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INTENTION : |
That families, thorugh their life of prayer and love, become ever more clearly "schools of true human growth".
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Introduction to Family Prayer
In our Catholic Tradition the family is seen as the Domestic Church or the Church of the home. It is primarily in the home and family that children learn their faith and learn to practice it in prayer as well as in behaviour.
It is also in the home that adults learn to develop their faith especially in terms of their relationship with God through one another. The gathering power for the family is their love for one another. Prayer in the home is essential to keep that love growing beyond the limits that each individual tends to place on it.
Our society today sees religion as something private. Unfortunately many of us have gone in that same direction by removing prayer from our homes and restricted it to when we gather in the church or when we call into the church for a private visit.
In the past, family prayer was the norm for Catholic families until comparatively recently. It has almost disappeared without us noticing it. The time has come to restore prayer as part of our family life, for the sake of the relationships that exist there, and for the sake of the faith that we profess.
How to go about it
Create a sacred space in your home. This is a symbol of the fact that your whole home is sacred. This sacred space does not have to be very large. In the past it was created by the Sacred Heart picture that was in many kitchens.
This sacred space could be a corner of your kitchen or sitting room. Mark it with a picture of Mary or of the Sacred Heart or one of the Saints. Gather at this point each day for your prayer.
Decide on when you as a family will pray together. We suggest that you would aim for 10 minutes a day. When could you give that time together to prayer? Make this decision and try to stick to it as much as possible. Of course it can be changed for occasions.
Decide how you, as a family, will pray during this short time. There are many good family prayer books available.
Involve each member of the family in the prayer - not necessarily every time but as a feature.
To get started it might be helpful to have an intention for your prayer each day and then say a Decade of the Rosary for that intention, with one person leading this decade.
Pray with the SHALOM.
Finish with the sign of peace as at Mass.
A Movement of Continuous Prayer for Marriage & Family Life.
The Power of Family Meals
I have a recurring memory that pops into my head from time to time. I would be hanging out with my friends when I suddenly realized the time-5:09. I'd drop what I was doing (even if I was batting in the bottom of the ninth) and set off at top speed, desperately trying to make it home by 5:15, the appointed dinner hour in our home.
My parents weren't big on having too many rules, but one of the few non-negotiables in our home was that we were all at the dinner table at 5:15 pm. I'm so glad they insisted.
Years later as I was writing a family newsletter, At Home with Our Faith, I started paying attention to all the research that was pouring out about the many positive effects of regular family meals at home. Year after year, the encouraging research results have continued to grow exponentially.
According to the mountains of research, children who enjoy regular meals with their family do better in school, exhibit fewer anti-social tendencies, and are more successful with their peers. They are far more likely to graduate high school and far less likely to take up smoking, use alcohol or drugs, or experiment with sex. The list of benefits goes on and on.
And it's no surprise. We bring all our hungers to the table-physical, emotional, social, and spiritual-and all of them can be fed. The meal doesn't have to be like a Norman Rockwell painting-everyone smiling around an orderly table. There may even be teasing and taunting and spilled milk. It doesn't matter. The fact that you are there together, sharing your lives, and being present to one another is how the magic happens.
Family mealtime prepares us to be really present to one another so we can better appreciate the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It can be a school where we learn to pray about what really matters to us, day by day, and the place where we practice forgiveness, both giving and receiving. It's the place to bring our needs and know they will be met. In effect, it becomes a great place to prepare our minds and hearts to move from the family table to the table of the Lord in our parish.
So after all these years I'm glad my parents were so strict about the family meal. My wife and I held fast to this practice with our own daughters. And that memory of me running frantically always ends well-catching my breath and taking my place as my family says together, "Bless us O Lord, and these, thy gifts ..."
Catholic moral theology should be understood not only as determining whether acts are right or wrong but also with the need to bring about change so that what is right becomes present in our society and justice replaces injustice.
Take, for example, the case of bribery that is an important part of the broader issue of corruption and is so present in all parts of the global society today. A bribe is an inducement improperly influencing the performance of a public function meant to be gratuitously exercised. Thus bribery violates a divine precept. Deuteronomy 10:17 maintains that God does not take bribes.
The Catholic tradition itself has not always recognized the important need to go beyond the morality of acts to attempt to bring about change in a concrete way with regard to existing practices. The manuals of moral theology had the narrow scope of declaring which acts are sinful and the degree of sinfulness. They express no interest in how to change practices such as corruption or bribery. It was enough just to point out what was the law of God about sinful acts.
Catholic Social Ethics and teaching by its very nature aims at making justice more present in society. Even here the emphasis for some time was heavily on teaching what is the right thing to do, but recently that has been changing. The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World decried the split between faith and daily life. There can be no false opposition between professional and social activities on the one hand and religious life and belief on the other (GS n. 43).
The International Synod of Bishops in 1971 insisted that "action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation." Therefore, Christians are called to change and eliminate structural sins in the world.
The Catholic tradition thus has to be concerned with the concrete ways of overcoming injustice and making justice, peace, and the integrity of creation more prevalent in our local, national, and global realities. Today moral theologians are more conscious of their responsibilities in bringing about such social change.
One example of this is the theological recognition of the role of community organizations to bring about change and greater justice in our society. Community organizations attempt to organize the poor and marginalized to show that they by their organized efforts can bring about change and make justice more present.
Community organization does not involve privileged people telling the underprivileged what to do. By definition such organizations try to find the local leadership within a community and encourage that leadership to discern among the people what are the primary problems of injustice they are facing. They then discern what are the best ways to try to bring about change. In the beginning it is very important for marginalized communities to have the experience that they too are empowered to bring about such a change. Small successful attempts encourage them to move towards the direction of overcoming sinful social structures and injustices thereby bringing about a just society.
One can readily see why Catholic social ethics should be concerned about the concrete ways of bringing about justice and overcoming sinful social structures.
God Needs Leaders of Integrity - Micah 3:5-12
God needs leaders with integrity, people filled with the Spirit, people with confidence who speak truth in His name, people who believe in Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation, people who seek to influence others with the message of hope and love of our Lord. God is calling you to live for Him and be available to impact others in His name! True prophets and leaders of God will be used to turn the world upside down!
Micah is an amazing leader because he contrasts his own calling as a prophet with the false prophets. God needs leaders of integrity who speak the truth. He needs people to step up in positions of influence so the message of Jesus Christ will penetrate into the confusion of people's lives and turn the world upside down.
Micah is willing to point to himself as a good example of what it means to be a leader of integrity? We need to be able to have confidence and boldness to declare God is with us. We bring a measure of wisdom from God, a spirit of peace, a smidgeon of sanity... Our prayer be that each one us is not a false prophet telling people only what the people want to hear, but unwilling to point out sin, misguided ideas, unfair goals... Micah says that unlike the false prophets, he does declare sin to be sin, wrong to be wrong, craziness to be craziness.
Micah is filled with power, but not his own: "I am filled with power with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might..." (Micah 3:8). I know right from wrong because God through His Spirit is in me. The world around us needs leaders of integrity who are focused on justice, right and wrong, leaders who represent God and the truth of Jesus Christ.
God will use leaders of integrity with truth and justice to turn the world upside down so that people will return to God and hearts will be right side up.
Be leaders of Integrity
Let's shed our passive ways in which we sit back waiting for others to risk and instead ask God to use us to speak truth, seek justice and love people.
God is calling every person to impact other people around them. Take on leadership roles, formally and informally. Our church needs leaders. Our community needs leaders. Pray for God to reveal where he wants you to serve, who he wants you to reach with the good news of salvation. God needs leaders of integrity in every area of society. Be a leader of integrity in your family. May you be able to say boldly with Micah, I am filled with power through the Spirit of the Lord, seeking justice, telling truth, and eyes wide open to sin." Amen.
Tom McGrath
Tom McGrath is the author of Raising Faith Filled Kids, The Meal Box, and is one of the authors of the God's Gift series
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