Marriage and Family

#1 - on the Works of Mercy

Hello and welcome! I am Paul Oliver, and I want to share my love of the Catholic faith with you and with the world. I will be trying to write a weekly short essay, which I hope will be useful to you. To start with, I wanted to write about a topic that is near and dear to my heart – the sanctity of marriage and family.

The Marriage Feast at Cana. Juan de Flandes, 1497. Public Domain. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We hear a lot about the sacramental character of marriage, the importance of family, the need to be open to children, and so forth. Yet at the same time, marriage has been at least partially subsumed by the secular world around us. It straddles two realms at once and can sometimes end up seeming like a “less holy” option than the other vocations that the Church offers.

My thesis for these first essays is this: the married life is a special and sacred vocation that presents the man and woman with a solid and beautiful path to salvation. It prefigures the joy and love of Heaven in a different way than the priesthood or the consecrated life, but not in an inferior way. Husbands and wives should see their sacramental vocation of marriage as their highest calling, and as the source of grace, blessing, and merit that it truly is.

Awareness of the power and grace of marriage should inspire us to live out our married vocations in a way that is pious, devout, humble, and grace-filled. A Catholic marriage, well-lived, should be as stark and eye-opening a witness to the grace and joy of Christ as the life of priest or sister. Our marriages should be and can be the salt of the earth, the light in the darkness, and the city on the hill, shining forth to illumine the dark and fallen world around us, guiding home all those in need of the healing power of Christ.

Marriage and the Works of Mercy

For the first week, I want to focus on Marriage, Family, and the Works of Mercy. The Works of Mercy are drawn from the Beatitudes (Matthew 25:31-46) and are divided into corporal and spiritual works. The pastoral care that the Church gives centers on these, and they are essential for both salvation and growth in the spiritual life – as is made clear by Christ Himself.

The seven corporal works of mercy are:

·       Feed the Hungry

·       Give Drink to the Thirsty

·       Shelter the Homeless

·       Visit the Sick

·       Visit the Imprisoned

·       Bury the Dead

·       Give Alms to the Poor

The seven spiritual works of mercy are:

·       Counsel the Doubtful

·       Instruct the Ignorant

·       Admonish the Sinner

·       Comfort the Sorrowful

·       Forgive Injuries

·       Bear Wrongs Patiently

·       Pray for the Living and the Dead

However, these works of mercy can also be a stumbling block for parents. How many of us have looked at these and thought “easy enough for my priest, for religious, for retirees, but how on earth will I find the time to do any of these?” Two responses immediately spring to find.

The first is that sometimes we have to make time. Opportunities for grace abound in the family, as I will discuss later, but the family is not the limit of our obligations. Jesus calls us to help our neighbors too. The family comes first, but we must share our talents and time with our parishes, our communities, and with the poor when it is reasonably possible for us.

This is not just essential for ourselves but also for our children. If our kids grow up never seeing us working at a shelter, teaching RCIA, visiting the sick, and so forth, then it is unlikely that they will do these things when they reach adulthood. We have to model Christian discipleship for them, and that means making the time to do at least something for the community.

Secondly, we have to be serious about tithing. The Church still holds as a precept that we must give to support the needs of the Church. 10% is traditional, but this is a matter of prudence for us now. If we are wealthy, perhaps 10% is too little. If we are poor, 10% might very well be more than we can afford to give. But we should all be giving, because in doing so we are doing Works of Mercy. A great example is donating to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Such donations allow the Society to directly help feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and give drink to the thirsty.

Making time to do something and tithing are two things that we do need to do. But beyond these “minimums” there is a source of abundant grace wherein we perform the works of mercy on a daily basis – our families. Tithing and some charitable work outside the home, while necessary when possible, are nevertheless supplementary to the acts of charity that we perform inside our homes. The key for understanding the sanctity and grace of the married life is realizing the vast amount of good works that we do each and every day when we care for our families.

We sometimes have a skewed view of the relationship between obligation and good works. Sometimes the two are separate, but often they go hand-in-hand. Consider the words at the Mass – “truly it is right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks.” The sacrifice of the Mass is not just a duty, but also the means of salvation for us!

In the same way, even our rote responsibilities around the home are not robbed of their sacred character by being obligatory. Instead, in fulfilling them we do both what is required of us as spouses and parents, but also work out our salvation. Children enter the world naked, hungry, thirsty, and ignorant. Parents are called upon to spend years feeding, sheltering, clothing, and educating them. These are all works of mercy! Are they obligatory works of mercy? Yes. Does this make them not worthwhile for salvation, or of no account in the eyes of God? Assuredly no.

Consider how many people shirk these duties. Whether via contraception or abortion, men and women can simply avoid all of these obligations. Voluntarily taking them on is not just our duty as Catholics, but a pathway to salvation. To joyfully raise a family, to sacrifice many hours and undergo many hardships for them, is a beautiful sign of God’s love in the world. It speaks to the needs of so many people who come from broken families, divorce, and loneliness. The hardships of family life, given up to Christ, conform us to His sufferings and prepare us for life in the world to come.

Consider lastly the example of St. Joseph. His entire vocation in life was to provide for and protect the Holy Family. While we can assume that he did works of mercy when he could and tithed in accordance with the Law, he is not remembered as a saint for these things. His mission was to his Family, and it was through his labors for them that the Church deems him a saint. We can ask for no better example of the grace available to each and every married person than the life of St. Joseph.

Let us pray that we can recognize the grace and beauty of our own marriages and families, and that we may live out this grace-filled vocation of ours with the same dedication that St. Joseph and St. Mary showed in the Holy Family.