This is such a good article. We are all in this together. Things may look pretty from the outside but, as families, we all have our struggles. We shoot for the ideal, but we will fall short…we don’t give up, we keep going and keep striving.

How to Raise Good Catholic Children by Mary Reed Newland

Remember that all families have difficulties

One of the great dangers in writing about family unity is that treating the family as a unit, a whole body that’s a miniature of the Mystical Body, everything you say will sound good, maybe a bit inspiring, maybe a bit sentimental, but also maybe a bit pat.

And looking from the subject treated in the round to your family, you’re apt to sigh and throw up your hands and say, “Yes, I suppose so, but I just wish it could be that way in our family.”

Of course, it is that way in “our family,” no matter who we are, because a family is always a unit even at the times it feels its disunity most painfully, and that ought to be the most comforting thought of all if we could just hang on to it.

A family is because God wills it, because He made a design for it, because it grows out of a sacrament that makes one person of two, and they bear fruit in the cocreation with God of children who receive their bodies from their parents, their souls from God. And if there are times when the unity does not feel like unity, it shouldn’t be surprising.

In spite of its mystical oneness, a family is made of several — sometimes many — individuals, each one of whom is the most important person in his life, and this makes for great conflict, in spite of the ties of blood and sacramental oneness.

But rather than prove some flaw in the family as a wise design, it only proves its wisdom, because man is a social creature made to live in the world with millions of others like himself, and if he had not this little society for learning in the beginning how to get along, he’d be hopelessly lost once turned out into the world.

Consider the advantages of learning to live as part of a family. Consider, first, how it is with all of us: in spite of our deep love for one another, we remain self-centered, wrapped up in our own desires, ambitions, plans, pains, and sensitivities.

The father works hard, and sometimes feels no one appreciates it, that all his work is taken for granted. The mother works as hard and sometimes feels the same way. The children are full of wonder and energy and curiosity, have a thousand discoveries to make every day, and many times feel that any claim on them beyond the most moderate (like washing a bit, eating at the proper time, sleeping some of the time) is unfair and robs them of time for the really important things.

On a bad day, when all these injustices are stinging all the members of the family at the same time, the life of this group called family can become a screaming dissonance rather than a harmonious unit.

Yet, let someone come for a visit, and suddenly, like magic, the group springs back to its primal unity. There’s an understanding in the minds of each (in his own way— and unspoken): “We’re a family. We can’t let them see us like this!”

Instantly the father is aware that his work has been fruitful in providing this house for these children, in feeding and clothing them, and it has been done in union with this wife. It’s good; he’s proud; he wants no thanks.

The mother is suddenly immensely proud of these children, of this husband who supports them all, and her suffering over their faults and failures and ingratitude is evaporated in the warmth of her confidence that the guests will see much to admire in them.

And the children are busy greeting and entertaining the guests, or, if they’re shy, seeking refuge with this father or this mother, all eager to show what “we have,” what “we’ve done,” and what “we’re going to do.”

In the discussions that follow, there’s much pointing out of the child who has Daddy’s eyes, and Mother’s hair, the one who is “just like his father — it’s really too comical,” and the other who does things “just like her mother — it’s quite wonderful.”

There’s the one who has done well at school (“we’re all so proud”), and the one who has had a struggle (“but we all help, and we’re sure things will come along”). And the sense of family burns very bright.

With what marvelously invisible ties divine genius has bound the family together. Its members are so united that when all the outward signs of unity fail — when sharing the same house, eating at the same table, driving in the same car, bearing the same name, all fail to preserve the sense of unity — a challenge that might expose the disunity they sometimes suffer will prick them once, and they spring immediately into a full-blown state of unity.

Family unity is not and never has been a matter of tangibles first. These protect, strengthen, and nourish it; but the unity is because it is first of all from God.

There are more striking examples of the force of these ties. Catastrophe strips them naked, and in times of suffering, one sees the complete annihilation of self in all the members for the sake of the afflicted member.

But, of course, the white peak of intense devotion cannot last. The child, the mother, the father recovers, life returns to “normal,” and little by little the same old obstacles to perfect harmony emerge.

Punctuality exacts self-discipline and detachment; it often asks us to interrupt some interesting, pleasant work in order to give ourselves to another kind, perhaps less attractive or less important.
However, it would be a great mistake to esteem our duties and to dedicate ourselves to them according to the attraction we have for them or according to their more or less apparent importance.
All is important and beautiful when it is the expression of the will of God, and the soul who wishes to live in this holy way every minute of the day, will never omit the slightest act prescribed by its rule of life. -Divine Intimacy

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