Let Your Love Show with Kindness in Family Life – Fr. Lovasik

Art by Harold N. Andersen, American

Let your Love Show in Kind Deeds

Love is not content with words, but seeks to assert itself by deeds. The effect of love is an eagerness to give, to serve, and to console. If you do not wish to cease to love, you must never cease to do good.

Love in action calls for generosity and self-sacrifice. Without the element of self-sacrifice, you are pleasing only yourself. True charity makes the wants of your family your own. It makes you ready to anticipate the least of the needs or wishes of the members of your family and to render them all possible service. Sacrifices will bring joy if motivated by love.

Be glad to perform little services for each other.

Each day brings many opportunities for these unselfish actions. All the monotonous and unglamorous tasks -the duties of the day – will help you to find happiness if you perform them with unselfish love for each other, for your children, and for God.

Love will move you to ease one another’s burdens and to give help in time of need. Even the little acts of politeness and courtesy, which are an accepted part of the relationship between men and women, can do much to make your home a pleasant ant place in which to live.

Courtesy is kindness manifested in your dealings with others. Intimacy should never destroy courtesy. You cannot possibly live in constant contact with others without noticing their faults and selfishness. Your own faults, like theirs, are bound to come to the surface.

The observance of the courtesies of life – little acts of kindness and politeness – can smooth your relations with the members of your family and make them not only bearable, but, to a certain extent, pleasant.

Small signs of consideration for each other’s ideas and plans are outward signs of interest, concern, and love for each other. Saying “Please,” “Thank you,” and “If you don’t mind” will always have a pleasant effect.

In the small things of daily living, you should treat each other with the same unfailing courtesy that you observe with strangers and friends. Why should you sometimes be rude to each other just because you know that your family will understand? The closer you are to each other, the more gracious you ought to be.

Manifest your love by giving thoughtful gifts.

Love has sometimes been defined as the desire to give. Little outward gifts are but a reminder and expression of the gift of yourself and all you possess to your spouse.

Such gifts need not be expensive or elaborate, but they should be marked by unexpectedness and understanding. Unexpectedness takes your gifts from the sphere of mere custom or routine, and understanding indicates a desire to bring special joy.

Give reasonable attention to your personal appearance.

This is a sign of respect and esteem. Even in the privacy of your home, make an effort to be clean and neatly dressed. This does not mean being dressed up at all times, as if you were entertaining company.

Let your charity be wholehearted and sympathetic, for the manner of giving is worth more than the giving itself.

Kindness is the art of pleasing, of contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you associate. If you make it a point in your dealings with your family always to treat them as you would like to have them treat you, you will have no occasion for any breach of courtesy. Learn to think of others first.

If you wish to achieve an ideal marriage, one of the most important obligations you both have is to develop an attitude of loving consideration. This means a constant solicitude for the well-being of each other. Since you cannot exchange jobs, be interested in each other’s work and activities, and try to understand the problems connected with them.

As a wife, you will become less inclined to talk about your own small irritations of the day if you try to understand what your husband’s job involves, what demands are made upon him in a highly competitive world, and what he hopes to accomplish.

This knowledge of what he faces each day in the outside world gives you greater incentive to make your home as clean, comfortable, and peaceful as you can.

Make him always feel welcome, wanted, and the center of everything.  Most of all, try never to nag. Do not talk of failures, of the faults of his relatives, or of the mistakes of the past. There is nothing to be gained by renewed talk about annoying habits that he cannot or will not correct. You must endure them, and must not act like a martyr in doing so.

As a husband, you should have the same loving consideration for your wife. Try to understand what her job as a wife and mother involves, the demands it makes on her energy, time, and patience to keep your home in order and your children happy.

It is good for you to remember her share in the burdens of caring for the children, doing household chores, cooking meals, dealing with money worries, addressing the problems of growing children, facing sickness, and meeting the demands of modern living. She will welcome a word of encouragement, but above all she will welcome understanding.

Gentleness, respect for the feelings of others, and consideration of their circumstances are the chief qualities of a gentleman or a lady. You have no better example to follow than that of Jesus and Mary.

Keep smiling is a wonderful slogan for family life.

A smile costs nothing but creates much. It enriches those who receive without impoverishing those who give. It creates happiness in the home and fosters good will. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and nature’s best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something thing that is of no earthly good to anyone until it is given away.

The reward of kind deeds is very great. Kind deeds, like the love of God, have the power to make you truly holy. Love of your neighbor is but another form of the love of God.

Kindness will make you a friend of Jesus, who said, “You are my friends if you do what I command you…. This is my commandment, that you love one another.”

Kind deeds are a source of happiness in the family. Little acts of kindness and little courtesies are the things that, added up at night, constitute a happy day.

The best part of your life is spent in the little nameless acts of kindness and love you have performed in your home. Faithful, self-forgetting service – love that spends itself – is the secret of family borrowed, or stolen, for it is something thing that is of no earthly good to anyone until it is given away.

“Mothers, (as far as possible), be at home with your children. As you nourished your child before he was capable of eating solid food, so in the early formative years, nature has determined that you must nourish your child in virtue.” -Fr. Lawrence G. Lovasik. The Catholic Family Handbook

Painting by Trent Gudmundsen

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