May 2018: Building the Domestic Church: The Family Fully Alive

Lead article from the May 2018 bulletin, online now.

By Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson

In founding the Knights of Columbus, Venerable Father Michael J. McGivney sought to respond to the crisis in family life affecting Catholics in 19th-century America. As a young man he witnessed firsthand the challenges his widowed mother faced with seven children at home. Later, as a priest, he confronted on a daily basis the problems affecting the families of his parish community due to poverty, violence, alcoholism, immigration, anti-Catholic prejudice and discrimination.

Father McGivney’s vision for family life was not only that each family might find financial and material aid. He understood that holiness is the calling of all baptized Christians. And considering that two brothers followed him into the priesthood, we can understand how truly important the sanctuary of the home was to the McGivney family.

His family was a living example of what the second Vatican Council later taught: each man, woman and child is called to holiness through proclaiming the Gospel and communicating the divine gift of love in the activities of their daily lives.

When Christian families respond in this way to the design of the Creator, they become a “domestic church” that, as Pope Paul VI explained, mirrors “the various aspects of the entire Church.” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 71).

The modern family recently has been a topic of particular focus for the Church, with the two-year synod on the family and the post-synodal exhortation by Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). During this time, the Knights of Columbus has been involved in supporting families in their Christian vocation through our new Building the Domestic Church While Strengthening our Parish initiative. This initiative, which includes The Family Fully Alive program, is designed to help families become more centered on their task of serving God, neighbor and parish.

Since the second Vatican Council, and especially during the pontificate of St. John Paul II, it has become clear that the family is “the way of the Church.” In one sense, this obviously means that the family is the object of the Church’s evangelization efforts.

But the Christian family too has its own indispensable mission. As St. John Paul II wrote in Familiaris Consortio, “The family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love.” This mission is at the heart of the “community of life and love” that begins with the married couple in the sacrament of matrimony.

To lead us in that mission we are fortunate to have a guidebook — Pope Francis’ exhortation Amoris Laetitia— to help us build the Catholic family as a domestic church. In Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis describes the Church as “a family of families.” He reminds us to view the family as the sanctuary of life and love that is at the heart of the domestic church. Our Knights’ families can take special guidance from Pope Francis as he calls us to a new “family apostolate” based upon “joy-filled witness as domestic churches.” Our parish-based councils also have a role in connecting men and their families with the parish.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, “Conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter. … It aims at a deeply personal unity, a unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul.” In other words, sacramental marriage involves not just an agreement between the spouses but a radical transformation of the spouses.

As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Deus Caritas Est, “Marriage based on an exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love.”

In this way, the witness of husband and wife within the daily life of the family can guard, reveal and communicate love as they make their own the gifts of marriage — unity, indissolubility, faithfulness and openness to new life.

A Vatican document on the role and mission of the family states, “The family needs to be rediscovered as the essential agent in the work of evangelization” (Instrumentum Laboris, 103). It also points to the necessity to better understand the “missionary dimension of the family as a domestic church” (Instrumentum Laboris, 48).

These observations echo those of St. John Paul II, who said, during a meeting with the Latin American bishops in 1979, that “in the future, evangelization will depend largely on the domestic church.” (Pope John Paul II, Address to the Third General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate).

Clearly, the role of the family in the work of evangelization is not primarily a matter of programs, projects or strategies. These all have their place, but they are secondary. Their place is to be at the service of what is essential — the love between a husband and wife that, sanctified through the love of Christ, radiates to each member of their family.

The family as domestic church is a place of encounter with Christ within the community of a particular Christian family — a place where each member of the family has an important role.

The “mission” of the family in the task of evangelization is to be what it is called to be — that is, to live its daily life as a Christian family. As St. John Paul II said so often, “families, become what you are!”

The family’s mission to “guard, reveal and communicate love”— like the parish community — does not exist in an ideal place. The truth and beauty of the family must be communicated to every Christian family, even those that are fragile, wounded or broken. These families too may read the words of St. Paul with confidence: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Rom 8:35). And they may find in that confidence a path of hope and healing.

During his visit to the Philippines, Pope Francis cited the need for “holy and loving families to protect the beauty and truth of the family in God’s plan and to be an example for other families” (Pope Francis, Address to Families at the Mall of Asia Arena. Our Building the Domestic Church initiative and The Family Fully Alive monthly devotions are concrete ways that Knights of Columbus, in solidarity with Pope Francis, can offer holy and loving families for the Church’s mission of evangelization in our time.

November 2012 Grand Knight's Message: Year of Faith

Grand Knight's message from the November 2012 bulletin: 

“Ever since the start of my ministry as successor of Peter, I have spoken of the need to rediscover the journey of faith so as to shed ever clearer light on the joy and renewed enthusiasm of the encounter with Christ.” 

— Pope Benedict XVI, from the Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei 

As people of faith, it’s never a bad idea to listen to the Roman Pontiff. Typically, it’s good spiritual direction to focus our attention on the areas to which he directs our attention. His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has proclaimed this year as the Year of Faith. It is my belief that our greatest failure as a society is our lack of faith. A faithless society is a hopeless society. It is this fundamental loss of faith and hope in our country that we currently face daily. As a parent of four small children, I see that one of the most essential roles I can play is to arm my children with faith. No matter how hostile society gets toward Christianity, no matter how much they are told Christ is not relevant anymore, faith will carry them through.

Pope Benedict urges the faithful to rediscover faith in our lives, and he has wisely dedicated this year to that end. “Reflection on the faith will have to be intensified,” he said, “so as to help all believers in Christ to acquire a more conscious and vigorous adherence to the Gospel, especially at a time of profound change such as humanity is currently experiencing.” It is faith that penetrates beyond our intellect and leads us to a deeper understanding of Christ. Our intellect is limited, but our faith penetrates our hearts and allows the Gospel to resonate in our lives.

We have all heard the saying “The world can be a cold dark place.” Typically, this is said by a parent to a teenage son or daughter who thinks they know everything. It’s one of those statements made to teach children about the realities we face in the physical world, however, this saying is especially true in the spiritual world.

For children, now more than ever, the world IS a cold dark place.  Never before have had kids had such access to evil.  Never before have children had the power to access damaging material with only a few clicks on a computer mouse.  Never before have they had the opportunity to have alternative beliefs, lifestyles and morality thrown at them.  Sadly, I would guess every one of us knows someone who had a child who was just playing around on a computer or cell phone and discovered a cold dark place that begins to cast a shadow of doubt on their faith. Confronted with a world radically different from what they know, they begin to wonder, What is truth?

I myself am not gifted with great intellect. As much as I would like to be able to arm my children with sharpened reason and intellect, it’s just not who I am, however, I can show them that in a darkening world, faith sustains us. When times are tough, and I feel worn down or beaten by the enemy, my limited intellect fails me. However, I know HE has a plan. This simple truth will and does get me through.

Faith, Hope and Charity are the three theological virtues imparted to us in the form of graces so we can discover God. The secret of the great saints of the Church is not merely superior intellect, but that these men and women allowed these virtues and graces to transform them from within. It is for this reason that we honor Saints as extraordinary examples for us to live by, and that the saints sometimes look so shockingly different from the people around us. Some of the saints established and defended the Catholic philosophy that guides us still today, and some were merely uneducated children, who found the courage to say, “I would rather die than allow anyone to separate me from Jesus Christ in words or deeds.” These two radically different examples of sainthood have one unifying thread: FAITH.

We often see the world through the eyes of our youth. What kind of world are we leaving for them? The reality right now can make us feel hopeless, but if we can give our children a true sense of faith, we can arm them to confront the world they will face. If they can begin to see through the eyes of faith, then they can make changes in this world. It is a discussion I have had often with my 12-year-old daughter when we are praying outside an abortion clinic. If she can see through the eyes of faith, and thus live her life as God would have her live it and not conform to the demands of our culture, change will happen. In science, the term natural selection simply states that the strongest survive. If she can allow faith in Christ to guide her actions and be open to life—and to the conception of children one day, if that is her vocation—she can directly end the culture of death. You see, we have two cultures competing to survive. If every pro-lifer is open to life, receives children and gives them the tools to hold to truth—if one culture follows Gods will, “Be fruitful and multiply,” while the other rejects that will, and if the children whose parents were open to life can teach them to have deep faith and adhere to Jesus Christ, that lifestyle wins out.  Natural selection in a society can take place as well.

I realize this philosophy on life is very simplistic, but my point to my daughter is that even when the world seems hostile and dark, faith will see you through.
  
I wish I could offer up 10 ways in which we could all go stock up on faith. It is an expression of the heart that you cannot simply purchase. However, I can tell you something I personally know has helped me: Mary and her rosary. In the rosary we pray for an increase in the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity.  In the rosary, the graces we receive allow these virtues to transform our lives. Mary is our example of faith in her response to God: “I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to thy word.”  Want to grow in the virtue of Faith? Ask Mary to lead you—she always does the will of God.

Pope Benedict XVI has decided it imperative that the Christian faithful probe the mysteries of Faith to strengthen us and prepare us to wage war against the enemy. He sees that more than ever that the best defense against a hostile world is faith. He’s not a bad person to follow.  Lord, please grant that all our brother Knights and their families richly grow in the virtue of Faith this coming year.

Fraternally in Christ,

Mike Engel 

Grand Knight