyclical, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, 3 – 5.
13. Ibid, 1.
14. Ibid.
15. Presbyterorum Ordinis, 16; cf. John 1:13.
16. pius XII, encyclical, Mediator Dei, 39.; cf. heb. 10:14; rev. 1:6; 1 pet. 2:5, 9.
17. Presbyterorum Ordinis, 16.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. eph. 5:25; cf. John 15:13.
21. eph. 5:27.
22. Ibid.
23. John 13:34.
24. “pope John paul II’s theology of the Body,” http://www.jp2.info/Theology_of_the_
Body.pdf (accessed october 20, 2009).
25. CCC, 1643.
26. Ibid.
27. gen. 2:24.
28. CCC, 1646.
29. Married Love and the Gift of Life (Washington, D.c.: uSccB publishing, 2006), 3.
30. paul VI, encyclical, Humane Vitae, 12. “the church, nevertheless, in urging men
to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant
doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.”
31. CCC, 1652.
32. Humane Vitae, 11.
33. cf. eph. 5:32.
34. Ibid.
35. Married Love and the Gift of Life, 3.
36. CCC, 1832.
37. “Sacra Virginitas,” http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_pi12sv.htm (accessed
august 22, 2009).
38. John paul II, Letter to Families, 13.
39. John paul II, apostolic exhortation, Familaris Consortio, 17.
40. Presbyterorum Ordinis, 16.
41. archdiocese of new york, “prayer for priests,” http://www.archny.org/pastoral/
year-for-priests/prayers (accessed august 22, 2009).
32
“Fireside Chat”
by Katie Andreski
St. John the Baptist de La Salle, North Wilkesboro, NC
Seton Hall University
my family is a close-knit bunch—with 11 of us living in the same house it’s hard not to be. there
are no other words to describe my parents than living saints...we put them through so much! face
it, with nine youngsters running around somebody is bound to break a vase or color all over the
walls. yet, in the midst of all the noise, confusion and chaos we’re able to hold onto that thing
which connects us at the core—love. John the evangelist tells us in his letter that god is love
(1 John 4:8). often we’ll look to foreign or uncommon experiences and proclaim them as “love-filled,”
because they’re not everyday occurrences. But how often do we recognize his love in the realm
of our complacency? this comfort-zone is often the defining factor of our home lives. therefore,
I have concluded that god’s love and beauty must be present in my family with great intensity….
looking closer at this photo, I began to see that the light reflecting from virtually all angles is
visually comparable to the love god has for us as a family.
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William J. Toth:
“I Want What He Has!”
By Jennifer Burgoyne
my father lived his life in a way that defied classification. he was reverent, but certainly
not overtly pious. he loved the high church, the latin mass, the pomp and glory. and
yet he loved movies with car chases and, dare I say, inappropriate language and slapstick
comedy. he loved country music, fast food, his family, and his church. he loved his wife
more than all of that.
What he left me, his oldest daughter, was a desire to live life to its fullest: to embrace the
bad parts, to be courageous and real; to admit, in a moment of weakness, that I don’t
have all the answers. one of his favorite quotes when I was a teenager was, “Don’t take
yourself too seriously, nobody else does.”
as my husband and I embark on raising our four children, the mysteries that we reflect
on are: how much can we give them that will last? What can we do to encourage our children to love the faith, to love god and grow to be faithful catholics? of course, we take
them to mass each week. We have prepared them for the sacraments. But at some point,
they will look to their parents and decide if that’s the kind of life that they want.
my dad had the kind of life that I want. his love of god defined him. It made him who
he was. there was no formula, no magic pill that he took other than that he was faithful
— faithful to the end.
a few months before he passed away, we were sitting in the kitchen discussing a current
event of the day. We were talking about a famous person who had money, fame, a beautiful wife and family, yet succumbed to despair, drug addiction and bankruptcy. my dad
said something to me that I will never forget: “only god can bring you happiness and
contentment. all else will lead to despair. I’ve tried some of them and nothing worked
but god.”
thanks, Dad.
Jennifer Burgoyne, Dr. William Toth’s daughter, lives in Glen Rock, NJ, with her
husband, John, and their four children.
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Reflections to Accompany a
Rosary Novena for a Couple
Preparing for Marriage
By Dianne m. traflet, J.D., S.t.D.
Joyful Mysteries: 1st, 5th, and 9th Days
The Annunciation (luke 1:26-35)
Mary gives her fiat to the Angel’s invitation to be the Mother of the Son of God.
lord, may this couple give their “yes” to life, and to god’s will in all circumstances and
challenges of their daily lives. as they grow in love for one another, may they also draw
ever nearer to you and your mother.
The Visitation (luke 1:39-56)
Carrying Divine life within her, Mary visits Elizabeth, Zechariah, and their unborn child, John.
From the darkness of his mother’s womb, John recognizes the Son of God within Mary, and leaps
for joy.
lord, may this couple know the joy of parenthood. may, they, too, in their own unique
ways, carry you close to their hearts, carry your life and love, and reflect your presence
(even in darkness) to their families, friends, and all those whom they may encounter.
The Birth of Our Lord (matt. 1:18-25)
When Mary gives birth to Jesus, she and her husband, Joseph, gaze together into the face of the
Son of God.
lord, may this couple learn to gaze together on your face—praying with one another and
for one another, and learning to see the image and likeness of god in each other and in
their neighbor. may they one day experience the grace of holding a newborn in their arms
as they recognize god’s creative love in their lives.
The Presentation in the Temple (luke 2:22-40)
Mary and Joseph follow the law, and present their Son in the Temple. In witnessing Anna and SimcatholIc center for famIly SpIrItualIty
reflectIonS to accompany a roSary noVena
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eon gazing into their Son’s face, they know their Son has a mission beyond the confines of their immediate family. Simeon proclaims that Christ will be “a Light to the revelation of the Gentiles.”
lord, may this couple always know and appreciate your light and love, and may their love
radiate beyond their home, helping others to experience your salvific presence.
The Finding of Jesus in the Temple (luke 2:41-52)
After Mary and Joseph search for Jesus for three days, they find Him in the Temple, amazing the
teachers with His wisdom. Mary cries: “Your father and I have sought you with sorrow.” Jesus
responds to his parents’ concern by asking: “Did you not know that I had to be about my father’s
business?” He then returns to his parents’ home where he “grew in wisdom, in stature and in
favor with God and man.”
lord, may this couple always seek you, as they strive to deepen their relationship with
you, your father and the holy Spirit. may, they, too, learn to be “about their father’s
business.” may their relationship with you help their children someday, and all those
entrusted to their care, to grow “in wisdom, in stature and in favor with god and man.”
Sorrowful Mysteries: 2nd and 6th Days
The Agony in the Garden (luke 22-39-46)
Jesus weeps in the Garden, as he cries out, “Lord, if it is your will, let this cup pass me by, but not
my will but your will be done.” During Jesus’ agony, He is comforted by an angel.
lord, in the trials and challenges that this couple may face in their long years together,
may they follow your example and ask the father if he would take away their sorrow, but
only if it be his will. In seeking to fulfill god’s will, may they know the comfort of his
ministering angels.
The Scourging at the Pillar (matt. 27:15-26)
Jesus is brutally scourged by the soldiers who do not recognize that they are torturing the Son of
God, the Prince of Peace. Jesus’ precious body is ripped apart, and his blood falls to the ground
as He endures each blow.
lord, may this couple know the great sacrificial love that you have for them, for their
families, and for us all. may this realization help them to draw closer to your heart, and
to sacrifice generously and lovingly for each other and for others.
The Crowning with Thorns (matt. 27:31)
Jesus is stripped of his garments, and clothed with a scarlet robe. He is spat upon, and crowned
with thorns, as the soldiers mock: “Hail, King of the Jews.”
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DIanne m. traflet
lord, may this couple’s lives be clothed with respect and kindness. In recognizing you as
King, may they realize their own royal dignity and that of their neighbor; may their actions help to build your Kingdom.
The Carrying of the Cross (luke 23:26-32)
As Jesus carries His Cross, he is helped by Simon of Cyrene, a stranger forced by a soldier to share
Jesus’ burden. Jesus falls three times, and each time, He is able to stand up again, and continue
to Golgotha.
lord, may this couple see and appreciate your courage in fulfilling the father’s will. may
they know the true meaning of christian courage—that great courage that flows from the
heart and perseveres in suffering. may they lovingly help each other to carry the various
crosses of daily life, and may they accept help from friends and strangers alike, recognizing in their kindness your loving hand.
The Crucifixion (lk. 23:33-43; Jn. 19:25-27; mk. 15:33-39)
From the Cross, Jesus forgives his persecutors, assures a repentant criminal of his place in heaven,
and gives us His mother. After suffering unquenchable thirst, and the darkness of desolation, He
abandons Himself to His Father, and breathes His last.
lord, may this couple gaze upon your wounds, and ponder your words from the cross,
realizing the vast ocean of your mercy. close to your merciful heart, may they love with
your love and forgive with your forgiveness. may they come to rely on your mother as
their mother, seeking her intercession, relying on her help, and imitating her virtues.
Glorious Mysteries: 3rd and 7th Days
The Resurrection (matt. 28:1-10)
Three days after the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary visit the tomb of Jesus.
There, they see an angel who declares that Jesus has risen from the dead. The angel commissions
them to share the news with the disciples.
lord, may this couple live with great joy and enthusiasm, spreading the good news in
word and example: you are alive!
The Ascension (matt. 28:16-20)
At the Mount of Olives, the disciples are assured by Jesus: “…and lo, I am with you always, to the
close of the age.” Jesus then is lifted up in a cloud until the disciples no longer could see him.
lord, may this couple recognize your abiding presence in their marriage, in their family
life, and in the joys and sorrows of everyday life. When they have a difficult time knowcatholIc center for famIly SpIrItualIty
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ing your presence, may they, like the disciples, pray together seeking you in hope and
perseverance.
The Descent of the Holy Spirit (acts 2:1-17)
In the form of fiery tongues, the Holy Spirit descends upon Christ’s followers gathered in the
Cenacle. The disciples then are able to speak and to hear in languages they had not known, prophesying to those assembled outside the house from various countries. Thousands of people hear the
disciples’ words, believe, and are baptized.
lord, may this couple grow closer to the holy Spirit, be animated by the Spirit’s gifts,
and guided by the truth. may their lives of faith, their witness of love and their words of
truth bring people the good news in such a way as to move their hearts to draw closer
to your heart.
Assumption of Mary
Mary is taken up to heaven, her body incorrupt. In heaven, she intercedes for us, as she interceded
for the bride and groom at Cana.
lord, may this couple realize that just as mary interceded for the couple at cana, so, too,
does she wish to intercede for them. She desires their happiness and wishes to deepen
their relationship with you, where they may experience your immeasurable and unconditional love.
The Coronation of Mary
God the Father crowns Mary, honoring her as Queen of Heaven.
lord, may this couple come to know mary as Queen mother who exercises her royalty in
a maternal way, gently encouraging them to draw closer to you. may their faith, like the
disciples, grow deeper because of her maternal presence as they take her words at cana to
heart: “Do whatever he tells you.”
Mysteries of Light: 4th and 8th Days
The Baptism of Jesus (matt. 3:17)
When Jesus is baptized by John in the Jordan, a voice from heaven declares: “This is my Son,
whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
lord, may this couple realize their baptismal identity and vocation as children of god.
In knowing that they are part of god’s family, may they strive to please the father in all
their responsibilities, in home and in the world. may they draw close to their neighbors,
recognizing in them their spiritual brothers and sisters.
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DIanne m. traflet
The Wedding of Cana (John 2:1-12)
Mary, Jesus and His disciples are invited to a wedding at Cana in Galilee. During the celebration,
Mary advises her Son that all the wine has been consumed. Jesus replies, “Woman, what does this
have to do with you and me? My hour has not yet come.” Mary turns to the servants and instructs,
“Do whatever he tells you.” Jesus tells the servants to fill six jars with water. After they do, Jesus
directs them to draw some out, and bring it to the master of the banquet. The master tastes the
water that had turned to wine, and realizes that the best has been saved until last. Jesus performs
this first miracle, and the disciples grow in their faith.
lord, may this couple celebrate their love as a gift from you. may they invite you to their
wedding, to their married lives, to their families, and to all their celebrations, recognizing
that you rejoice at their love. as they witness to your miraculous work in their lives, may
they together grow in their faith, embarking on a spiritual adventure of faith and love.
The Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (mk. 1:15; mk. 2:3-13; lk. 7:47-48; Jn. 20:22-23)
In proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom, Jesus calls for conversion, repentance, and belief in
the good news.
lord, may this couple’s journey of love be a spiritual journey towards you, one that inspires them to delve deeply into the mystery of your merciful love. may their experience of
your mercy help them to forgive each other, and to have recourse to the Sacrament of reconciliation. may each step of their journey bring them ever closer to your Sacred heart.
The Transfiguration (luke 9:28-35)
On a mountain top, Jesus begins to pray in the presence of three of his disciples. Suddenly, his
face changes, and his clothes are illuminated. Moses and EIijah appear and speak to Jesus. Peter,
awakening from sleep, sees Jesus and two men, and declares: “Lord, it is good for us to be here. Let
us build three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Then, a cloud descends
upon all of them, and a voice from the cloud, instructs: “This is my Son, whom I have chosen;
listen to Him.”
lord, may this couple discern the voice of god, reminding them to listen to you. as they
do so, may they realize the beautiful divine calling of their marital love. In their lives
together and in their homes, may they lead lives that echo peter’s words: “lord, it is good
for us to be here.”
The Institution of the Eucharist (mk. 14:22-25; Jn. 13:1)
“While they were eating, Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and offered it
to them, and they all drank from it. ‘This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for
many,’ he said to them.”
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lord, may this couple lead eucharistic lives, appreciating and relying on the Sacrament of
love as they seek to live and embrace your great love for them. may the eucharist nourish
them with your life, and ignite a flame of pure love within their hearts that inspires every
day of their married lives.
A similar novena was created, and prayed, by the author
for Catherine Phelan and Edward Cunning
as they prepared for their wedding day, November 1, 2008.
This is now dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Cunning,
as they celebrate their first anniversary.
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The “Yes” Man
By michele carr
It’s no coincidence that I was inspired to write this reflection on the day of the big yeS,
the divine handshake, the holy family Kick-off, none other than the feast of the annunciation. on that day, an otherwise ordinary woman on an otherwise ordinary day said
“yes.” yes to the mystery, yes to the father, yes to the lord Jesus christ.
my father, William toth, was a person of infinite “yes-es.” even the slightest possibility of
a divine collaboration, big or small, wetted his appetite like a juicy t-bone steak hot off the
grill. While some may limit the realm of divine collaboration to church matters or theological pursuits, my father’s imagination had no such boundaries. every moment held his beckoning to say “yes.” yes to the good; yes to connect people; yes to bring peace; yes to serve. his
declarations were followed by action and results. grace seemed to come easily to my father.
In his book, Outliers, malcolm gladwell explains that to become a master of anything,
practitioners must put in at least 10,000 hours of practice. hours of lessons, application,
refinements, tweaking, the same shot, over and over again. then, one day, just seconds
before the buzzer, that same shot, for the thousandth time -- SWooSh! all net! Victory!
the crowd goes wild. “he’s a natural, a prodigy,” they say, shaking their heads in disbelief. What the crowd never sees are the hours of tedious and solitary practice that their
hero endured to “receive” such a prodigious reward, with such grace.
my father was a high performer. he always delivered. he’d show up, calm and cool in
his Brooks Brothers’ sweater and khaki dress pants, and he casually would knock out the
audience with his homily, lesson plan or lecture. he made it seem so easy. Back at home,
we knew the real reason why my father was blessed with such grace. he worked hard at it!
he put in his 10,000 hours. his entire life seemed a quiet but determined practice to live
his commandments. he said “yes” so that he could experience this invisible god and
discover and master the service for which he was created. only god knew that service.
now in heaven, my father knows, too. If I had to guess, I’d say that my father’s willingness
to say “yes,” followed by his 10,000 hours of practice, brought the mystery of the trinity
to life in him, in our family and in all the lives he touched.
the “yeS” man
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on the night my father died, I took a walk down my block in hoboken to try to grasp the
magnitude of the news. I looked up at the clear dark sky and I thought to myself, “Wow,
he finally did it.” he worked his whole life to be prepared for this moment. he took that
final shot and SWooSh, all net! I could practically hear the celestial crowd going wild,
“yeS, he did it! What a life!”
he was blessed, so we are blessed. thanks, Dad, for saying “yes” to us and for all your
hard work. you mastered your craft. now you finally can get some rest!
Michele Carr, Dr. William Toth’s daughter, lives in New York City with her husband, John. They are expecting their first child in November 2009.
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The Gift of Self Through
Marriage
By lesa rossmann, m.a.t.
The Church sees in Mary the highest expression of the “feminine genius” and she finds
in her a source of constant inspiration. mary called herself the “handmaid of
the lord” (lk 1:38). through obedience to the Word of god she accepted her
lofty yet not easy vocation as wife and mother in the family of nazareth. putting
herself at god’s service, she also put herself at the service of others: a service of
love. precisely through this service mary was able to experience in her life a mysterious, but authentic “reign.” It is not by chance that she is invoked as “Queen
of heaven and earth.” the entire community of believers thus invokes her; many
nations and peoples call upon her as their “Queen.” For her, “to reign” is to serve!
Her service is “to reign”!1
the most important aspect of pope John paul II’s Theology of the Body that I have been
able to put into practical use in mothering four young children is the gift I have made
of myself to my husband and my children. It is in mary’s gift of herself to god by saying
“yes” that she was able to embrace more fully the transcendent bond that she had with
her Son, our Savior, Jesus christ. there is such an incredible paradox that presents itself
in the reciprocity of self-possession and self-donation. mary, in her innocence, possessed
a splendor that is known only to those with an understanding of what true holiness
means. In marriage, the knowledge of self and the giving of self from one to the other is
an example of communion as was first understood from the beginning of time. In the
conception, birth and rearing of children, we come to understand, in a profound way,
what it means to die to self in order to give life to another. for me, I began to understand
what it meant to offer myself as gift to another within the context of marriage. It also is
through marriage that I have been able to make a gift of myself to my children. finally,
the message of the ultimate trinitarian love and the love expressed within the holy family has taught me how my own family can share in the gifts we have to give to one another
in order to help us grow in our faith and love of god.
a few days before my wedding, I presented my husband with a poem I had written to
him, called “god’s Words:”
the gIft of Self through marrIage
43
As a little girl I knelt before You, Lord, my hands folded in prayer.
You told me You would always love me.
You told me You would never leave me.
You told me faith would show me the way.
Was it Your words, God, that inspired me to find
the one who would love me for all of my life?
Was it Your words, God, that roused me to believe
That I could give myself to another and love in return?
Today, I have discovered these are his words, God.
His words when he reads the gospel with those all-knowing nuances
that make him so ethereal to me.
Today, I have discovered these are his words, God.
His words that make me feel so special,
that I am like no other in this world to him.
These are his words when he speaks of my lips
as if they were made out of rose petals, “so delicate, so sweet.”
These are his words when he speaks of my face
as if it were etched with Michelangelo’s paint, “so exquisite, so unique.”
Oh God, if only I could express my love for him at every moment,
the way You have always expressed Your love for me.
Oh God, if only we could live each day as if it were the first
in the eyes of this holy union.
Today, I kneel before You, Lord, my hands folded in prayer.
Yes, You have loved me,
And through You, I have learned to love another.
my first understanding of offering myself to another, as a gift, came through marriage.
the question “can you see christ in that person?” needs to be asked at every moment
in marriage. “can I see christ in my spouse?” after all, that was god’s original intention. “god created man in his own image, in the image of god he created him; male
and female he created them” (gen. 1:27 naSB). as we were all made in his image and
likeness, god has willed for us the same kind of dignity that was meant for all humankind. therefore, nothing outside of true married conjugal love between husband and
wife could be considered dignified by god. god has implanted the highest sacredness in
human sexuality and it is with great responsibility that we are all called to carry out the
will of god. pope paul VI speaks of heroic virtue in his encyclical Humanae Vitae and puts
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the moral challenge of marital chastity in the context of “endurance.” pope John paul II’s
The Theology of the Body repositions heroic virtue as a way of living a life of sexual love
that can fit into the iconography of marriage. the challenge is to live out our embodiment as male and female — to live sexual love — so that sexual love in marriage becomes
the most illuminating possible icon of self-giving. pope John paul II makes it clear that
self-donation is the only way to true fulfillment and happiness in marriage, and this has
become the standard by which I try to live my life.
It was nearly 10 years ago that my husband, charlie, and I were married before the “eyes”
of god and all present whom we loved and admired. never in my life, until now, would
I have thought that scripture taken from the Song of Songs could rouse the passions of
my lover and spouse. “you have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my
heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. how delightful is
your love, my sister, my bride! how much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the
fragrance of your perfume than any spice! your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb,
my bride; milk and honey are under your tongue. the fragrance of your garments is like
that of lebanon” (Song of Sol. 4:9-11 naSB). In the Song of Songs, the lover’s reference
to his beloved is “sister.” In The Theology of the Body, pope John paul II states that the
lover uses the word “sister” because he wants to validate her personhood. In other words,
he recognizes her common humanity and wants to uphold her human dignity. as pope
John paul II explains, “the fact that in this approach that female ‘I’ is revealed for her
groom as ‘sister’--and that precisely as both sister and bride — has a special eloquence.”2
In his book Theology of the Body Explained, christopher West writes, “It reveals that he sees
her not as a thing to be appropriated, but as a person to be loved.”3 this is what John paul
II characterizes as the “fraternal” theme of “mutual entrustment.”4
In christopher West’s Naked Without Shame commentary, he states that lovers need to
recognize each other as brother and sister, before they are able to properly love one another as husband and wife.5 It is precisely this idea of sister and brother that has allowed
charlie and me to know what it means to be truly loving. through the grace of god, we
have discovered what it means to respect each other and love not just as lovers but as
friends. In a class I took with Dr. toth, he explained that the word “intimacy” is derived
from the latin word intima, meaning “sacred ground.” When I heard this, I realized and
appreciated how the gift of marriage is truly a transcendental experience. In other words,
intimacy is not just an experience of one-fleshedness but also an experience of transcendence. charlie and I have been able to share in an experience of god not only with our
bodies but with our minds, hearts and souls. for us, a one-flesh union has become an
act of sacred prayer, which is not only a gift to each other but has become an act of selfgiving to god.
In the Song of Songs, the lover recognizes that his beloved is created “for her own sake.”
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here, the lover has respect for his bride because he knows that he cannot grasp or possess
her. he must trust in the freedom of her self-gift to him.6 In The Theology of the Body, the
metaphors “garden enclosed” and “fountain sealed” reflect the authenticity of the gift of
bride to bridegroom and bridegroom to bride as reflected in the genesis union. today,
through the gift of marriage, I have found myself valuable not only to my spouse but also
to god, for through his mercy I have learned forgiveness.
It is through respect of self that I have learned more deeply how to respect others — most
importantly, my husband. as pope John paul II writes,
this is the first step on the road to chastity: continence subordinated to the
process of objectivization…is necessary if in the midst of the values which appeal to the senses, the value of the person, for which the reason can speak,
is to enter consciousness. thereafter, the value of the person must “take command,” so to speak, of all that happens in a man. When it does continence
is no longer “blind.” It goes beyond mere self-restraint and interdiction and
permits the mind and the will to “open up” to a value which is both genuine
and superior.7
charlie and I have come to know that our true love is directed toward the true goods and
that when we allow ourselves to give in to “mutual surrender,” our love becomes a giving
away of ourselves to each other. In other words, we learn to treat each other as we treat
ourselves.
In his letter to the ephesians, St. paul speaks of this same mutual respect for each other
even to the point of husbands laying down their lives for their wives just as christ did
for his church:
husbands, love your wives, just as christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through
the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or
wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. he who loves his wife loves
himself. after all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it,
just as christ does the church - for we are members of his body. “for this reason
a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two
will become one flesh.” this is a profound mystery - but I am talking about
christ and the church. (eph. 5:25-32 naSB)
In The Theology of the Body, the “language of the body” between husband and wife is both
mystical and liturgical. In pope John paul II’s analysis, the conjugal union had become a
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sign of the great mystery and sacramentally expressed in the language of the liturgy. an
interesting reference to this is found in christopher West’s Naked Without Shame, when he
speaks of the “marital bed” as an “altar” and a place where spouses can offer their “bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to god — this is your spiritual act of worship”
(rom. 12:1 naSB). In this way, the conjugal union becomes a spiritual act of worship.
charlie and I keep a crucifix above our bed and this has become a constant reminder
of the responsibility we have to each other to live out our vocation as a married couple
within the context of authentic love. from Dr. toth, I learned that true authentic love is
faithful, permanent, exclusive and fruitful. therefore, our marital bed had to become a
place of worship — a place where all that transpired would be holy and acceptable to
god — a place where something of heaven would be tasted.
there is an inseparability of man and woman that has existed from the beginning. In the
second creation story, after god created eve, adam said, “this is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man” (gen.
2:23 naSB). In Humanae Vitae, pope paul VI wrote about the inseparability of unity and
procreation and stated that there is an “… inseparable connection, established by god,
which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the
procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.”8 Similarly, pope
John paul II wrote, “Such a violation of the interior order of conjugal union which is
rooted in the very order of the person, constitutes the essential evil of the contraceptive
act.”9 therefore, the very meaning of the word contraception being “against life” becomes
the bodily lie. contraception makes an act predisposed to good an intrinsic evil. according to christopher West, contraception is a “counter-sign of the ‘great mystery’ of creation
and redemption.”10
Since charlie and I both came from divorced parents, we were looking for an “insurance policy” on our marriage from the onset — something that would ensure that our
marriage would last forever. When we heard about natural family planning (nfp) at
engaged encounter, the couples running the retreat said that although most couples had
a divorce rate of more than 50 percent, those who practiced nfp had a divorce rate of
less than two percent. We didn’t know that nfp was about female fertility awareness. We
didn’t know that nfp utilized three signs to determine when I was ovulating. We didn’t
even know that nfp meant that couples shared a greater degree of intimacy because
abstaining meant that a couple would have to find more extraordinary ways to show affection for each other. charlie and I only knew that nfp was for us because it meant the
word “divorce” never would exist in our vocabulary. It is quite possible that to this day
nfp has saved our marriage and has made it grow stronger and richer than we otherwise
might have known.
according to both paul VI and John paul II, parenthood is responsible when it corcatholIc center for famIly SpIrItualIty
47
responds to the personal dignity of the spouses and to the truth of the conjugal act.
responsible parenthood comes from faith in god and recognition of the many great
spiritual blessings of family life. responsible parenthood also comes from self-mastery,
continence and chastity. Self-mastery, continence and chastity involve seeing the good
and directing the passions and emotions toward the good. christopher West states that
the truly free man is one who is under no compulsion to act in one way or another. he
is able to see the good, direct his passions and emotions toward the good, and choose it
freely. this freedom is one of the distinguishing factors that makes a man a person. Without self-mastery, love is impossible.11 pope John paul II states that continence through
abstinence leads to self-mastery and chastity through the capacity to resist, which leads
to an enrichment of the “marital dialogue of the couple, purifying it, deepening it, and at
the same time, simplifying it.”12 In St. paul’s second letter to the corinthians, he wrote,
“Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that
contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for god” (2 cor. 7:1
naSB). With four young children running around our home, it seems almost impossible
that charlie and I ever would have a moment for passion. however, when the need to
remind ourselves of the importance of purity and chastity arises, we need only look at the
purity and innocence of our four wonderful children.
one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible for marriage and family is found in the
first letter to the corinthians, “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not
boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps
no record of wrongs. love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always
protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (1 cor. 13:4-7 naSB). the power
to love has been poured into our hearts by the holy Spirit. according to the church, this
“power,” because it is of god and not of man, makes it possible to meet the demands of
love. love is a power given to us by god to help sustain the true meaning of the conjugal
act so that there is no separation between the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning. It is this regard for the truth that bolsters deep respect for each other in the married
relationship. In Theology of the Body, pope John paul II wrote,
love itself makes possible and brings about conjugal dialogue according to the
full truth of the life of the spouses. at the same time love is a power or a capacity of a moral nature, actively oriented toward the fullness of good and for this
reason toward every true good. that is, it concerns protecting both the value of
the true union of the couple (that is, the personal communion) and the value
of responsible fatherhood and motherhood (in the form that is mature and
worthy of man).13
this mutual gift of the person in marriage opens itself up to the gift of a new life, and a
new human being, who also is a person in the likeness of his parents.
48
leSa roSSmann
through marriage, I also have been able to make a gift of myself to my children. Because
of nfp, charlie and I were able to conceive our first child quickly. I always was the type
of person that didn’t believe in miracles until that remarkable day nearly eight years ago
when Xavier, our first son, was born. Since then, we have been blessed with three more
children: Blaise, Jude and Seraphina.
for me, being a mother has been a series of moments of love that I try to lock into my
memory, for I know that time is fleeting, and I want to remember this special bond. In
his encyclical, Mulieris Digitatem, pope John paul II wrote,
motherhood implies from the beginning a special openness to the new person:
and this is precisely the woman’s “part”. In this openness, in conceiving and giving birth to a child, the woman “discovers herself through a sincere gift of self.”
the gift of interior readiness to accept the child and bring it into the world is
linked to the marriage union, which - as mentioned earlier - should constitute a
special moment in the mutual self-giving both by the woman and the man.14
the sum total of marriage is a gift of self between a man and woman that is so extraordinarily powerful that it produces another, in the image and likeness of the husband and
the wife.
Some of the most intimate moments that charlie and I possess are when we pray together each morning. During these moments, we can sense the movement of the holy
Spirit who is active in our lives and in our marriage. marital spirituality is based on the
gifts of love that are given through the Spirit. this is expressed by pope John paul II, “the
fundamental element of the spirituality of married life is the love poured out into the
hearts of the couple as a gift of the holy Spirit…chastity lies at the center of the spirituality of marriage, not only as a moral virtue (formed by love), but likewise as a virtue
connected with the gifts of the holy Spirit — above all, the gift of respect for what comes
from god.”15 John paul II said that mary, in being a “gift” to her Son, was a gift to the
entire human race. our redemption is based on the relationship that mary had as mother
to Jesus and as wife to Joseph, on the love of persons in marriage, the begetting of a child,
the intentionality of marriage in its original state and the Word made flesh.
this leads to my final point of utilizing the love shared by the holy family as a model
for my own family, as we share our gifts with one another and to help each other to grow
in our own journey of faith and love of god. I often contemplate what the dynamics
must have been like within the holy family. What an authentic love and friendship that
Joseph and mary must have shared! It is nearly impossible to fully comprehend their
personal and intimate experience of the trinity and their total gift of self to one another
for the sake of the Son of god, himself! no matter how difficult it might be to ponder
49
this great icon of marriage, there still remains what god had intended in the union of a
man and a woman: children and family. one might consider how a husband, wife and
child might mirror the holy trinity. like the persons of the trinity, there is an inner relational dynamism that exists in the life of the family as well as in the life of the church.
In Mulieris Dignitatem, pope John paul II wrote, “according to the Bible, the conception
and birth of a new human being are accompanied by the following words of the woman:
‘I have brought a man into being with the help of the Lord’ (gen. 4:1).. the eternal mystery
of generation, which is in god himself, the one and triune god (cf. eph. 3:14-15), is
reflected in the woman’s motherhood and in the man’s fatherhood. human parenthood
is something shared by both the man and the woman. even if the woman, out of love for
her husband, says: ‘I have given you a child’, her words also mean: ‘this is our child.’”16
over the last 10 years, my husband, charlie, and I have been blessed beyond measure
with our four beautiful children. pope John paul II summed up the importance of a man
and a woman joined in marriage and the centrality of the family in our culture,
mankind’s future rests in, and depends upon, the family, more than any other
society, institution, or environment. this truth rang out in abram’s conversation with god heard moments ago in the reading of the expressive page from
genesis: “your reward shall be very great,” the lord promised to his friend.
“What will you give me, lord?” abram asked with a shade of skepticism, “for
I continue childless...”(cf. gen. 15:2). abram’s dejected prostration will be followed by his joy when, “at the time of which god had spoken to him” (gen.
21:2) Sarah will give him a son. mankind’s future is, first of all, man himself. It
is man born from man: from a father and a mother, from a man and a woman.
for this reason, mankind’s future is determined in the family.17
yes, it is true that the gift of marriage has made my life complete. It is also true that god
has blessed my marriage beyond any dream with four beautiful children. however, the
most important truth will come to pass with the hope that our faith-filled children will,
one day, share their love of god and their own gift of self with future generations.
Lesa is a 2008 graduate of Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology and was a student of Dr. Toth. She and her husband, Charlie, are youth
ministers at St. Mary’s Parish in Dumont, NJ, where she also plays organ and
piano and sings. Lesa currently is writing her first pro-life fictional mystery
novel, “The Bloodstone Legacy,” which she plans to complete in 2009. Lesa
and Charlie reside in Dumont with their four young children: Xavier, Blaise,
Jude and Seraphina.
50
leSa roSSmann
noteS
1. John paul II, Letter of Pope John Paul II to Women, 10.
2. pope John paul II, The Theology of the Body, Human Love in the Divine Plan
(Boston: pauline Books & media, 1997), 372.
3. christopher West, Theology of the Body Explained, A Commentary on John Paul II’s
“Gospel of the Body” (Boston: pauline Books & media, 2003), 402.
4. Ibid., 401.
5. christopher West, Naked without Shame, Sex and the Christian Mystery, Reflections
on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (carpentersville, Il: the gIft foundation,
2000), 60.
6. Ibid., 61.
7. Karol Wojtyla, Love & Responsibility (San francisco: Ignatius press, 1993), 198.
8. paul VI, encyclical, Humane Vitae, 12.
9. pope John paul II, The Theology of the Body, Human Love in the Divine Plan, 398.
10. christopher West, Theology of the Body Explained, 419.
11. christopher West, Naked without Shame, 67.
13. Ibid., 406.
14. John paul II, apostolic letter, Mulieris Dignitatem, 18.
16. John paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 18.
17. matthew e. Bunson, Papal Wisdom, Words of Hope and Inspiration from John Paul II
(new york: penguin group, 1995), 29.
51
“The Generational Blessing”
by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Church of Christ the King, Morristown, NJ
respect for human life—from the womb to the tomb—is a virtue that my family holds near and dear.
living this out, however, requires an understanding of the fragility of the life cycle. While I understood this to be true in reason, I did not understand it in my heart until I saw this photo developed.
this is a picture of my grandfather and my sister. What is so significant about this moment is that as
my family faced the final stages of my pop pop’s life there was an anticipated excitement of new life
looming on the horizon. What an emotional conflict to be grieving the soon to be loss of a larger
than life man while simultaneously filled with joy at the excitement of a new baby.
as the ultimate provider and protector of our large family, my grandfather, even in his final days,
understood the importance of giving the next generation his blessing. although these two great men
never met, their passing like ships in the night not only unites them to one another but provides a
comforting approach to the unknown mystery of life.
52
By Karen Boushelle
By John henry cardinal newman
little maiden, dost thou pine
for a faithful Valentine?
art thou scanning timidly
every face that meets thine eye?
art thou fancying there may be
fairer face than thou dost see?
little maiden, scholar mine,
Wouldst thou have a Valentine?
go and ask, my little child,
ask the mother undefiled:
ask, for she will draw thee near,
and will whisper in thine ear:“Valentine! the name is good;
for it comes of lineage high,
and a famous family:
and it tells of gentle blood,
noble blood, and nobler still,
for its owner freely pour’d
every drop there was to spill
In the quarrel of his lord.
Valentine! I know the name,
many martyrs bear the same;
and they stand in glittering ring
round their warrior god and King,
Who before and for them bled,
With their robes of ruby red,
and their swords of cherub flame.”
ValentIne to a lIttle gIrl
53
yes! there is a plenty there,
Knights without reproach or fear,
Such St. Denys, such St. george,
martin, maurice, theodore,
and a hundred thousand more;
guerdon gain’d and warfare o’er,
By that sea without a surge,
and beneath the eternal sky,
and the beatific Sun,
In Jerusalem above,
Valentine is every one;
choose from out that company
Whom to serve, and whom to love.
the oratory.
1850
In 1974, when I was four years old, my father was 34. he was the head of the history
Department at a diocesan school in upstate new york. although he donned turtlenecks
and a snug, large print, wooly blazer to work, I liked to think he wore those according the
haute couture of the mid-1970s, and not because he was a nerd. In reality, my father’s “nerdentials” were above reproach: gifted student, champion debater, president of his high
school student body and winner of countless scholarships. years later, he would receive
his doctoral degree in theology. my father took a back seat to no other brainiac.
there were contradictions with my father, too. In the ’70s, nerds did not root for the
oakland raiders or rock out to Johnny cash as my dad did. they most certainly did not
blast their 8-track cassettes as they cruised up the new york State thruway in moss green,
souped-up pontiac muscle cars. any way you sliced it, my father was so darn cool to this
little girl -- and despite the oakland raiders thing, he was foremost a loving father and a
gentleman. he was my first love and Valentine.
at an early age, though, I realized the pangs of anxiety which naturally accompany all
great loves: the body-seizing, “uh-oh! What-if-he-bails-on-me?” moment that has rocked
female hearts since antiquity. at four, my little heart was in his hands, and I knew it. I
started to imagine what would happen if one day my father just didn’t come home from
work (a nightmare scenario for most four-year-olds). I confided these fears to my mother,
and a few days later she read me the following letter: “Dearest Karen, So you cried when you
found out that your Daddy wasn’t home. Don’t worry, Karen: Daddy will be home because he
loves you very, very much. Daddy”
54
Karen BouShelle
my father easily could have used a number of seemingly more effective and convincing
approaches in his letter, like the breaking-the-bad-news approach: “Pumpkin, that’s what
dads do: we leave and go to work every day.” he didn’t use the quick, pay-out approach:
“Let’s go get you that big, red bicycle you want on Saturday” as restitution for the anxiety I had
endured, nor did he go for the big-daddy-self-promo approach: “Some days, nights and
weekends, I might work really late, and let’s not forget the travel, but I’m bringing home the bacon
so I can buy you….” Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have turned down a bike or debated
anything he wrote in his letter. after all, I was only four. But thankfully, my father spared
me all the gobbledy-gook and double-talk. the words “daddy will be home” were written,
as St. Vincent De paul says, “with the simplicity of a dove.” and so, there it was: I kept his
letter, and he kept his word.
cardinal newman’s poem gets it right: there aren’t many who truly are as worthy of a
little girl’s love as the martyrs and saints. But there are honorable and good men like my
father who trust in the promises Jesus has made to them and live with the intention of
keeping the promises they’ve made to god. they are our reliable superheroes, chivalrous
knights and worthy Valentines, who, as St. paul says, “fight the good fight, run the good
race and keep the faith.” our hearts are safe with them.
Karen Boushelle, Dr. William Toth’s daughter, lives in Columbus, Ohio with
her husband, Joe, and their four children.
55
“A Loving Touch”
by Devon Henderson
St. Barnabas, Bayville, NJ
Monsignor Donovan High School
I saw god in my family when I watched each and every one of them taking time out of their lives
to take care of my great grandmother who was diagnosed with alzheimer’s disease nearly 11 years
ago. alzheimer’s disease is one of the most difficult diseases to deal with. It may not affect the
body physically until the disease has truly taken over the person’s body and you literally watch
your loved one forget everything about who you are and most difficult, who they are. even with
the great difficulty this disease places on a person’s family, I never saw my family react negatively
to my great grandmother. We loved her unconditionally….
I believe I saw god in my family in those 11 years caring for her until her unfortunate passing this
past november. I believe I am still seeing my family’s unconditional love for my great grandmother
after her passing….
through my nanny, I have learned to appreciate every day as if it was my last because it is a gift
from god.
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Covenantal and Vocational
Aspects of Marriage
By Stephen B. Kass, m.S., m.a.t.
the wonderful story of the Wedding feast of cana comes from the second chapter of
John’s gospel and has been represented and depicted over the millenia through countless art forms. In the louvre, there is an immense 22‘ x 27‘ painting, The Wedding Feast
at Cana, by paolo Veronese. on this tremendous renaissance canvas, there are over 130
figures that crowd the painting. In this masterpiece, the figure of Jesus is almost perfectly
centered in the painting. his eyes are the only ones that are fixed and directed at someone
observing this work of art. this is a reminder that christ not only has to be at the center
of any marriage, but that he calls out and invites us to join him at a joyous banquet that
brings god and mankind together through the Sacrament of marriage.
this essay will address three themes that are important for couples to consider as they
reflect on the sacred nature of their union: an examination of the symbolism in the Wedding at cana, the implications of that symbolism for a covenantal relationship between
two people who are joined in marriage and a discussion of marriage as a Sacrament of
Vocation.
Symbolism in the Story
from a pastoral perspective, the Wedding feast at cana is important because in this
gospel account, Jesus is invited to a wedding, he attends and he uses his divine power
to save the celebration from disaster due to a lack of wine. tradition always has held that
Jesus sanctified the institution of marriage through his presence at the wedding feast.
the wedding feast also exemplifies how the Kingdom of god became present to those
at the banquet and symbolically to the people of Israel. In both the old and the new
testaments, the images of a banquet, wine and a wedding are used to illustrate the glory
and the joys of the coming of the Kingdom of god. an example is found in the Book
of Isaiah, “on this mountain the lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich
foods and choice wine, juicy rich food and pure choice wine, on this mountain, he will
destroy the veil that veils all peoples” (Isa. 25:6-7 naB). a similar reference is found in
the Book of revelation, “alleluia, the lord has established his reign, god the almighty.
let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. the wedding day of the lamb has come”
coVenantal anD VocatIonal aSpectS of marrIage
57
(rev. 19:7 naB). these passages are significant because they convey the joy, feasting and
abundance that will be experienced when the veil that shields god and man is parted.
this union between god and man is expressed in Scripture through the imagery of a
banquet and a wedding.
god’s union with man, his beloved creation, is achieved through the marriage of his Son
to the faithful who are joined to him through his body and blood. St. augustine wrote,
“for the Word was the bridegroom and human flesh was the bride. and both are the one
Son of god and likewise the Son of man.”1 Jesus’ sign at cana finally removes the veil
of the faithful who become fully present to the father through the Son. his presence at
the wedding feast, as the bridegroom, symbolize the union of god and man and demonstrates that one does not need to wait until the end of time to see the glory of god – it
is fully present in his Son, Jesus christ. the events at cana also are symbolic of god’s
overflowing generosity, as the contents of the six stone jars are transformed into wine and
the jars are filled to the brim. this illustrates that god’s feast with humanity, and his own
gift of self, has begun.
today, we remember this joy, feasting and abundance when we gather around the table
of the lord every Sunday and celebrate the real presence of Jesus christ in the Sacrament
of the eucharist. While on the surface, it may appear that the Wedding at cana is simply
about Jesus’ presence and sanctification of marriage, on a deeper level, it is intended
to communicate the extraordinary love and the desire for unity god the father has for
mankind. In his book, Jesus of Nazareth, pope Benedict XVI makes the point that at cana,
“Jesus identifies himself here as the bridegroom of god’s promised marriage with his
people … in an unexpected way, god and man become one.”2 the intimate union god
desires with his creation is consummated through the symbolic wedding of his only Son
to his beloved people. god’s eternal love is what is at the center of the Wedding at cana
– in Scripture and also in paolo Veronese’s renaissance masterpiece.
Covenant Defined
It is important to consider the origins of god’s desire for unity with humanity. this
is important pastorally because it provides the cornerstone for what is most important
about marriage – its covenantal character. In order to appreciate the significance of this,
one must first understand what a covenant meant to people during the time of christ and
recapture the essence of that word. In merriam-Webster’s dictionary, the primary definition of a covenant is, “a usually formal, solemn, and binding agreement: compact.”3 the
secondary definition is, “a written agreement or promise usually under seal between two
or more parties especially for the performance of some action, the common-law action
to recover damages for breach of such a contract.”4 Synonyms for the word “covenant”
include: agreement, arrangement, bargain, bond, compact, concordat, contract among
others.5 like many other words in our language, the essence of the word “covenant” has
58
Stephen B. KaSS
eroded over time and across cultures. for the ancient Israelites, a “covenant” had a special
meaning that went beyond legalistic and contractual terms. a contract was something
whereby two parties exchanged property, goods and services. a covenant, however, was a
willing exchange of persons. contracts established the terms for a business transaction,
while covenants established familial ties and bonds. In his book, Swear to God, Scott
hahn described a covenant as something that went “far beyond the limits of any contract.
When people enter into a covenant they say ‘I am yours and you are mine’… to biblical
authors, the difference between covenant and contract was like the difference between
marriage and prostitution or between adoption and slavery.”6
In the old testament, one learns that god’s relationship with the Israelites and mankind
was a covenant. In the book of genesis, god tells noah, “But I will establish my covenant
with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives
with you” (gen. 9:8 naB). and in the book of ezekiel, the lord god says, “you shall dwell
in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your
god” (ezek. 11:20 naB). covenants, therefore, are built around and made up of familial
relationships. a covenant is a mutually consenting exchange of persons – not goods or
services. god willingly reached out to his chosen people to create a new family and social
order through a covenant that was centered on his relationship with mankind.
Marriage as a Sacrament of Vocation
the Bible presents marriage as the primary metaphor and imagery for the covenantal
union among god, mankind, Jesus christ and his church. In the book of genesis, one
learns that mankind was created in the image and likeness of god. It is this trace of the
divine that resides within and a common humanity that bring a man and a woman together. this is recounted in the second chapter of genesis, when adam exclaims, “this at
last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she
was taken out of man. therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his
wife, and they become one flesh” (gen. 2:23 naB). In the new testament, this is reiterated by paul in his letter to the ephesians when he writes, “for this reason a man shall leave
his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. this
mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to christ and the church” (eph.
5:31 naB). the latin Vulgate translation of this passage uses the word “sacramentum”
where paul uses the word “mystery.” this mystical union of a man and a woman through
the Sacrament of marriage in many ways is an image and representation of the covenant
god established by creating man and woman in his own image and likeness.
understanding the nature of the marriage covenant is essential to understanding why the
roman catholic church takes this sacrament so seriously. In our society, one can argue
that the indissolubility of marriage is something that people may assent to, but do not
readily embrace and take to heart. Within the past five years, secular culture’s acceptance
59
of the transitory nature of marriage has come to prominence with something called a
“starter marriage.” according to Wikipedia, a starter marriage is “a first marriage that
lasts five years or less and ends before the couple has children. the term, a play on the
expression ‘starter home,’ appears as one of the footnotes in Douglas coupland’s 1991
novel generation X. however, it did not enter common parlance until the publication of
pamela paul’s 2002 book, The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony.”7 this concept
is an example of the cultural conflict that exists today over the reality of marriage. In light
of this, one might reasonably ask if marriage is a religious or a secular reality, and where
the ultimate authority over marriage resides. If marriage is a secular reality, then mankind
can choose to define and redefine marriage in any way that may be culturally, or even
politically convenient at any given time. a marriage whose reality is adjudicated in the
courts and through the judicial system begins to diminish into a contract and betrays the
covenantal aspect of marriage where two people willingly surrender their former selves to
one another in imitation of god’s marriage to his chosen people through his Son, Jesus
christ. today, cultural atheism has attempted to reform marriage in a manner in which
god either is absent or is on the periphery. the chasm between culture and religion may
seem, at first glance, impossible to bridge. however, there is a way to connect this cultural
divide, and it begins with recognizing that marriage is a Sacrament of Vocation.
In the roman catholic church, there are Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, eucharist
and confirmation), healing (penance and the Sacrament of the Sick) and Vocation
(holy orders and matrimony). In holy orders, men are given the authority, power and
grace to function as ordained deacons, priests and bishops. It is important for the laity to
understand that the church views marriage with the same degree of sacred dignity and
respect that is reserved for those who are called to ordained ministry.
today, our secularized society not only attempts to separate church from state but church
from self and culture, as matters of faith are readily marginalized into a single hour of
liturgy on Sunday. many may forget that one’s apostolic obligations begin when mass
concludes. the Second Vatican council document Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People,
addresses the importance of the laity in the mission and role of the church,
In the church there is a diversity of ministry but a oneness of mission. christ
conferred on the apostles and their successors the duty of teaching, sanctifying,
and ruling in his name and power. But the laity likewise share in the priestly,
prophetic and royal office of christ and therefore have their own share in the
mission of the whole people of god in the church and in the world … Since
the laity, in accordance with their state of life, live in the midst of the world and
its concerns, they are called by god to exercise their apostolate in the world like
leaven, with the ardor of the spirit of christ.8
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Stephen B. KaSS
the proactive role of lay people in the married state in bringing about the manifestation
of god’s kingdom on earth is a duty, and born out of the vocational proclamation that
all of the faithful have responsibilities as priests, prophets and kings. this may come as a
bit of a surprise to some – but these are not just idle ramblings; this is what the church
expects out of her members. this is a universal call to holiness and pertains to those who
take the vocational vows of holy orders in the same way that it applies to those who
take vows of marriage. While there are clearly different roles and responsibilities between
those who have taken vows of holy orders and matrimony, there is one apostolic continuum of faith.
the Sacrament of marriage has more to do with embracing our vocations as christians
and less to do with many of the other expectations and illusions that our culture places
on those who are joined in holy matrimony. marriage is about creating a new reality and
identity through our gift of self to another rather than a narcissistic self-centered life that
many in our society seem to revel in and embrace. the gospel of John tells us that there
is no greater demonstration of love than laying down one’s life for one’s friends. this is
at the core of the marriage covenant. It mirrors the love god had for his beloved chosen
people and it mimics the incredible gift of god, who gave the life of his only Son, who
became man through the miracle of the Incarnation and demonstrated through his infinite love that “I am yours and you are mine – forever until the end of the age.”
today, just as he was 2,000 years ago, Jesus is present at the wedding feast. he summons
all his disciples – married, clergy and single people – to join him at his glorious banquet
where we are fed, nourished and celebrate the lifting of the wedding veil that had separated man from god.
Stephen Kass is the Editor of family reflections and is the Coordinator of
Marketing and Development for the Institute for Christian Spirituality at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology. He holds Master’s degrees
in Nuclear Engineering and Systematic Theology. He has been married for 14
years to his wife, Beverly, and they reside in Pequannock, New Jersey.
noteS
1. thomas c. oden, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament IVa
John 1-10, ed. Joel c. elowski (Downers grove, Il: Intervarsity press, 2006), 90.
2. pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, trans. adrian J. Walker (new york: Doubleday, 2007), 245.
61
3. merriam-Webster online Dictionary, “covenant,” http://www.merriam-webster.
com/dictionary/covenant (accessed may 5, 2009).
4. Ibid.
5. thesaurus.com, “covenant,” http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/covenant (accessed
may 5, 2009).
6. Scott hahn, Swear to God (new york: Doubleday, 2004), 61.
7. Wikipedia, “Starter marriage,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starter_marriage (accessed
may 5, 2009).
8. Second Vatican council, Decree on the apostolate of the laity, Apostolicam
Actuositatem, 2.
62
Family Spirituality as a
Transformation of Love
By mario J. coccia, m.a.t., S.t.l.
When you hear the phrase, “family spirituality,” what first comes to mind? for me,
images spring up of families praying together, images colored by the personality and
character of the family itself. perhaps one family is what people might call “regular”
catholic. they go to mass, say grace before meals, and end the day with some formal
prayers before tucking the little ones in at night. another family might be more “traditional,” another might be “charismatic,” and another family simply might continue
whatever traditions the parents grew up with and experienced. Some families volunteer
at soup kitchens, some read the Bible more than others, and some like devotions to the
saints — the possibilities are as varied and as vibrant as the families themselves.
the list goes on and on. In the end, as long as the family nurtures each member in the
catholic faith and their relationship with god, it is often a question of style and not of
substance. yet is family spirituality really only about the adults instilling the faith and its
praxis in the children?
the effects of the faith and praxis on the individual could be put in terms of how one is
transformed by the love of god (that is, by charity). the increase of charity by grace, or its
decrease due to sin, shows the dynamic nature of charity, which can be called the union
of the human soul with god. In charity and grace, the soul becomes more and more
unified with god, more and more transformed. If the human soul is transformed in love
with god, then it likewise is capable of an analogous transformation by natural love, the
love of things or human persons. Indeed, one cannot know the transformation by charity
except by comparing it to transformations by natural, human love.
Since grace perfects nature, grace also would perfect the transformations in the individual
due to natural, human love. family spirituality, therefore, also should regard, and seek to
perfect, the transformative dynamics of the bonds of love among family members.
A transformative power
the transformation by love begins with knowledge, because one cannot love a thing
famIly SpIrItualIty aS a tranSformatIon of loVe
63
unless one knows something about it. St. thomas aquinas, drawing on aristotle, describes the transformation by love in the following way. When we apprehend a thing
through one or more of the senses, some truth about the thing enters our soul and
forms the soul.1 Say, for example, you see a chair in a furniture store. you are changed
only slightly by this sight but you instantly will make some judgments about the chair:
whether it is sturdy or comfortable, if it would look good in your house, if you want
to sit and rest in it right now. the more you look, the more you know, the more you
are formed and the more you are changed or transformed. perhaps you decide that you
have no liking for this particular chair, and you largely ignore it. perhaps, on the other
hand, you decide that it perfectly would complete your living room decor. you increasingly become drawn to the chair. you, in a sense, let the chair “live” in your heart. you
feel incomplete without it. you then see the price. perhaps you rejoice at being able to
possess the chair. perhaps you mourn and feel a loss because you suddenly do not like
it as much or realize that you cannot have it.
given this transformative power of knowledge and love, St. thomas says that it is better
to know things than to love them, while it is better to love persons, immortal images of
god loved by him, whether you know them or not.2 Seeing how through knowledge and
love a thing comes to live in the lover’s soul, one can see that things are unworthy objects
of love — it is beneath our dignity as living images of god to become more and more like
lifeless things. things, moreover, cannot love us back. persons, on the other hand, are of
much higher dignity than lifeless things and they can love us in return. god himself is
absolute person and, in loving god and being loved by him, we become more and more
like him, and we become ever more perfectly a place where he can live. While other human persons cannot live in our souls in the same way as god does by grace, there is a
similar and reciprocal transformation at work.
When it comes to reciprocal love between human persons, there always is an element
of accepting the unknown and of being an unknown to the other. a person is largely a
mystery that unfolds only over a lifetime. there also is complementarity, meaning that
the person one loves may be seen as making one complete, or at least more complete.
reciprocally, one becomes the completion of the other in some way. finally, there is
self-mastery, without which one cannot participate effectively in the transformational
dynamic of love with another person.
Self-mastery is particularly important. We could call self-mastery “self-control” or “selfdiscipline” or “virtue.” the Catechism of the Catholic Church equates self-mastery with
chastity.3 at any rate, it should be clear that, in love, one makes a gift of oneself to the
other in various ways. one cannot give what one does not have. therefore, one must have
mastery of oneself in order to give oneself to another.
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marIo J. coccIa
let us examine the interplay of complementarity, acceptance of the unknown and selfmastery in the transformation in love between persons, in the example of a man and
woman falling in love. the lover (the man in our example) makes at least three self-gifts
to his beloved woman on account of how love has transformed him. By these self-gifts,
he furthers the transformation. first, simply by his initial knowledge of this woman, he in
some sense appreciates the attributes he knows of her, and longs to know and appreciate
what is unknown about her. he thereby gives her his own self, in which these attributes
of her also can live. If in observing her, for example, he notices that she likes a particular
kind of chocolate, he begins to seek that chocolate out as if he liked it himself; indeed,
on account of the beloved, he does like it himself (in some way, at least) and so seeks it
out. Second, he gives himself to her in giving her that chocolate, by revealing himself and
his feelings in the act, making what is unknown about himself more knowable to her.
notably, in this self-gift, the lover reveals and gives to the beloved her own presence in
his soul, the transformation in his soul that was the basis of his act of buying chocolates.
third, he makes himself available to her response, which will be her own self-revelation
to him and precisely for him. over time, the two lovers interpenetrate each other by
multi-dimensional self-gifts that increasingly include a return of each to the other.
the love between a man and a woman differs in many respects from the love between
parents and children, as well as from the love between siblings. for one thing, the man
and the woman choose each other and marry voluntarily, whereas the parent-child and
sibling-sibling relationships are more or less imposed. Despite these differences, however, the transformative dynamic of love is essentially the same and must be considered
in family spirituality.
Maximizing the transformation
to maximize and take full advantage of the transformative power of love in family life,
we must keep three things in mind. first, we constantly must choose the transformation
and in a sense make the transformation happen. Second, in doing the first, we must give
special consideration to how we ourselves are transformative forces on the other members of the family — for good or ill — and conscientiously must make ourselves forces of
good transformation. third, we must keep the perfecting power of grace in mind. these
remarks are addressed primarily to parents, of course.
If the transformation begins with knowledge, then all things that the family members see,
hear and experience are part of the transformation. material possessions, television, movies, internet, magazines, books, visitors, friends, society at large and behaviors of every
kind all form each member, and often for the worse. If Dad is always on the computer, he
reveals himself to the family in a particular way and forms them through that revelation.
If a teenage daughter in the midst of being reprimanded imitates her best friend by ignoring her parents, everyone is formed by it: the daughter, the parents, the other children and
famIly SpIrItualIty aS a tranSformatIon of loVe
65
the friend. parents, therefore, must take great care to ensure that their family is formed
through positive behaviors.
parents also must help to keep the family from loving things inappropriately. We can say
“love” to mean “like a real lot,” as in “I love chocolate,” but when “love” means that a
thing has become a driving force of one’s actions, it has gone too far. even good things
become bad the more the family members become like these things and less like persons.
not to be able to set aside one’s facebook page (or cell phone, or Wii, or food, or treats,
etc.) reveals a demeaning, almost addictive state. family members are persons, and family spirituality primarily must cultivate mature persons.
people talk about spending “quality time” together, but it’s not about the time or the activities shared during that time. It’s about “I want you to be part of me and to be the reason
why I do what I do.” that does require time, but the real purpose of the time is to know the
other and to give the gift of oneself to the other, and to form (and be formed by) the other:
“I want to know you and give myself to you, and I want you to live in me. I want you to
know me, and I want to live in you, too.” all too often we form our family in just the opposite way: “not now, sweetie, I’m busy.” to a certain extent, children do need to learn to respect the parents’ prerogatives and duties and not to interrupt, but they also have to know
where they are in the parents’ hierarchy of importance. In the end, the formative power of
self-giving cannot be limited to scheduled activities and cannot take a back seat to less important things. your children and your spouse know that a partial self-gift means holding
something back, that it means adding “only a little” to “I want you to live in me.”
We, therefore, are duty-bound to form ourselves conscientiously in the good, to be forces
of good in our power to form our spouses and children. this can be called “teaching by
example,” but it really is more a matter of giving our families something good when we
give ourselves. parents must cultivate virtue and holiness in themselves as individuals
and as a married couple if they expect to have a spiritually healthy family.
cultivating holiness cannot happen without grace and charity, which are from god. By
grace and in charity, god transforms us by dwelling ever more perfectly in our souls. In
loving god and giving ourselves to him, we reveal and return his own indwelling in us,
as St. John of the cross teaches.4 the more we love god, the more we allow him to become the driving force of all of our actions. We are capable of loving our family members
better when god dwells in us. god, living in us, loves them through us; we give god to
them when we give ourselves to them. We also allow our families to become a reason for
our actions as we seek to form them in the good.
family spirituality refers not only to the family’s style in things religious. It also refers
to a holistic transformative process based on the dynamics of natural knowledge and
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human love. this transformative power cannot be stopped; it will influence each family
member and, left on a natural level, it often and quickly becomes a power for degradation and destruction. It is when natural human love in the family is perfected supernaturally by divine love, and when it is embraced and cultivated conscientiously, that it
becomes family spirituality.
Mario J. Coccia holds a Master’s degree in Theology from Immaculate Conception
Seminary School of Theology and a Master’s degree and a Licentiate in Sacred
Theology from the International Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage
and the Family (Austria), specializing in the effects of the transformation in
love on spouses. He and his wife, Aileen, live with their five children in Wyoming, where he works as an administrator at Wyoming Catholic College while
completing a doctorate in Theology.
noteS
1. St. thomas aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard III, d. 27,
q. 2, a. 1.
2. St. thomas aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 23, a. 6, ad. 1.
3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2339.
4. “the living flame of love – Stanza 3 (68-85),” http://www.karmel.at/ics/john/
fl_10.html (accessed november 2, 2009).
67
“My Brother’s Confirmation”
by Melanie P. Santos
St. Michael, Cranford, NJ
Hillside Avenue School
last year, my brother Bryan, was confirmed at St. michael’s church in cranford, nJ. my family is very
religious and this was a special sacrament for my brother. god is clearly evident in this photograph
due to the religious significance and meaning behind this sacrament. throughout the process, my
brother’s godfather helped him get ready. this day marked his full initiation into the church and
this symbolic picture demonstrates how sacred this tradition is. that was a joyous and momentous
day in his life and the fact that his godfather was there to help him made it even more special. I am
now 13 and I am eagerly waiting to do my own confirmation next year. Being a part of this ceremony
and witnessing it makes it all the more special to me. this picture truly demonstrates the religious
impact on one’s life and I feel it symbolizes the true meaning of being confirmed.
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Learning Latin
By lt. Joseph toth, uSn, Jag
my dad taught me latin during my second eighth grade (the fact that it was my second
eighth grade should explain how well the first eighth grade went). my dad was very busy
at the time, and our conversations about school were of the kind that should be all-toofamiliar to those with adolescent children: he would ask me about school and I would
shrug my shoulders and mumble something before slinking out of the room.
and then came latin. my dad somehow had talked the principal of my new school into allowing me to enroll into latin II, provided I could pass an examination given by the teacher. the only problem was that I had never taken a single class in latin. Dad was undaunted.
every evening after dinner I cooked microwaveable popcorn, and we would spend an hour
together conjugating verbs. “Amo-amas-amat-amamus-amatis-amant.” our initial meetings
had a distinctly marine corps feel to them as he played the role of the gunnery Sergeant
to my lance corporal. he tapped his feet: “are you absum (absent) or adsum (present)
today?” “Sum adsum.” he would begin, “Which conjugation are we on?”
his explanations were always simple and complete unto themselves. he explained to
me the difference between a direct (accusative case) and indirect (dative) object: “I hit
the ball to the second baseman. the ball is the direct object, while the second baseman
is the indirect object.” the ablative case: “the ball was hit by the second baseman. the
direct object is the ball, and the object of the preposition is the second baseman.” he
explained that “to run” was an intransitive verb – unless you were running the bulls, as
they do in Spain, in which case it would be transitive. to this day, I have yet to hear a
better explanation.
for the a-stem nouns we developed a musical cadence: “fenestra-fenestrae-fenestrae-fenestram-fenestra…” he explained that to “throw your little brother out the window” would
be to “defenestrate him.” I can still hear him tapping his feet like a jazz drummer keeping
time – “somni-somnorum-somnis-somnos-somnis.” We developed different rhythms for the
different conjugations. Irregular verbs were free jazz, their cadences determined by their
peculiarity: “eo-ire-ivi (or ii)- itum” had a fast pace because it meant “to go,” while “nolo,
learnIng latIn
69
nolle, nolui” was loud and defiant because it meant “to be unwilling.” I even obtained a
motto: “nihil me terret.” “I fear nothing.”
over the course of months we devoured cartons of popcorn as we covered the active and
passive voices, the indicative and subjunctive moods, the pluperfect and future perfect
tenses. I easily cleared the test for latin II and found myself at the top of the class. I realized that the method he taught me could be used in other classes with great success. at
last, school began to make sense to me.
two years later, I was a homesick teenager braving the rigors of ovid (latin IV) as well as
the new england winter at my boarding school, when I received a letter from my dad. It
read as follows: “Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.” It was a quote from Virgil, which
translates: “Someday, perhaps, he will look back on even these things and smile.”
my father was, above all else, a teacher. he was funny and humble and intense and gentle
and had a million great qualities, but most of all, he was a teacher. It was through teaching that he revealed himself most deeply – his sharp mind, his quirky humor, his love of
truth, of beauty, of order, of goodness. I miss him tremendously. the months that he took
to teach me latin changed my life in ways great and small. I am grateful to god for giving
us that time together. Virgil was right: I look back at those days and smile.
Joseph Toth, Dr. William Toth’s son, is a defense attorney in the JAG Corps of the
United States Navy and is stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
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“You Always Hurt the One You Love:“
Reconciliation and the Family
By reverend monsignor Joseph r. chapel, S.t.D.
maybe you recall hearing the mills Brothers way back when singing “you always hurt
the one you love.” or if you’re a bit younger, maybe it was the Willie nelson or even the
michael Bublé version. either way, there is a certain truth to be found in that old lyric. If
you think about it, a cross word from a stranger might annoy you, but for the most part,
you need to be in relation with someone for that person really to be able to hurt you — by
action or omission, by what is said or by what fails to be said. and the closer the relation,
the greater the capacity for hurt! What holds true for our relationships in general proves
ever more true within the family: “you always hurt the one you love.”
marriage and family life offer the chance for the deepest experiences of love, vulnerability and mutual self-disclosure. But, for that very reason, the capacity for hurt likewise is
greater. consequently, the need for reconciliation is greater, in the same proportion. even
in minor matters, experience shows us that we must ask forgiveness of the other. Where
there also is sin, we also must ask forgiveness of the church, for there is no private sin —
all sin affects the entire Body of christ. all of this needs to be expressed, vocalized, spoken — it cannot be passed over in silence. I would like to suggest here a few of the reasons
why — not by way of theological argument, but by way of human experience through the
prism of a bit of philosophy, which will dovetail with our catholic theology.
fault, harm and offense all need to be reconciled in words. forgiveness must be sought
in words. Why is this so? Well, because a central fact of being human is that we speak.
What separates us from the animals is our gift of reason: we can think about things —
even abstractly. that is, we can think about things that are not present; we can stand back
from our lives and our actions and think about them and put them into words. thinking requires language, and reason is mediated by speech. We might teach a chimp to say
“banana,” but unlike us, he never will be able to say “good banana, but the one yesterday
was sweeter.” only humans truly have the faculty of speech.
philosophers of Dialogue tell us that we receive our identity through language; that is,
the ability to use the word “I” comes as a gift from a “thou.” from a mother’s first sound
“you alWayS hurt the one you loVe:” reconcIlIatIon anD the famIly
71
and touch, we begin to “receive” our “I.” from here, we grow and develop the capacity
for authentic dialogue and “I-thou” relationships — meaning the ability truly to address
one another intimately, in the second person, as persons, and not in the third person as
if speaking about an object.1
our god is “the eternal thou” or “absolute thou,” spoken to in the second person rather
than spoken about in the third person. Because of this we can say that human speech helps
constitute human existence: humans are given the “word.” “having the word” is nothing
short of a miraculous gift from god. It only is in the word, in language, that an “I” meets a
“thou,” that relationship and self-identity can occur, and this word is given in Jesus christ,
the Word made flesh: “In the beginning was the Word;” Jesus, the Logos of St. John’s gospel, mediates between man and god and “stands” between “I” and “thou.” It is through
Jesus that it is possible to address god in another person, in the human “thou.”2
this is a relational reality in which god addresses us, his creation, in his own words
and through his own Word — Jesus christ, the Word made flesh, who is the very language of god. We, in turn, are invited to respond to god’s address in and through our
relationships, our moral life. In this “dialogical” dynamic, god reaches “down” to reveal
himself to us. What we call “theology” is a part of this: a word (logos) from god (theou).
We respond, reaching back “up” to god, through all the choices of our moral life. this is
a daily reality experienced in “a more intense way in the sacraments,”3 as visible signs of
an invisible reality.
In all of this, anything — indeed everything — that truly is important must find its way
into expression and into speech. Sometimes I might think that something exists only in
my mind and that there is something “I can’t put into words.” But in fact, if I can think
it, I can find the words to say it, for thought already happens in light of language. this
is why there is no “private language” that exists only in my head; there is nothing that
cannot be expressed.4
the gift of language gives humans the possibility of naming and concretizing our experiences in words. “naming” does not simply put labels on things, but rather it summons
them into presence, drawing them near and making them present. likewise, speaking
always implies the second person: “the ‘I say’ is logically incomplete. to complete it we
must formulate it as follows: ‘I say to you; and I await your response.’”5 Speaking and
naming make speech “public;” language is a communal phenomenon.
no wonder speaking is so difficult at times! Sometimes I don’t want to “say it” because
what I imagine to be hidden within me now will find its way out into the “public” realm,
with a name. think of the first time you realized you were in love, and you decided: “I’m
going to tell that person: ‘I love you.’” Why was it so hard to find the courage to say it?
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reVerenD monSIgnor JoSeph r. chapel
Well, sometimes speaking does more than just transmit information or data. Sometimes
it can alter reality; it is an action. there are some utterances, such as “I name this ship
the Queen Mary” or “I take this woman for my wife,” which do not describe or report,
but do something. If I say “I do” before the altar, “I am not reporting a marriage — I am
indulging in it.”6 Such a statement is called a “performative:” it performs an action which
is effective, in that it creates a new situation. that is, in the act of enunciation, it brings into
existence a relationship that was not present before. there are some things, in being spoken, which change reality.
Because this kind of speech changes reality, it changes the world. and it awaits a response:
what if you say “I love you,” and your beloved does not respond the same way? one of
the challenges of authentic speech is vulnerability: because my speech “awaits your response,” I entrust myself to your freedom to respond as you wish. this is hard enough
when we are speaking of love, but how much harder it is when I must seek your forgiveness! We might say that “I’m sorry” is the hard version of saying “I love you.” to say “I
love you” is to affirm something good and positive. to say “I’m sorry” is to affirm that “I
love you” but that I have done something to violate that love, and now I ask you to treat
me as if I had not violated that love. It is so hard to say “I’m sorry” because in so doing,
I entrust you with the complete freedom to accept or not to accept my apology, to grant
or not to grant me forgiveness.
yet, as speaking beings, built to speak what truly is important, we have the experience
of discomfort and imbalance — a “communicative tension” — when we fail to communicate a fault to the other, to seek forgiveness from the other. We are less than ourselves to ourselves, to the other and to all we meet until we seek forgiveness when we
are aware of harm or sin. here we must be careful: there is the temptation to make that
“confession” to the wrong person. If I harmed my brother, there is no point in telling
my friend about it. the temptation here is that telling my friend may be “cathartic,”
that is, it feels good to get the burden “off my chest.” this catharsis is what drives so
many tV programs on which people reveal the most surprising personal matters before
a national audience.
forgiveness is not catharsis. I must bring my sin before my brother whom I’ve offended
if it is actual forgiveness that I seek. and I leave him the freedom to respond. In addition,
because no sin is private or truly solitary, sin always harms the community. So our sin
also must be brought before god in the Sacrament of reconciliation. It is precisely why
Jesus came into the world: to reconcile our sins. yet we keep in mind that Jesus does not
need us to go to confession; Jesus does not need us to participate in any of the Sacraments
— that’s not why he gave them to us. rather, as the old latin adage says, “sacramenta
propter hominem sunt:” sacraments are for us — for man and for woman. god gave us the
sacraments because we need them! god knows how he made each of us — he knows
73
each of our very specific weaknesses. he gave us the sacraments because they fit the way
he made us.
We can say we become authentic human subjects in the performative and effective words
we speak: “I love you;” “I’m sorry;” “I forgive you.” But it is in celebrating our daily reality
in the more intense context of the sacraments, as gifts christ gave to his church to meet
our human need (propter hominem), that we come to be authentic believers through far
more performative and efficacious words: “this is my body;” “I’m sorry for my sins;” “I
absolve you.”
What is it that happens in the Sacrament of reconciliation in light of what we have seen
up to this point? Because humans “have the word” in the miracle of language, to confess
our sins out loud is to come out of isolation into authentic encounter with the other. In
confession, we come to god through the human “thou;” we come to the human “thou”
through god, the eternal “thou.” the process of confession of sin, in the broadest sense,
involves the individual, neighbor, god and the whole community of believers, which is
the church.
Within the overall process of confession of sin, examination of conscience closely corresponds to “naming.” one can try to avoid the admission of guilt or sin by not naming
the offense, by not giving the reality a name, even in the silence of one’s heart. however,
once the name is given, there is a concreteness that needs to be voiced in speech — a
“communicative tension.” once the name is given, there is no going back; I no longer
can pretend to be neutral.
In naming my sins, I recognize that there is a relational “other” whom I have offended.
the need to speak out what I have named becomes evident. confession involves opening the self back up to authentic relationship with god and others and, once sins are
“named,” bringing them into speech.
this relational “other,” in the act of confession, will reveal me to myself, bringing me
out of isolation and into the public world of the christian community. Just as there is
no “private language,” there is no private sin. Sin must be brought into speech because
authentic language requires two people. the other, the “thou,” “guarantees” my authenticity. In “receiving” the word of my confession, the “thou” reveals me to myself in truth.
When the sin revealed by an examination of conscience does not come into word, I am
not yet freed of the burden.
confession also is “performative” because it “does what it says” in the very act of being
said, so that as both word and act, confession is a word act by which the subject commits
himself or herself. the self-commitment that occurs in confession is a language act but
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reVerenD monSIgnor JoSeph r. chapel
also a moral act: in confessing, the subjects affirm their freedom; at the same time, confession recognizes the freedom of the other to offer or to withhold forgiveness.
Still, even in the context of sin, it is not uncommon to hear the question: “Why should I
confess to a priest? I confess my sins directly to god in my prayers; he knows I’m sorry.”
of course, it is true that god knows our sins and the church recognizes that perfect contrition is sufficient for forgiveness where sacramental confession is impossible. now that
the significance of the actual naming and performativity of speech is clear, we can grasp
easily the danger that the insistence on confessing to god alone may mask a serious selfdeception, for “the comfort that we take in confessing our sins to god alone might be a
sign that we are really confessing our sins to ourselves and granting ourselves our own absolution. Self-forgiveness ... can bring neither peace, nor true healing. ...”7 there is a real
temptation toward self-justification or rationalization of guilt in a society such as ours
that often does not recognize the hopefulness of the christian message of forgiveness.
our reality ultimately is communal, and this is possible only through Jesus, the Word,
who founds our being. and it is in Jesus that we have the word which founds our relationships with ourselves, with god and with neighbor. there is no private reality in
which the community is not present also. for this reason, the authentic word of love
between an “I” and a “thou” must be spoken to be effective. So, too, must confession
be spoken to be effective. Where there is hurt, the desire for forgiveness must come to
speech. for there is no hurt, not even in the most private of sins, that does not affect the
community even as it offends god. even if the apparent hurt is to the individual only,
that person is less than the whole person he or she is called to be by god and less than
fully present to the community: “regardless of its personal nature, sin is never just an individual, or even a private affair; rather, a sin committed by an individual human being
touches the people of god in their entirety; it damages their wholeness and is thus truly
‘dangerous to the public.’”8
Where sin is understood as closing oneself off from the other and where relation needs
to be restored, the authentic “naming” of sin is accompanied by the drive to bring it to
speech in confession: to confess my sin, to say I am sorry, to hear the words of forgiveness that restore and reconstitute a broken relation. to say “I confess my sins to god
alone, directly in my thoughts, and I know I am forgiven” suggests the possibility of sidestepping authentic human existence and perhaps also side-stepping true freedom and
responsibility. to avoid bringing my sins into word may be to avoid the truth of myself.
as the song says: “you always hurt the one you love.” yes, the more intimate the relationship, the more profound the possibility of hurt and sin — all the more true in the most
intimate setting of all: the family. yet god does not leave us orphaned: christ’s Incarnation showed that the eternal “thou” is met in and through the human “thou.” We are
75
given all that we need to repair and restore these most intimate family relationships,
and ultimately, to deepen them. through the church, god gives us the Sacrament of
reconciliation as a gift to meet our human need. When our family bonds are strained or
broken, god continues to call us and invite us back. We are invited to speak our sorrow
out loud and to hear god’s forgiveness in the Word.9
Reverend Monsignor Joseph Chapel is Associate Dean, Co-director of the
Institute for Christian Spirituality and Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics
at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology. He holds a doctorate
in Theology from the Alphonsian Academy of the Pontifical Lateran University
in Rome and a Master’s in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University’s Paul S. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
noteS
1. martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (new york: charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1970), 54.
2. ferdinand ebner, Das Wort und die geistigen Realitäten. Pnuematologische Fragmente
(Innsbruck, 1921), citing John 1:1ff.
3. Karl rahner, “faith and Sacrament,” Theological Investigations 23 (london: Darton,
longman & todd, 1992).
4. ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. g. e. m. anscombe (new
york: macmillan, 1953), especially §7, §23, §27-28, §261, §340.
5. martin heidegger, On The Way to Language, trans. peter D. hertz (San francisco:
harper, 1982) and John macmurray, The Self as Agent (london: faber and faber ltd.,
1957), 73-74.
6. J. l. austin, How to Do Things With Words, eds. J. o. urmson and marina Sbisà, 2 ed.
(cambridge: harvard university press, 1975), esp. 219.
7. for a concise presentation of confession of sins to god alone, see John o’Donnell,
S.J., “the need to confess,” america 144 (march 28, 1981): 252-253.
8. Walter Kasper, “the church as a place of forgiveness,” Communio 16 (Summer,
1989), 167.
9. for more on the topics found in this article see, Joseph r. chapel, “Why confess
our Sins out loud?: Some possibilities Based on the thought of ferdinand ebner and
louis-marie chauvet,” Irish Theological Quarterly 66 (2001): 141-156; “philosophy in the
ongoing renewal of moral theology: Dialogical personalism revisited,” Studia moralia
40 (2002): 205-236; “philosophy as preparation for Sacramental theology and moral life,
Seminary Journal 11, no. 1 (Spring, 2005): 27-35.
76
Seeing Things as They Are
By reverend Stephen toth, m.Div.
I recall driving with my father southbound on the Westside highway in new york city
sometime in the late 1970s. I remember the rattle and gasp of the oldsmobile diesel as
we wove in and out of traffic, past the spires of the riverside church, grant’s tomb, and
the Boat Basin, as the road descended toward “hell’s Kitchen.” the topic moved to the
hotly debated “Westway” highway project, which would have moved the West Side highway underground. Dad told me he was solidly in favor of the project, especially since his
beloved cousin george was in line to be the project manager. he explained the case to me
and told me about the infamous “Darter Snail.” my mind held fast to the odd juxtaposition of “darter” and “snail.” I discerned that my father classified “darter snail” along with
“los angeles Dodger,” as another indignity foisted upon working class new yorkers.
as we made our way through stop-and-go traffic, docks to the right, warehouses to the
left, derelicts with dirty rags surrounded our car. the air conditioning was on full blast
and I felt the onset of a freon headache. the garbage was piled high on the curb and my
dad got into a heated exchange with a junkie who lingered long on the crosswalk after the
light had changed. We were enjoying an experience typical of new york city in the 1970s.
he turned to me and said: “It is important to experience things as they really are.”
my father had a great disdain for ideologues. he believed ideologies compromised a person’s ability to participate in reality. he referred to ideologies as prisms through which
the harsh, brilliant and unrelenting light of reality was refracted into a spectrum. Ideologues saw rainbows where none were to be found.
I see in my father a synthesis of the realism of a working class kid who grew up in an
Irish neighborhood in manhattan filled with cats and kids and the realism of St. thomas
aquinas as presented by etienne gilson and later pope John paul II. he often recounted
how my grandfather, born in Budapest, cried in anguish when the West turned a deaf
ear to the pleas of the hungarians. president eisenhower did not understand the nature
of their cries but the church did. Solzhenitsyn and the students in Budapest and prague
didn’t want to live in the West. they wanted to live in reality. Ideology is an assault on
SeeIng thIngS aS they are
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our capacity to know and to be. my father found in John paul II a person who understood
and represented this fact.
growing up in new york city, he observed and experienced things on the streets of his beloved Westside neighborhood. he listened to longshoremen and nuns and cops and cleaning ladies. he was aware of wars and rumors of war. he also held fast to the church. he
often served the 5 a.m. mass on weekdays at holy name parish. he told me of Irish dockworkers with shipping hooks dangling from their belts kneeling to receive communion
after unloading cargo ships all night. he never forgot where he came from.
he experienced the church, a sacrament that let a person enter into reality unflinchingly, with all of its distortions, mercies, abominations and graces. She was not a place
where one hid from life. the church as mother gave us life, a life free from the fear of
non-being. She is the prolongation of the event of christ, in whom we live and move and
have our being.
Father Stephen Toth, Dr. William Toth’s son, is a graduate of Immaculate
Conception Seminary School of Theology and was ordained to the priesthood
in 2002. Father Toth works in Pastoral Ministry at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
78
The “Goods” of Marriage
By Stephen nakrosis, m.a.t.
In chapter 5 of Lumen Gentium, the catholic church recognizes and calls all mankind to
follow “the universal call to holiness,”1 the idea and ideal that the whole of humanity
is called to live in a manner befitting true children of god. thankfully, we are not left to
our own devices in pursuing the ideal of holiness. through our Baptism, we are entitled
to an infinite fountain of graces from heaven, which are meant to guide and strengthen
us in our lives as we journey to our ultimate destination. through christ’s sacrifice on
calvary, through the gifts of the holy Spirit, through the wisdom of the gospels and the
example of the saints, we receive what we need to live full, proper and holy lives.
all are called to their own unique vocation, and all are offered the graces appropriate to
their place in life. all are given the gifts they need to fulfill the call to holiness. all have
numerous examples of the holy men and women who have come before — either religious or lay — to give inspiration and guidance.
for most, their vocation lies within the married life, where they have been given graces
and gifts through the Sacrament of marriage. upon those in the married life, heaven has
bestowed a series of what St. augustine refers to as “goods,”2 to ensure they can live fully,
as christians, in the honorable manner to which husband and wife are called. unfortunately, these goods often are overlooked or ignored by the married couple. the blessings
available to every married couple are there for the taking. Since marriage is so common
and because it has been the basis of society for millennia, the wonder of the state, the
glory of the gift of marriage, which god has given, often is overlooked.
part of the problem is the lens through which marriage is viewed in contemporary society. We have seen over the past generation a breakdown of the institution once revered as
the firm foundation of any stable society. today, divorce and adultery are rampant and
same-sex unions are being put on par with heterosexual marriage. to many, marriage is
just another phase of life, something one does, along with getting a job and buying a
house. Similar to a job or a house, marriage is not always seen as permanent in our culture. Instead, one tries to trade up, to bigger and better.
the “gooDS” of marrIage
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The Creation of Marriage
one remedy for today’s commonly held view of marriage is to recall what the church
teaches as the ultimate end of married life. In Casti Connubii, pius XI writes that god
intended marriage to be “the principle and foundation of domestic society.”3 the Sacrament of marriage, like all sacraments, was instituted by god to aid sinful man, to confer
the graces needed to withstand the temptations that beset us daily, to act as a sign and,
at the same time, to create that very thing which that sign represents. as the new Jersey
Bishops recently noted: “marriage not only is a call to holiness, it also is the foundation
of the family and society. marriage as a union of one man and one woman has its roots
not only in human tradition and history, but also in natural law, which transcends all
man-made law. god is the author of marriage.”4
god created marriage for the good of mankind. In genesis, god himself remarks: “’It is
not good for the man to be alone” (gen. 2:18 naB). none of the animals in eden is the
equal of adam and none is worthy to be his helpmate. for that, he would need a being
of equal dignity, equal ability and equal worth. thus, god takes not mud, with which he
formed adam, but rather a rib, a part of adam himself, to form eve. as he did for adam,
god himself breathes life into eve. She is not subordinate to adam, but of the exact same
essence. the means by which god brings life to the newly formed eve are identical to
those god used to bring life to adam.
Before her creation, god refers to eve as “a suitable partner for [adam]” (gen. 2:18 naB).
this phrase represents not a diminishment but a differentiation from adam. eve’s role is
different from adam’s, but in no way is she to be seen as subservient. her dignity and the
dignity of her office are on par with adam’s.
adam himself proclaims as much. When he first sees eve, he “exults” and proclaims:
“the man said, ‘this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called
Woman, Because she was taken out of man.’ for this reason a man shall leave his father
and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh” (gen. 2:2324 naB).
this idea of two becoming one flesh is evoked by our Savior when he is questioned about
the permissibility of divorce. In matthew’s gospel, he reminds the pharisees of the creation account in genesis, remarking on the status of husband and wife as “no longer two
but one flesh” (matt. 19:6 naB).
this mystery is discussed by St. paul in his letter to the ephesians, when he teaches how
christians should comport themselves while living in this sinful world. he writes that
husbands and wives should “be subject to one another in the fear of christ. Wives, be
subject to your own husbands, as to the lord. for the husband is the head of the wife, as
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Stephen naKroSIS
christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the Savior of the body. But as the
church is subject to christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything”
(eph. 5:21-24 naSB). St. paul expands upon the obligation husbands must have for their
wives and reinforces the concept of one flesh:
husbands, love your wives, just as christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing
of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her
glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy
and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own
bodies. he who loves his own wife loves himself. (eph. 5:25-28 naB)
this is not license, however, for the husband to lord over his wife, as a master would over
a slave. the two are part of one flesh, mutually joined in a loving relationship, and are of
equal worth. this point is amplified by pope John paul II in his apostolic exhortation,
Familiaris Consortio: “authentic conjugal love presupposes and requires that a man have
a profound respect for the equal dignity of his wife: ‘you are not her master,’ writes St.
ambrose, ‘but her husband; she was not given to you to be your slave, but your wife....
reciprocate her attentiveness to you and be grateful to her for her love.’”5
pope leo XIII, in his encyclical on marriage, “Arcanum,” reminds the married couple that
they are companions to each other and must act to aid their spouse as they strive for
salvation. he writes:
they are bound, namely, to have such feelings for one another as to cherish
always very great mutual love, to be ever faithful to their marriage vow, and
to give one another an unfailing and unselfish help. the husband is the chief
of the family and the head of the wife. the woman, because she is flesh of his
flesh, and bone of his bone, must be subject to her husband and obey him; not,
indeed, as a servant, but as a companion, so that her obedience shall be wanting
in neither honor nor dignity.6
Joined together in love, through the gift of the sacrament, the married couple consciously should strive to act always in a manner befitting the dignity and honor of their
state. as mutual co-creators of their marriage, they are called to act, in their own unique
ways, to bring themselves and their spouse to a better understanding of their christian
vocation.
Goods defined
Within the marriage, there are goods to be pursued and ends to be attained. the pursuit
of these goods is a mutual act. they cannot be attained by individual effort but must be
81
attained through the concerted efforts of the husband and wife. St. augustine, in his work
On The Good Of Marriage lists the three goods as proles, or children; fides, or fidelity; and
sacramentum, or a sacramental lifestyle.7 these goods cannot be enjoyed in isolation but
only within the context of a loving, sacramental relationship. these goods are gifts given
by the spouses, one to the other, under the mandate of heaven.
It takes both father and mother to bring about new life. although augustine lists children
as the first of the goods, this should not be construed to mean that this particular good
holds primacy of place over the other two. rather, the child is the most visible sign of the
love that exists between husband and wife. the child originates in the loving embrace
of husband and wife, brought about by love, is raised in love and, in turn, creates and
returns love. the child returns the love of the parents and strengthens the bond of love
between husband and wife. “fecundity is the fruit and the sign of conjugal love, the living
testimony of the full reciprocal self-giving of the spouses.”8
more than just being the originators of life, the father and mother are called upon to raise
their progeny as good christians. By this mutual task, they are drawn closer together,
closer to their children and closer to an understanding and love of the almighty. pius XI
writes: “In the training and education of children, which must extend over a period of
many years, it plays a great part, since the grave and long enduring burdens of this office
are best borne by the united efforts of the parents.”9
the child is a gift, given by god, given by the spouses, one to the other. When the wife
becomes a mother, she gains a new and greater understanding of her femininity. through
the child, the husband becomes more aware of his masculine nature. through their loving
and mutual efforts to raise their child, the husband and wife bring each other to a greater
awareness of their roles as man and woman, husband and wife, father and mother.
St. augustine’s second good of marriage is fidelity. the husband and wife owe to each
other, and offer to each other, a loving, exclusive, monogamous relationship. not all
couples are given the gift of children. But all couples, all husbands and all wives, can
give their spouse the everlasting gift of fidelity. the promise made during the wedding is
“to be true,” and each married person can live that truth every day. although the marital
good of proles, children, is the most visible sign of the love between husband and wife,
especially to the world at large, no less visible to the married couple is the fidelity with
which they live, the truth with which they demonstrate their love every day. Without the
presence of the spouse, there would be no opportunity to demonstrate fidelity. It is only
within the lived truth of the marriage that the good of fidelity is cultivated.
With this fidelity, the couple owes each other not just continence of body but also continence of affection. “you have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell
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you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her
in his heart” (matt. 5:27-28 naB). When our Savior spoke these words, he made it clear
that the husband’s affections, both physical and emotional, rightly were directed only to
his wife. In a like manner, the wife owes the same affection, whole and complete, body
and heart, only to her husband.
[p]hysical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total
personal self-giving, in which the whole person, including the temporal dimension, is present: if the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by this very fact he or she would not
be giving totally.10
an important aspect of this fidelity, given by husband to wife, by wife to husband, is the
fact that it is permanent. on their wedding day, the couple vows to remain together “until
death do [they] part.” We are taught that the love of a husband and wife reflects the great
mystery, the love of christ for his church. like christ’s love for his church, the love of
husband and wife is exclusive. like christ’s love for his church, the love of husband and
wife is given in total. Just as christ loves his church for all eternity, so, too, the love of the
married spouses is permanent, so long as their lives on this earth last. as pius XI writes
in Casti Connubii:
By matrimony, therefore, the souls of the contracting parties are joined and knit
together more directly and more intimately than are their bodies, and that not
by any passing affection of sense of spirit, but by a deliberate and firm act of
the will; and from this union of souls by god’s decree, a sacred and inviolable
bond arises.11
augustine’s final good of marriage is sacramentum, living a sacramental lifestyle. like fidelity, this is not a good that can be attained by a solitary individual. that is not to say
that a solitary individual cannot live a sacramental lifestyle but rather that the particulars
of any marriage’s sacramentum are such that there must be two, legitimately married, to
experience this particular good.
the husband and wife make a very special gift to each other — each enables the other to
live in accord with the plan of god. as John paul II writes in Familiaris Consortio:
By taking up the human reality of the love between husband and wife in all its
implications, the sacrament gives to christian couples and parents a power and
a commitment to live their vocation as lay people and therefore to “seek the
kingdom of god by engaging in temporal affairs and ordering them according
to the plan of god.”12
83
pius XI puts great emphasis on the good of sacramentum. In Casti Connubii, he writes:
“this mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other,
can in a very real sense, as the roman catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason
and purpose of matrimony.”13
When one reflects upon these goods of marriage, it is obvious that in a very real sense,
they are gifts given, spouse to spouse, enabled only within the context of marriage. this
gifting is not a static process. rather, it is the work of a lifetime. each of these goods
always is present, and always is available, but as life goes on and circumstances change,
the balance of the goods of marriage changes. early in a marriage, the good of children is
most visible and most emphasized. as time goes on and children grow and move on, the
emphasis shifts more to the fidelity between husband and wife and to the sacramental
lifestyle to which they are called.
the husband and wife each act as giver. the husband makes a gift of himself to his
wife, and the wife makes a gift of herself to her husband. they are equal partners in the
marriage. one neither imposes the goods upon the other from above nor accepts them
from below.
In On the Good of Marriage, St. augustine writes that marriage “signifies the unity of us
all made subject to god, which shall be hereafter in one heavenly city.”14 marriage is
a reflection of our ultimate destiny, our union with god and, through him, with all of
humanity. there will be no distinction in heaven between the slave and the free person
or between the mighty and the meek. all will put on christ and all will be one in him.
John paul II describes this fruitful union in Familiaris Consortio:
this conjugal communion sinks its roots in the natural complementarity that
exists between man and woman, and is nurtured through the personal willingness of the spouses to share their entire life-project, what they have and what
they are: for this reason such communion is the fruit and the sign of a profoundly human need. But in the lord christ, god takes up this human need,
confirms it, purifies it and elevates it, leading it to perfection through the sacrament of matrimony: the holy Spirit who is poured out in the sacramental
celebration offers christian couples the gift of a new communion of love that
the living and real image of that unique unity which makes of the church the
indivisible mystical Body of the lord Jesus.15
thus, a marriage that reflects this reality, the relation of christ to his church, will not be
a marriage in which power plays a role. the man and the woman, it is true, have different roles, as husband and wife, as father and mother. But the one is not greater than the
other. though their offices are different, the dignity of each is equal.
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Stephen naKroSIS
this equality is evidenced in the nature of the goods of marriage. one cannot simply
impose fidelity upon another, nor can one force it from an unwilling partner. Similarly,
one cannot be forced to live in a sacramental manner, but freely must desire to do so, and
must work to achieve the ends for which the sacrament has been given.
the two spouses — husband and wife — in union with Jesus christ — must work together, in partnership, with all this implies, to assist each other in the work of their marriage.
through the intercession of the holy Spirit, they grow in love and in knowledge, of each
other and of god. In such a way, their marriage becomes their real life’s work, and the
goods derived from it become the reward for their efforts and a sign to the world at large
of their love and commitment to each other. as John paul II emphasizes:
the gift of the Spirit is a commandment of life for christian spouses and at the
same time a stimulating impulse so that every day they may progress towards an
ever richer union with each other on all levels — of the body, of the character,
of the heart, of the intelligence and will, of the soul — revealing in this way to
the church and to the world the new communion of love, given by the grace
of christ.16
Stephen Nakrosis works for a financial newswire service in New York City. He
received a Master’s degree in Journalism from Northeastern University and a
Master’s degree in Theology from Immaculate Conception Seminary School of
Theology. Dr. Toth was one of his professors and was his thesis advisor. Stephen
lives in Clifton, New Jersey, with his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Mary.
noteS
1. Second Vatican council, Dogmatic constitution on the church, Lumen Gentium,
39.
2. new advent, “church fathers: of the good of marriage (St. augustine),”
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1309.htm (accessed august 22, 2009).
3. pius XI, encyclical on christian marriage, Casti Connubii, 1.
4. Diocese of camden, “a letter from the catholic Bishops of new Jersey,
dated 12 february 2009” http://www.camdendiocese.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=
article&id=984:a-letter-from-the-catholic-bishps-of-new-jersey&catid=33:press-releases-a-latestnews&Itemid=1203 (accessed november 1, 2009).
5. John paul II, apostolic exhortation, Familaris Consortio, 25.
6. leo XIII, encyclical on christian marriage, Arcanum, 11.
7. new advent, “church fathers: of the good of marriage (St. augustine).”
8. John paul II, 28.
9. pius XI, 37.
11. pius XI, 7.
13. pius XI, 24.
14. new advent, “church fathers: of the good of marriage (St. augustine).”
16. Ibid.
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86
Breaking Bread Together
By William toth, Jr.
When I think about my father’s life and the gifts he gave us, I often think about his sense
of taste. I mean his olfactory sense. my father could sniff out rosemary, for example, in
a dinner entrée faster than a german shepherd could spot a potted marijuana plant in
the trunk of a VW van. my father didn’t like rosemary. But he loved to eat. he loved the
arrangement of flavor as much as he loved the arrangement of guests at his table. eating
together was a sign of our thanks for the graciousness of the father.
In our house, food never was just sustenance. It provided an opportunity to sit together,
know one another and love one another better. “for where two or three are gathered
in my name, I am there among them” (matt 18:20 nrSV). all meals started with grace
— salutations to the lord! During dinner at our home, one could expect a lot of things
— repartee on an array of subjects ranging from art and history to drama and sports, a
philosophical debate or poetic discourse on the depth of the yankees’ bullpen. eating
together was really important. I remember being eleven years old and chugging home
from Billy manus’s on my mountain bike with my mother’s voice alive in my head,
“don’t be late for dinner!” I gather my dad heard the same in his head as he unleashed
that throaty, supercharged Dodge hemi on the garden State parkway and raced home for
dinner, too. Dinner was the opportunity to thank the lord for a tangible gift and enjoy
it with our friends.
my brothers and I referred to our dad as the “food guru.” having a master’s and a Doctorate didn’t excuse him from getting corn on his face or dropping his Brooks Brothers
necktie into a bowl of pea soup. he ate aggressively. But he really did have an acute sense
of what went together. he enjoyed our company and that of anyone who might be visiting. With a family of 10, we had a lot of guests.
a year and a half ago I joined another family of great eaters — the new york fire Department. I am on the bottom of the ladder, as it were. I don’t quite understand all the personalities of the men in my firehouse, but I know they are fundamentally good people,
because they enjoy eating and do it together. this is a city-wide firehouse tradition — the
BreaKIng BreaD together
87
brothers always eat together. you might see us shopping for food in full firefighting regalia. We prepare the meals together and critique the meals, too. We discuss the day’s
happenings, sports or the current action blockbuster at the movies. I enjoy this part of
my work day most. It reminds me of what my mom and dad taught me and what their
parents taught them — we break bread together as a remembrance of christ’s love for us
and the beautiful gifts our father has given us.
thank you to the “food guru,” my dad, for all the gifts, and well, the food, too, of
course!
William Toth, Jr., Dr. William Toth’s son, is a member of the FDNY and works
in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He and his wife, Nivedita, reside in Manhattan.
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How Papal Teachings on Erotic Love
and Theology of the Body are Applied
Through the Virtue of Modesty
By reverend W. Jerome Bracken, c.p., ph.D.
Does it seem odd to you that pope Benedict XVI, in his first encyclical, God Is Love,1
devotes so much space to writing about erotic love? Does it seem odd to you that pope
John paul II devoted 129 weeks of his Wednesday general audiences to speaking about
human sexuality in terms of a “theology of the Body?”2 Since so much of our culture is
focused on sex, shouldn’t our spiritual leaders help us to rise above what is sexual and
direct our minds to what is above rather than to what is below, or at least condemn what
is so crass and crude in our day?
“no” is the answer of Benedict XVI and “no” is the answer of John paul II. Both of them
see in human sexuality not only the mystery of god’s creation but also the mystery of his
redemption. Benedict XVI goes back to the experience of erotic love to show how, when
it is purified of its aberrations, it is linked with the christian love of agape. John paul II
goes back to the story of our own creation in genesis to show that through our bodies, as
male and female, we express our very personhood. When that expression is a gift of love
to another, we take on a likeness to christ, who gave himself up for our salvation.
In this article, I wish to set forth how the two pontiffs see our sexuality as basically human
and as leading us to the divine and then to offer how this can be achieved by acquiring
what aquinas delineates as the “sexual virtues.” this will be illustrated by referring to an
incident in christ’s life and showing how the practice of modesty is essential for bringing
this about.3
Love
In examining the greek concept of erotic love, Benedict XVI describes it “as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of reason by a ‘divine madness’ which tears man away from
his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine
power, to experience supreme happiness.”4 In more mundane terms one might call erotic
love an experience of heaven on earth, whose loved one is described as “divine.”
papal teachIngS
89
Such an experience, however, has been corrupted in ancient as well as in modern times.
In the time of the ancient greeks, fertility cults were introduced. Seemingly ordered to the
divine, the erotic experience gained at the temple came from turning women into objects
of desire to be manipulated for selfish pleasure.5 In our own day, eros has been corrupted by
being reduced to “pure sex.” one’s body and sexuality is considered to be only the material
part of his being, to be used and exploited at will. no longer does one see his sexuality “as an
arena for the exercise of…freedom” and as the “vital expression of our whole being.” now
it is simply an object that is made “enjoyable” but “harmless.”6 for eros to regain its power
and to be “an ascent in ‘ecstasy’ towards the Divine,” that is, “a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence,...for which our whole being yearns,” it must be “purified”7 — not in
the sense of the physical being separated from the spiritual, but in the sense of the physical
and the spiritual being joined together so that we are led beyond the confines of ourselves.8
according to the hebrew Bible’s Song of Songs, this process can well begin with an indeterminate and searching kind of love (dodim), but it reaches maturity when it becomes “a real
discovery of the other,” in which one moves beyond the intoxicating experience of love to
seek the good of the beloved (ahabà). then, by an act of self-giving to the other person that
is “exclusive” and “for ever,” one discovers not only the other but his own self and god.9
Creation
pope John paul II takes a different, yet similar approach. In examining the Book of genesis, he sees the two creation stories about our creation as humans as closely related not
only because Jesus quoted from both stories when speaking about the permanency of
marriage and against divorce (matt. 19), but because these stories set forth the outer and
inner aspects of our humanity and of our sexuality.10
In the first creation story, god is portrayed as making us in his image. as he has dominion over all of creation, he gives us dominion over our own lives and over all living creatures, “over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over
all the earth.”11 however, god does not stop there. he makes us in his image not just as
human but as male and female. as John paul II puts it, it is by being in communion with
each other, as male and female, that we image god.
finally, god makes us in his image by giving us a share in his own creative activity, not
only by exercising dominion over all living things of the earth but also by commanding
us to “[b]e fruitful and multiply.”13 he is the creator, and we are to be procreators.
augustine, long ago, took from this understanding of our human nature that our actions must aim at obtaining three good things, a companionship that is faithful (”bonum
fides”), an openness to and a care for new life (“bonum proles”) and an ability to image
god’s unbreakable covenant of love (“bonum sacramentum”). outwardly, our actions are
ordered to these three things.14
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Inwardly, there is something else involved. this is revealed in the second creation account
(gen. chapter 2), in which god is portrayed as giving man multiple gifts. he gives man
the breath of life, then a garden in eden to live in and care for, animals to help him in his
work and finally the gift of eve herself.15 It is through his response to each of these gifts
that adam gains an inner and deeper awareness of himself. he is alive. he is pleased with
the trees and their goodness for food. he is superior to them, for he has power to tend to
the trees of the garden and eat their fruit and he is free to obey god in not taking from
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. he is, then, self-aware and self-determining.
he has the power to name and determine the roles of the animals god gives him as his
helpers. But his being superior to them makes him realize that he is not like them. he is
alone. finally, his sense of self and his exercise of freedom reaches its pinnacle when he
is presented with eve as his helper. he sees in her a likeness to himself, bone of his bone,
flesh of his flesh, but he grasps something more. She, far more than the animals, is inwardly aware of herself, inwardly pleased with the world, inwardly able to choose how to
live and to love. her body, with its inner freedom, is an expression of her own person. as
a gift of god, eve can be adam’s “helper,” his completion. Should he, should she, freely
leave home and cling to the other, they will become one, two in one flesh.16
unfortunately, the story of their creation turns into the story of their fall and thereby the
story of what we inherited, and did not inherit, from them. accepting Satan’s rather than
god’s words, they abuse their freedom and disobey god. as a result, instead of being
able to walk with god in the cool of the evening, they hide from him. they are ashamed.
they forfeit the world he has given them for the vain promises of Satan. choosing to be
the arbiters of truth, they mentally lose their moorings about what is truly good. making
each of themselves the supreme good, they make their own wills malicious, adam blaming eve and eve blaming the serpent. Desiring forbidden pleasures, adam finds the earth,
from which he came, resisting him. Desiring adam, eve finds adam, from whom she
came, dominating her. having rebelled against god and each other in mind and heart,
they find their senses and emotions rebelling against their own minds and hearts. unable
to sustain this inner division indefinitely, adam and eve die, and so do we.17
Redemption
had not god come back to them, outwardly making them clothes to hide their nakedness and inwardly bestowing his love (i.e., grace) upon them with the promise of a Savior, they would have had no hope, nor would we. But with god’s forgiving love and his
promised Savior, a new union with god, self and the world can be forged.
Aquinas and Virtues
aquinas explains how this can be done through divine gifts and human effort. So in the
second part of Book II of the Summa Theologica, questions 1-46, he explains that god first
gifts us with his love so that we are sanctified and are made capable of responding to his
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overtures of love with the virtues of faith, hope and charity. then, in questions 47-170,
aquinas speaks of the human effort that god calls us to make, with the aid of his grace,
so that our human powers of acting can start working in harmony with one another as
god’s gift of original justice enabled adam and eve to do. In Book III, aquinas speaks
of god’s ultimate gift to us, his Son. By his own living and dying, christ brings about
his transformation through his death and resurrection, and then through the sacraments
enables us to enter into a similar process.
one part of this transformation that grace, christ and our own human effort bring about
occurs in the sexual sphere. What is sexual is an integral part of our nature. consequently,
we are inclined not only to preserve and promote our own individual existence but also
to preserve and promote the good of the human race. By being integrated with our rational inclination “to know the truth about god, and to live in society,” our sexual inclination does this in a human way.18 It involves human intelligence and freedom of choice
and thus it comes from the soul as well as from the body. consequently, the Catechism
of the Catholic Church describes human sexuality in the following way: “Sexuality affects
all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns
affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude
for forming bonds of communion with others.”19 this means that when we experience
our sexual inclination we experience a bodily and spiritual need for affection, a need to
love and procreate and a need to form bonds of communion with others. Seeking the
fulfillment of these sexual needs is seeking not something evil but the fulfillment of our
own human nature.
If this is the case, then why are so many theologians wary of our sexual desires? even the
great cappadocian and brother of St. Basil, gregory of nyssa, who himself was married,
believed that in the garden of eden before adam and eve’s fall, the human race would
have been propagated by some means other than sexual intercourse.20
augustine, fortunately, disagreed. While acknowledging the easy connection between our
sexual desires and sin, he affirmed that such desires are sinful only when the goods of
friendship, progeny and god are not pursued. When one makes the other the object of
his pleasure rather than the subject of his love and when he disconnects the pleasure of
love from the fruitfulness of love, he turns sexual desire into lust. Similarly, when desire
turns to what is finite to the exclusion of what is infinite, then desire (i.e., erotic love)
becomes lust (i.e., sinful).
aquinas recognized that sexual desire becomes sinful not because of the sensible pleasure that comes from it but because what is sensible is broken off from what is spiritual.
In fact, he affirms that sexual love would have been more intense and pleasurable had
there been no sin, for all our powers would have been integrated.21
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aquinas clearly grasped that as body-spirit realities, we have multiple ways of perceiving
the world around us, and so multiple ways of judging something good or evil. When a
food is sweet to our taste, it pleases us and so we say it is good. But if we remember how
that particular food gave us a stomach ache in the past, we emotionally distance ourselves
from it and say it is no good. But if it is the only thing that can keep us alive now and in
the foreseeable future, then our minds have to step in and determine whether it is good
or bad for us. If it is judged really good for us, then we should choose to eat it despite
our emotional aversion and concentrate on the pleasure of the moment! (of course, this
is not the same as “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” since in the case presented, we’ll have a stomach ache tomorrow but live rather than die!).
In the sexual sphere, similar things can happen. multiple perceptions of a person can
bring about multiple and disparate responses, one or another of which will be to our
good or to our harm. consequently, aquinas, and many before and after him, saw the
need for acquiring certain strengths or virtues so that we can think clearly about what is
at stake, make our way through all our pleasures and desires and choose to do good.
the virtue of temperance helps us to do this. In that virtue, aquinas sees three different
sets of strengths or virtues that can help us to make good choices.22 In fact, knowledge
of these six aspects of temperance can give us insight into how christ acted in given incidents in his life and how we might imitate and become like him.
the first set of strengths, which aquinas calls the integral virtues of temperance because
they help to prevent one from doing evil and aid one in doing good, are shame (verecundia) and honor (honestas). Shame, however, is not actually a virtue of the will or of
our sensible appetite but an emotion.23 In shame, one fears being disgraced, and so he
pulls away from what would disgrace him. for instance, in writing about the behavior of
women wearing slit dresses, a writer observed “that ‘when the wind blows, almost all of
them are overwhelmed by modesty and take measures to prevent their thighs from being
overexposed.’”24 these women would be ashamed of being “’overexposed,’” and acted in
a manner to preserve their modesty.
as for the man with honor, he does act virtuously. Instead of taking advantage of a woman, he has the courage to do the more difficult thing of protecting her and her reputation.
he becomes like one of the knights of old protecting the “lady in waiting.”25
according to Wendy Shalit, the author of A Return to Modesty, there is something natural about shame and honor – and there is. the emotions related to shame and honor
manifest themselves when one’s perception of a situation is matched with his own sexual
inclination. Inclined to bonds of affection, a woman recoils in shame from a situation
in which she perceives that such affection is unlikely. Inclined to bonds of affection, a
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man seeks to do the admirable thing to win the other’s affection. (this sense of honor
works well except in those situations of today when the man who refrains from making
advances on a woman is perceived as a wimp rather than as a gentleman. then, instead
of honorable behavior being invited, abusive behavior is.)
the next set of strengths consists of “continence” (continentia) and “modesty” (modestia).
the strength called “continence” is a virtue in the proper sense in that it inclines one
to act well and this inclination is acquired by free, repeated and good acts. however,
continence is a virtue of the will only. that is, with continence one’s will is subject to his
command of reason to pursue the sexual goods of friendship, progeny and god, but his
sensations and emotions are not subject to reason.
a man without continence would be a man like alfie in the 1965 film by the same name.
Seeking his own satisfaction and in his own way “meaning no harm,” alfie has relations
with every woman he can charm, whether it be the married woman in the car, or gilda,
his “backup” lover, who becomes pregnant with his child but for whom alfie is not
about to take responsibility, or his hospital friend’s wife, who also becomes pregnant
when he seduces her and for whom he callously arranges an abortion. alfie has neither
the thought nor the will to say “no” to his own pleasures for the sake of others. like the
continent man, his sensations and emotions haphazardly seek their own satisfaction, but
unlike the continent man, he has no will to resist them, even in the face of tragedy.
In the midst of our very sexualized culture, the virtue of continence is very much needed. the
woman who is made fun of by a man when she does not want to have sex needs strength
of will to say “no” to him and to keep him from wearing her down. Wanting affection, she
needs strength of will to resist getting it in this abusive way. a man who avails himself of
the Internet needs the virtue of continence to resist the sexual teasers being displayed on his
home page. Wanting gratification, he needs strength of will to resist getting that gratification
from what is only a “virtual reality,” i.e., from something neither real nor virtuous!
In modesty, one acquires a different kind of strength. It is not simply strength of will to
resist untoward sexual urges. modesty is a strength that enables one to utilize his sexual
pleasures and desires to establish bonds of affection and communion with others and
even to enter into and maintain a marital relationship. thus when sexual feelings are
awakened by one’s perception of his own or another’s sexual qualities, modesty inclines
those feelings to acts of genuine friendship and love.
the third set of strengths comprises the virtues of purity (pudicitia) and chastity (castitas).
like modesty, they give strength both to one’s will and to one’s sexual appetites, so that he
can fulfill his needs for affection, communion and procreation. purity and chastity deal
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with those pleasures and desires awakened by touch. While the seeing of a handsome
man by a woman or the hearing of a woman’s voice and the smelling of her perfume by
a man can give each of them pleasure and awaken emotions of love or desire, these inner
movements can be managed easily by the virtue of modesty. But when the sense of touch
is involved in perceiving what is sexual, stronger movements of one’s sexual appetite are
experienced. a kiss or a hug is much more moving than what is seen or heard, so purity,
and not modesty, is needed. the body-to-body touching that leads up to and occurs during sexual intercourse is even more moving, so chastity is needed. When these virtues
are in place, one’s sexual pleasures and desires enable him to establish genuine bonds of
communion, to procreate and care for new life and to be related to god. thus with the
virtue of chastity, one’s erotic love not only reaches a state of ecstasy but becomes a gift of
oneself for the other’s goodness and happiness.
It is through the stepping stones of these six virtues, from shame and honor, to continence and modesty and finally to purity and chastity, that erotic love is able to become
christian love, joyous self-giving for the good and goodness of the other.
Christ and the Sexual Virtues
our knowledge of these virtues can give us insight into an incident in christ’s life and
how we might imitate and become like him.
the incident is described in chapter seven of the gospel of luke. It occurred when Jesus
accepted Simon the pharisee’s invitation to dine with him. upon learning that Jesus was
at table in Simon’s house, “a woman of the city, who was a sinner....brought an alabaster
flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet
with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed
them with the ointment.”26
In what way this woman was a sinner, St. luke does not say. only her unbounded hair
gives us a hint. as one scholar explains, “for a Jewish woman to appear with hair unbound was an act of gravest immodesty. on her wedding day a girl bound up her hair and
never would she appear with it unbound again.”27
Simon the pharisee knows her past. Seeing her touch Jesus’ feet with her unbounded hair
and loving kisses, Simon makes the judgment that Jesus, as a prophet, should know what
kind of woman is touching him. a continent person never would allow such a thing to
happen, lest he be seduced into wrongdoing.
however, Jesus is not this way. as a prophet, he does know the woman’s past, and he even
knows Simon’s thoughts, but he does not stop the woman from kissing his feet, drying
them with her hair and anointing them. Jesus has not only the virtue of continence to
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resist what is sinful but also the virtues of modesty and purity. So while he sees her womanly hair and tears and feels the touch of her hair and kisses, he is not seduced. rather,
modest and pure, Jesus is able to receive the pleasure they give him and emotionally
respond to her loving kisses (katephilei) with his own emotion of love. and so he defends
her actions. contrasting her signs of respect for him with Simon’s signs of disrespect,
Jesus says, “’you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and
wiped them with her hair. you gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not
ceased to kiss my feet. you did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet
with ointment.’”28 and then Jesus says to the woman, “’your sins are forgiven.’”29
the distinction between how Simon acts toward the woman and how Jesus acts is an
important one not only because Jesus sees the woman favorably and Simon does not
but also because of their reactions. extrapolating on Simon’s thoughts about what Jesus
should have done, we can assume that Simon never would have allowed the woman
to touch him. But we know that Jesus does. considering that sensations of pleasure or
pain automatically follow upon a thing’s suitability or unsuitability to one’s sense of
sight, hearing, smell, taste or touch and considering that emotions of love and desire or
hate and aversion automatically follow upon one’s perception of a thing’s suitability or
unsuitability to his natural inclinations, we can assume that Jesus feels pleasure at the
woman’s touch and is moved emotionally with love by her suitable, rather than unsuitable, actions toward him.
In fact, we should assume this. aquinas says that the highest perfection a moral act can
have is one that involves not only an interior movement of the will towards what is
good (Jesus favoring her) and an exterior execution expressive of that movement (Jesus
defending her) but also a movement of one’s own feelings accompanying these interior
and exterior acts of the will.30 Jesus loved her emotionally and not just intellectually and
supernaturally. christ’s act of forgiveness came from his entire being.
Imitation of Jesus and the Sexual Virtue of Modesty
Since this is the case of Jesus, then for us to be like him, we need to acquire the same
sexual virtues he had. not only should we be ashamed to act inappropriately even in the
privacy of the Internet but we should seek to do the honorable thing even in that moment and resist sexual teasers being displayed. furthermore, should we want not to sin
sexually, we need to build a will power strong enough to resist the movements of pleasure
and desire that would lead us into sin. one important way of doing this is not to stand
near the fire of temptation and see how well one resists it but to make those choices of
the will that avoid all proximate occasions of serious sin. each choice we make in this
regard will strengthen us when an occasion of serious sin arises.
But establishing proper boundaries lest one become the victim of one’s own pleasures
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and sexual desires is not enough. one has to learn how to incorporate his sensations of
pleasure and emotions of love into his choices for what is sexually good. the practice
of modesty is the key way of learning how to do this. for one reason, modesty is the
midpoint of the sexual virtues. like continence, modesty involves an exercise of the will.
unlike continence, modesty involves a movement of one’s sensible appetite. Both one’s
will and one’s sensible appetites are inclined to carry out one’s judgment of conscience
as to how he should behave regarding his own or another’s sexuality. like purity and
chastity, modesty involves the movement of one’s sensible appetites as well as one’s will.
unlike purity and chastity, the movement that is to be directed to the sexual goods is not
as strong as those stirred by the sense of touch; hence it is easier to direct these sensible
movements to what is good sexually.
moreover, modesty involves the two things that draw us into action, our nature and our
powers of perception. By nature, and so by god Who created us this way, we are inclined
to what is good for us, not only to preserve ourselves through food and drink but to
preserve our own human race through sex. When we experience the sexual inclination
within ourselves, we, like adam, experience a need for affection and companionship that
no created thing or animal can fulfill. When we perceive that there is no one who can
meet these needs, we experience a sense of great loneliness.31
on the other hand, when we, like adam, perceive someone who can meet these needs,
we experience pleasure at the sight of that person and a desire to be united with that person.32 In the case of continence, however, the pleasure and desire are not subject to one’s
reason; only one’s will is subject to reason’s command. So the pleasure and desire have
the power to lead us away from what is truly good and thus often have to be resisted. In
the case of modesty, the pleasure and desire are subject to reason and so they do not have
to be resisted; they actually assist us in coming to know and love the other person.
as distinct from the cases where purity and/or chastity are needed, the pleasures and
desires that modesty deals with are awakened only by the perceptions of sight, sound
and smell. Since we are at a distance from the other person, these senses do not move us
as vehemently as the direct contact that comes from the sense of touch. We are stirred by
pleasure and desire, but not at so intense a level that we are swept overboard. So, while
experiencing such feelings, we still are able to think and choose how to act. on beholding
eve, adam was able to see her as a gift from god, but he also was able to see her not as
something to be taken like food from a tree but as someone like himself who was utterly
free and so at liberty in being or not being a gift to him.33 So adam could wait upon her
choice, and she upon his. In the meantime, they could come to know more and more
about each other. Since the movement of the will and senses is proportionate to what we
apprehend of the other, the greater knowledge that adam and eve gained of each other
enabled the free gift of themselves to be even greater.
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too often in our day, however, bodily contact comes first with its overwhelming pleasures, and the intense experience of the other’s body shuts out the more subtle and more
insightful ways of coming to know a person. the practice of modesty, on the other hand,
gives each person time to know the other person and oneself, time to decide whether
or not to receive the other person as god’s unique gift and time to decide and prepare
oneself to make that ultimate gift of self to the other person, that is both “exclusive” and
“forever.”
moreover, the willingness to forgo the full pleasure of body-to-body contact, which is
part of the practice of modesty, makes one ready to give himself to the other person in a
way that looks to the other’s good and not just to his own self-satisfaction. Instead of sex
being a quid pro quo, it is made into a gift, something freely given to the other person and
something freely received from the other person. then the intensity of erotic love can be
linked to one’s own act of freedom, whereby through a free gift of self, one discovers not
only the other and his own self but god as well.
Conclusion
In summary, we can say that god made us, body and soul, with the power of erotic love
not to draw us into our inner selves but to draw us to each other and to himself, whereby
our free gifts to each other become our happiness in each other. the practice of modesty
prepares us for such happiness. the modesty in which one is aware of his own and another’s sexuality and in which he feels both the pleasure of this and the desirableness of
complete communion prepares us either for the moment and lifetime of freely giving
oneself to another, as happens in marriage, or for the moment and lifetime of freely giving the gift of self to no one other than god, as happens in celibacy.
Father W. Jerome Bracken, C.P., is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics
at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology. He was ordained
to the priesthood in 1968 and earned a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from
Fordham University and a Master’s in Theology from St. Michael’s Seminary,
Union City, New Jersey.
noteS
1. Benedict XVI, encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est, 3-9.
2. John paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans.
michael Waldstein (Boston: pauline Books and media, 2006), 4.
3. Ibid., 70. michael Waldstein writes: “the gospel’s ideal of the moral perfection
that is to be reached by following Jesus, Wojtyla argues, has three main characteristics. (1)
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It is a real ideal, because it aims at a real perfection of the person in the imitation of a real
perfection already found in Jesus. (2) It is a practical ideal, because it is realized by acts
of which the person is the responsible cause, acts by which the person therefore becomes
really good or bad. (3) It is a religious ideal, both because the perfection to be imitated is
that of the father and the Son and because imitation establishes the right personal relation
with god as the final end.”
4. Benedict XVI, 4.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 5.
7. Ibid., 4.
8. Ibid., 5.
9. Ibid., 6.
10. John paul II, 132, 136-37.
11. gen. 1:26.
12. John paul II,163.
13. gen. 1:28.
14. augustine, De Bono Conjugali, ed. roy J. Deferrari (new york: fathers of the
church, Inc., 1955), 48.
15. John paul II, 178-200.
16. Ibid.,146-69.
17. Ibid., 236-63. See also St. thomas aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 85, a. 5. “In
this way the sin of our first parent is the cause of death and all such like defects in human
nature, in so far as by the sin of our first parent original justice was taken away, whereby
not only were the lower powers of the soul held together under the control of reason,
without any disorder whatever, but also the whole body was held together in subjection
to the soul, without any defect, as stated in the first part (Q. 97, a. 1). Wherefore, original
justice being forfeited through the sin of our first parent; just as human nature was stricken
in the soul by the disorder among the powers, as stated above (a. 3; Q. 82, a. 3.), so also
it became subject to corruption, by reason of disorder in the body.”
18. St. thomas aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, a. 2.
19. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2332.
20. St. thomas aquinas I-II, q. 98, a. 2.
21. Ibid.
22. St. thomas aquinas II-II, q. 143, a. 1.
23. St. thomas aquinas II-II, q. 144, a. 1.
24. Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue (new york: Simon
and Schuster, touchstone Book, 1999), 122.
25. Ibid., 149-51.
26. luke 7: 37-38.
27. William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, rev. ed. (philadelphia: Westminster press,
1975), 95.
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28. luke 7: 44-46.
29. luke 7: 48.
30. St. thomas aquinas I-II, q. 24, a. 3.
31. gen. 2:18; John paul II, 146-54. “then the lorD god said, ‘It is not good that
the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’”
32. gen. 2:23. “then the man said, ‘this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my
flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man.’”
33. John paul II, 182-200.
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“A Father’s Love”
by Richard Tienken
Holy Rosary, Passaic, NJ
St. Joseph Regional High School
In a christian home, there is love where all can see. the love between family members is most
evident. this photograph I took is a picture of my little brother and my father. at the time, we were
at a park, and they were sharing a quiet moment. my father was saying a silent prayer for our family
and for his young son. as you can see, my little brother shares the moment and strokes my father’s
smooth, clean-shaven face.
the love of a father is a powerful thing…. We are all god’s children; and with his love, comes his
compassion. psalm 103:3 says, “Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the lord has
compassion on those who fear him.” this verse is a great example of how much the lord really loves
his creation and his sons and daughters on earth.
my father loves his children more than he loves himself. It is very tough for a human to try and live a
life that fits god’s expectations and example. I believe this photograph provides an excellent illustration of what these prospects really are.
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A Letter to My Father
By regina Wackerman
this is a letter I wrote and read at my Dad’s grave on what was his birthday:
Dear Dad,
a father can have many children, but a child has only one father, and you are my father.
on your birthday I would like to acknowledge your gifts and to thank you for them. I
will miss your kindness, your decency and the way you brought dignity to everything
you did. I will miss your good judgment and your sense of humor. I will miss your
good manners. I will miss your style of problem solving, which was the counterintuitive
method of sweating only the small stuff. the big stuff you could handle, and you always
did, with that large measure of grace known only to you. you were never thrown by
tragedy because you had a deep and abiding faith in the providence of god. Shakespeare
describes it as “the star to every wandering bark.” you fixed your eyes on that star, and
it brought you through. you lived what you were, and you were a great man. you could
not do otherwise. I quote hopkins here: “the just man justices, keeps grace and keeps all
his goings graces; acts in god’s eye what in god’s eye he is — christ. for christ plays in
ten thousand places, lovely in limb, and lovely in eyes not his. to the father through the
features of men’s faces.”
I love you, Dad — father forth!
regina
Regina Wackerman, Dr. William Toth’s daughter, lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey,
with her husband, Bill, and their three children.
10 2
“A Mother’s Nurturing”
by Robert Aramboles
St. Francis of Assisi, Bronx, NY
All Hallows High School
It is quite difficult to see god in day-to-day family life. We tend to get so caught up in the big picture
in life that the little things that make god obvious tend to be overlooked. the mortgage needs to
get paid, the kids need to get to school on time, and your body is aching from a long day at work.
yet when you focus on the little things everything comes into perspective. Sometimes it is as easy as
one’s influence over another….
from the subtle influences a person can have on another we can see the presence of god in family
life. If this loving mother never gave the little boy a set of headphones to listen to music he may turn
out to be a totally different person than he will be. he may have been bitter and distant from the
people around him. however, he becomes warmer and more loving when he hears “music” and as
a result, is more caring. he is allowed to experience the presence of god through other people and
will now become a better person thanks to his mother’s influence.
10 3
One Family, One Marine,
One Lord of All
By andrew e. Saunders, m.a., m.a.t.
It was approximately midnight when the phone began to ring. my wife, peg, and I were
startled and awakened by the noise. as the phone continued to ring, my mind began to
clear from a sleepy fog and my heart started to race with anxiety. Who could be calling at
this hour? Was there an emergency? had something happened? phone calls in the middle of the night generally are terrifying and usually bring with them bad news. my wife
picked up the phone and noticed that the number on the caller ID was a strange six-digit
number and not the standard ten-digit phone number. maybe it was a wrong number, or
a prank or some sort of a scam. maybe we should let it ring and not answer it. If it were
important, the caller could leave a message and we would call back.
But a little inner voice coaxed my wife to answer the phone. “hello,” she said rather
hesitantly. She was startled and surprised to hear the voice on the other end of the phone.
In fact, the voice was so loud and clear that I could hear it from a couple of feet away.
… “hey, mom, it’s Dave! hello from afghanistan. how’s it going in new Jersey?” We
quickly woke up our daughter, meghan, and the three of us excitedly gathered together
passing the phone around, each asking Dave questions and rejoicing in the few short
minutes allotted before we said our goodbyes.
oh, what a sweet joy to hear our son’s voice! god had listened. he had answered our
prayers! When we finally went back to sleep that night a sense of calmness, peace and
gratitude had descended upon us. our growing sense of anxiety knowing that our son
had entered the war-torn country of afghanistan had been dispelled, at least temporarily.
In this unexpected call in the middle of the night we found such complete joy and happiness in hearing our son’s voice from a faraway and dangerous land. yes, truly the lord is
kind and merciful to those with aching and hurting hearts who trust in him.
In prior wars, families eagerly would sit around the kitchen table opening letters from
loved ones with care and anticipation, knowing that every piece of communication was
a blessing and a grace. each word lovingly would be read, sometimes aloud, so that all
could hear. In today’s world, with instant global communications, I discovered that it
I m m ac u lat e conc e pt I on Se mI na ry School of t heol ogy
10 4
anDreW e. SaunDerS
can be a surprise phone call in the middle of the night from a war-torn country that can
become a sacred family moment.
It is never easy to send a son or daughter, a brother or sister, or a father or mother off
to war. there is fear and anxiety over a long separation from a loved one and the worry
and hope that the loved one will return healthy in mind and body when his or her
mission has been completed. the final moments and conversations before departure
are etched forever into our memory banks. the senses become heightened and more
intense. colors are sharper and more brilliant. our emotions become more difficult to
control. We vividly remember smells, tastes, touches and sounds with all their brilliance
and clarity.
yet despite the heartache, the fear and the deep anxiety, there also are feelings of intense
pride and of being touched by the grace of god. for peg and me, the last moments that
we spent with our son were on a Wednesday morning in a diner, enjoying a meal together. It was the simple pleasure of a mother, a father and their son sharing an ordinary
meal, laughing and enjoying one another’s company. as I reflect on what it means to be
family, I am convinced that each time we break bread together is a sacred and profound
moment. for us, this meal on that Wednesday morning was a celebration, a meal of
thanksgiving and a commemoration of our lives together as family. In our sorrow at
knowing that soon we would be separated, there also was the anticipation of great joy,
knowing that we would be reunited in the future.
Indeed, as time passes, it becomes clearer to me that the family itself is the “domestic
church.” It is in our sacred family relationships that we learn about life and how to love.
It is in and through the family that christian values and actions are instilled in the hearts
of each member. It is in the family that members learn that life is profoundly precious
and worthy to be celebrated with all its joys and sorrows and at all stages from conception to natural death. yes, the family is “the church in miniature,” with its own vocation
collectively and as individual members to love and serve the world as a “christ” to our
brothers and sisters. as family, we are called to live out the gospel and to transmit it to
other families and to all of society.
During our meal together, we thought that we were three anonymous people among a
crowd of other families and friends enjoying sacred time together. But about halfway
through the meal, we were approached by our small town’s mayor, a Korean War veteran,
marine and longtime parishioner of our church, who wished our son godspeed. Between
an old marine and a young marine about to go to war, there is a fraternal bond that transcends generations, a code of conduct steeped in honor, courage and commitment. these
noble values govern a selfless and self-sacrificing love that is “always faithful” in service
to god, country, corps, family and friends.
one famIly, one marIne, one lorD of all
10 5
after the mayor left, we drifted back into anonymity, continuing to eat our meal together
oblivious to the whirlwind of activity and the cacophony around us. We knew that our
precious time together would be ending shortly. But before finishing our meal, we were
approached by one of our parish priests. learning that our son was soon to leave for war,
he offered Dave a blessing. We all bowed our heads reverently in prayer at the table. In a
way, it reminded me of that famous norman rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover depicting a family saying grace in a restaurant. Quietly and without fanfare our parish priest
and dear friend called upon the Blessed trinity — the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
— to look after our son and protect him from all harm.
as I further ruminate on this meal, it occurs to me that the family derives its strength
from honoring and respecting god’s laws and from praying as individuals, as a unit
and in and with the broader community. an old adage holds that “there are no atheists in foxholes.” But I think that there should be a corollary that “there are no atheists
among families with loved ones in combat zones.” there is a common bond among
military families united in their trust in god regardless of the worst of situations and
circumstances. our lives are filled with daily prayer, and life becomes ever more precious,
sacred and beautiful with each moment worth celebrating. our faith and trust in god is
like Kevlar armor plating, providing protection, strength and comfort in times of great
anxiety, fear and loss.
I often have flashbacks to the day our son graduated from boot camp at parris Island and
became a united States marine. It was witnessed by three generations of our family — sister, parents, an aunt and grandparents. With a dramatic backdrop of the marines raising
our flag at Iwo Jima, the chaplain stood to give his invocation and blessing to the newly
minted marines and their families. In sharp military precision, 300 marines in their dress
green service uniforms bowed their heads in unison in prayer. their family and friends,
sensing that this was a sacred moment, joined them. We were families from all parts of
the eastern united States, with different religious beliefs and diverse economic and social
circumstances, yet we all acknowledged our faith and trust in god, coming together in
prayer to celebrate our common heritage as “one nation under god.”
and so, when the meal was done, it came time to part. Soon Dave would be on his way
back to camp lejeune and then to afghanistan. as we said our goodbyes, I wondered
how we, as a family, would get the strength to wait for his return home. Where could we
find that spiritual armor for solace in time of war? We soon discovered that it could be
found in mary, the mother of Jesus christ, the Word made incarnate. through the intercession of mary, our faith in god, in christ, in the church and in the goodness of man
made in god’s image is reaffirmed and strengthened. mary has become our helper. She
is our model of faith who trusted in god, submitting and surrendering to his will. her
courageous living is to be imitated. as Queen of families she understands the fears and
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anDreW e. SaunDerS
anxieties of departures and separations, the self-sacrifice of a family and a son and the
hope and joy for reunion and homecoming.
yes, mary, mother of god, Queen of families and Queen of peace, intercedes for me, for
my family and for all humanity, having borne in her womb our lord and Savior. our
Queen points the way to her Son, Jesus christ, prince of peace. Similar to the physical
nourishment received during our sacred meal in the diner on that Wednesday morning,
the eucharist feeds and nourishes the soul. this sacred meal of thanksgiving, this banquet of the Body and Blood of christ, provides us with the Kevlar armor needed to sustain us in times of great worry and anxiety. It is in the eucharist, celebrated in community
that we are strengthened as individuals, as families and as church. christ’s self-sacrifice
poured out for all humanity is a total, unconditional gift of love to humanity that serves
to convert individuals, families and communities to lives of service to others.
In times of war, especially with a loved one in harm’s way, the intercession of mary and
the nourishment of the eucharist provide great peace and comfort. however, faith is not
simply a solitary activity limited to private practice. It also has a public and community
dimension. faith calls forth to the family to be a witness of the gospel and to be a transmitter of the gospel values. It is in the family as the “domestic church” that god’s love is
reflected through self-sacrifice and self-emptying service to one another and to the larger
community. military families, during times of their own anguish, anxiety, suffering and
sacrifice, have a unique calling to reflect god’s love as an outward sign for the community
in their gospel witness of faith, hope and charity to others.
and yes, even in a small town diner during a precious, sacred meal celebrating family life
and family relationships, families are called to be signs and witnesses, publicly praying
and asking for god’s protection over a beloved son, giving thanks and praise for god’s
great bounty, mercy and kindness.
Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us!
Andrew Saunders is the Coordinator of Programs for the Institute for Christian
Spirituality and Director of the Catholic Center for Family Spirituality. He
holds Master’s degrees in Economics and Theology and is in formation for the
permanent diaconate in the Archdiocese of Newark. He has been married for
27 years to his wife, Peg, and has two children.
10 7
“Sunday Morning”
by Jennifer Raps
St. Benedict, Newark, NJ
Seton Hall Law School
every Sunday morning, the St. Benedict’s ccD building is filled with children. It is also filled with
my family. four out of five members of the raps family are a vital part of the religious program in the
parish of St. Benedict’s. my mother, mary Jo, teaches second grade, and I am her aide. my younger
sister, Janine, teaches eighth grade and my father, Jeff, is the principal.
the photograph, entitled “Sunday morning,” depicts my mother teaching the first communion
class about pope pius X, who believed that children at the age of seven should be able to receive
holy communion. every week, I listen as she teaches with such conviction. It is through her that
I see god. the ccD program exists to teach children about the church. each morning I am the one
who learns a lesson in true faith from my mother.
10 8
mIchael toth
The Man Who Was Sunday
By capt. michael toth, uSmc
Dad was born on a Sunday. on another Sunday, 67 gracefully lived years later, he departed this world for the eternal Sabbath. In between these two Sundays, Dad’s life was
a joyful celebration that he shared with those around him. In a word, he lived life as
though all his days were to be offered as a worthy gift to god.
professionally, he did what he loved most. he was a teacher. he put his entire self into his
lectures, working and re-working his material from the many sources that he so diligently
researched. he had a sense of the importance of rising to all occasions, which was distinguished further by the genuine affection that he held for his students, present and past.
thus, when he stood in front of his students, he was prepared for the task at hand — to
serve them. he saw teaching moral theology as a way of spreading the gospel. like John
paul II, he understood the subject matter that he taught as the church’s answer to the
question that the rich young man asked christ: “good teacher, what must I do to inherit
eternal life?” (mark 10:17 naB) Dad knew of what he lectured because of his profound
personal faith. When he taught, he brought us wonderfully closer to the same christ
whom he encountered in his prayer and work.
Dad’s family life also was a Sunday. he was blessed with eight children and 11 beautiful
grandchildren, and he blessed his children and his grandchildren with an abundance of
his own generosity. he was deeply committed to us, a living model of a warm and loving
father. he had the vision to see family as a blessing, and his own family as god’s plan for
him. he was forever joyful about his calling to marriage and family life. his delight with
his vocation led him to celebrate, so often, in the company of his own family.
not least, of course, Dad’s spiritual life was a Sunday, too. he followed christ with cheerfulness and loved the church completely. he never accepted the fiction that men cannot
be holy, or that professional success must come at the expense of christian values. he was
born in the bosom of the church and grew only closer to our cherished mother. Shortly
before he died, he printed a verse that perfectly captured his interior life, the depth of
which allowed him to see god as a child sees his loving father. the verse from the Book
the man Who WaS SunDay
10 9
of Deuteronomy reads: “and thou shalt make merry in thy festival time” (Deut. 16:4
Douay).
thank you, Dad, for showing us how to be grateful and to make merry all the days of
our lives.
Michael Toth, Dr. William Toth’s son, is an attorney in the JAG Corps with the
United States Marines. He is stationed at Parris Island, South Carolina.
11 0
“Being Present is the Greatest Gift”
by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Church of Christ the King, Morristown, NJ
often when we conceptualize an image of god we view him as tender with us and available to us,
arms outstretched. this picture not only captures the reunion of two cousins but also portrays a
“christ-like” exchange of being truly present with whomever you are with. this picture can be seen
two ways: first, as the younger (gabe, 2 years old, right) learning in to confide in his older cousin and
secondly, as the older (eddie, 3 years old, left) confiding in the younger. regardless of how you see it,
both are listening intently with an open and honest heart. this sincere relationship between friends
is truly the way god wishes to be in relationship with us. not just as god of the universe but as a very
real presence in our everyday lives with us sharing with him and him with us. While captured in a
moment of time, this photo is truly an example of God in My Family Life because it reveals a greater
truth about him: that he meets us wherever we are, even on a beach.
111
11 2
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Catholic Center for Family Spirituality

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