March 2008 Print

^{Fr. James Doran, SSPX}

 

Being the best parent is of vital importance to your salvation, and to your children. It is by you that the framework and general security are established in which your child is educated. The Catholic home is the place where your primary responsibility is to transmit the Faith and teach, as well as learn, to love according to charity. These two responsibilities are grounded on the Sacrament of Matrimony. From matrimony are to flow unity, order, the life of prayer, discipline, and by these security will be made firm.

We will look at the text from Sacred Scripture: "and they two shall be two in one flesh" (Gen. 2:24). This sentence is well known, quoted by Our Lord, but its context and meaning remain hidden for most. The citation is from Genesis, Chap. 2, and follows immediately upon the creation of Woman:

This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man (23). Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they two shall be two in one flesh (24). And they were both naked: to wit Adam and his wife: and were not ashamed (25).

This text is prophetic, and consequently practical for our consideration this evening.

Note firstly that this text precedes original sin and the Fall. Man and woman were created as it were, one. In one recital of the creation man "he" is created as one, but "male and female He created them." This is the original intent of God, and as such it is the manner in which Christ Himself quoted this text. God intended monogamy and stability for the union between man and woman. For this reason, the Church speaks of Christ restoring the original unity of marriage.

By doing away with divorce Our Lord removed an effect of sin and selfishness that had arisen in subsequent centuries. The first to take to himself two wives was Lamech, a man more wicked than, and a killer of, Cain (Gen. 4:18-24). Lamech was the son of Methuselah and the father of Noah, so it is significant that the taking of more than one wife is noted as immediately preceding the Deluge.

In addition to restoring the original unity and permanence of marriage, Christ more importantly elevated it to a source of sanctification and holiness. This is the reason we call it a sacrament. It signifies and confers the grace signified: unity. For Adam and Eve marriage was meritorious and sanctifying in the sense that it was their duty of state, they were created in it. This remains true also in Christian marriage, but the sacramental reality of matrimony is much more. While a Christian man and woman merit by the fidelity to their state in life, they are also established as an extension of Christ and the Church by the Sacrament of Marriage. This brings us to our first point: the prophetic aspect of this text of Genesis.

This text, recorded before original sin, is held as a prophecy of the Messiah. Note the wording: "Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife." The strangeness of this text is somewhat similar to that which speaks of the "seed of the woman." Both are in reverse of the sense expected.

It was never a Hebrew custom, nor that of Europe, that a man leave his family for marriage. The custom was contrary: a woman left her family and married into the family of her husband. For this reason a woman changed her family name, and to this day changes it, to that of her husband. The more recent practice of not changing names is more a loss in the importance of family and less the empowerment of women.

Note also that this departure had not been the case of Adam specifically: he had no parents and left no one to marry Eve; if anything she had been created from him and was thus an extension of him. Adam left no one to be joined to his wife. The Fathers of the Church see this text as an image of Christ and His Spouse, the Church.

The Divine Word "left" the Father, came into the world by His Incarnation and was joined to His Spouse, the Church, in the Divine Nuptials in this Epiphany. Therefore, when the Messiah quotes this text against the Jews who favored divorce He not only wished to point out the original unity and monogamy of marriage, but He also took as a prophecy of Himself. Marriage is not only monogamous; it is Christ present in the world.

Marriage before Christ was a foreshadowing of the Incarnation, and once the Sacrament had been established it is a realization of His Presence. In this idea you can clearly see the first responsibility of marriage which is the transmission of the Faith.

This therefore is your duty of state: to make Christ present in the world by the Sacrament of Matrimony.

The rest of the text, "And they were both naked: and were not ashamed," signifies that marriage was not afflicted with concupiscence in the beginning. The union of our first parents was one of persons joined in love and affection. They were first united in grace, mind, and heart; their physical union was the result of this profound love. The pleasure found in this union was not only ordered to the spiritual love of the couple it was enhanced by the same. This is the reason that the text states that they were not ashamed.

Obviously the Sacrament of Matrimony does not restore this original integrity to marriage. It only restores it to the degree that it remedies the effects of sin–a full restoration we must await in the Resurrection, but this is not to deny the fact that Matrimony is efficacious in healing to some degree the disorder introduced by concupiscence. Collaboration with grace is necessary for this rehabilitation.

Grasping this messianic aspect of marriage, which belonged to it from the beginning of creation, is necessary to properly understand your place in the world as Catholic fathers and mothers. Your very first obligation as husband and wife is to work, in collaboration with grace, to restore the original unity intended in marriage. It can even be said that your responsibility is to reflect the perfect unity realized between Christ and the Church.

The Catholic husband and wife are an extension of Christ and the Church: a union of charity born in the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan and reaching consummation in the Sacrifice of Calvary and in the identification of Christ with His Mystic Body. Here is to be noted the parents' second responsibility, included in the first, which is to teach the children to love according to the Sacred Heart in charity.

The original act of creating Eve was to give a helpmate to Adam, but the Sacrament of Matrimony does more than establish assistance in life; it constitutes a help and complement in life. Man and wife are to complete and complement one another on every level of life: on the spiritual level, the intellectual, the moral, and the physical level. Each of these categories could lend itself to its own conference, but we will limit ourselves this evening to the unity of matrimony. All the unnatural and anti-Christian deviations from the true conception of marriage have arisen from the failure, or the refusal, to respect the wonderful order and harmony in this human and Catholic ideal as formulated by the wisdom of Christ Himself. Marriage is above all a union of souls.

As Catholic fathers and mothers, you must work to establish a united front in your households. You are not simply a man and a woman, you are joined together to yield mutual enrichment to one another in your common nature as human beings and in your common faith as Catholics; this is the full meaning of two in one flesh.

Two you shall always remain no matter how close the union, but the union is meant to enrich you both and form you into a single unit. This unity is the complementary reality in which you achieve your salvation, and this you must do for the sake of your children. From this let us pass to some concrete things to be noted.

When we speak of parents as the first educators of their children it does not mean that they have the first responsibility to teach their children everything. It is not a question of instructing in specific topics. "Parents as educators" means that your first responsibility is to dispose your children to learn. This formation of minds and hearts is your first task.

God is the first teacher of men, and no one can replace Christ as our only Master. The work of collaboration between home and school is a mutual labor under the single Hand of God, and all education is meant to lead to salvation. I would even say that education should lead to a contemplative attitude before God. St. Bernard poetically called this contemplative discourse the theoricus sermo. We must now consider the condition in which this attitude can be realized.

It is more than certain that if your homes are in constant agitation and noise you will never achieve this first goal as educators. Your children can simply not develop an ordered interior if the living conditions are those of continual dissipation. Television, computers, and electronic gizmos are prime culprits here, but the very first culprit is the lack of order within the home. You simply must have a set order and schedule to your day. I do not speak of a timetable as if you were running a monastery, but an ordered day in which silence has some place. You need not go so far as St. Thomas More, who had spiritual reading done during his family's meals, but your home must be ordered as a place where Christ can be heard. Because the task is difficult (there is true labor here) it has no chance of succeeding where no real attempt is made.

The spiritual ordering of your home is even more important. There can be no learning where there is no order, and Christ cannot be heard where there is no regular prayer. Your prayer lives must be the first importance in a unified family life. It is unacceptable that prayers come in a family's life "wherever or whenever they fit." It should be the other way around: the daily schedule should be set around the family's prayers. These come first and should center on the rosary.

The experience of the sweetness of God will give rise to enthusiasm, and this will blossom in greater fidelity.

The life of prayer, however, is not attainable where there is no life of discipline and mortification. Thus when you consider the ordering of your home, and the electronic noise which invades it, you must also consider how it is that you discipline the household. Remember that the word, discipline, comes from the word, discere, to learn. The order of your household requires that you also consider the mortification of the individual members.

Surely not all the members of the family can observe the same mortifications, but the parents must be first in their example of asceticism ("effort").

Following this you must instruct, encourage, and impose mortification proper to each child's age and capabilities. This requires prudence and wisdom on the part of the parents, but just because the task is difficult does not excuse you from the responsibility. Note here that the sense of mortification and discipline that you teach your children will not only help them in the spiritual life, it will benefit them in their studies. One of the greatest obstacles that the teachers note in a child's learning is that they lack sufficient discipline. A dissipated attitude in a child indicates the dissipated household from which it has come.

Lent is an excellent time to consider these aspects of your lives and your families. Unity, order, discipline, mortification, and example are your first responsibilities as parents. They all are meant to flow from the union established by the Sacrament of Matrimony, but they result only from your collaboration with grace.

Have you been faithful thus far? Where might things be improved in your households? The education of the children is the reason for which you were married, it cannot fall to second rung, it is the reason for being of your state in life.

Faith, spirituality, and an ordered household: these three realities cannot be separated in the real life of Catholic families. Without being faithful educators you cannot be deemed faithful Catholic husbands and wives, but having experienced the sweetness of God in your positions as Catholic parents, you will no longer be only seeking to be faithful, but you will desire to do so.

You and your families will no longer simply try to know God, you will experience Him.

 

 

Fr. James Doran was ordained for the Society of Saint Pius X in 1988 and is currently the prior of St. Francis de Sales Priory in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the former vice-rector of St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary (Winona, Minnesota) and editor emeritus of Angelus Press. The conference was given in Onex, Switzerland, February 23, 2007.