Chapter 10 of Love is Our Mission: “Choosing Life”

Birgit - holy family

Birgit - holy family

This column is the tenth in a series of introductory essays on “Love is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive,” the preparatory catechesis for the eighth World Meeting of Families that will take place in Philadelphia September 22-27 with Pope Francis. (Page numbers referenced in parentheses.) The title of this final chapter is “Choosing Life.”

The first essay on the first chapter is here. The essay which introduces the second chapter is here. The third is here. The fourth is here. The fifth here. The sixth here. Here are the seventh, eighth, and ninth.

If you would prefer to view this essay as a video, click here. If you do so, you can also see the full program which supports the reading of the preparatory catechesis.

Loving like God is our life mission

By now I think we are in good shape to understand the claim that “[God’s] love is our life mission” (105). We are here on earth to love as God loves. That is our work in life.

How does God love? He sacrifices himself for us, for our good.

We are able to love the way God loves because God gives us his love. Part of his giving of love is his grace. Through the Sacraments, God gives us the ability to love the way he loves. We can give ourselves to another for his or her true good, even if it requires a sacrifice on our part.

This catechesis has focused on our “job” as children of God to love, in the context of marriage, family, children, and the parish.

Yet this catechesis on love can shine light on many other aspects of life, such as “questions of ecology, technology, and medicine” (109). When it comes to science and technology we cannot do just anything. What we do should be for the benefit of all, including those who will come after us.

Our mission to love also extends to “all those who will always depend upon others for basic care” such as “the very young, the elderly, [and] the disabled” (110). This has always been and will always be part of the vocation of every Christian.

Living as a creative minority

One of the most startling, sobering, yet exciting sections of this entire catechesis is found in the section Living as a creative minority (110). We Catholics in the West are returning to a minority status. Catholics in many parts of the world are already in that position. The entire Church for her first three centuries was like this, too.

In the West we can no longer assume “some sort of rough congruence between public values and Catholic values” (110).

That is a problem. It could discourage us and make us become inward focused.

However—the catechesis tells us—this new status in society should make us even more “outward-looking [and] service-oriented” in spirit, encouraging us to “seek the common good together” (110) with our fellow citizens.

Yeast with toughness

We Catholics in the West are to be leaven in society. We are supposed to be like the little bit of yeast that makes the whole mass of dough rise.

And we can be leaven. We clearly know our identity as followers of Christ. We know how to be good citizens of this earth. And we know when not to compromise, because we are also citizens of heaven. For this, virtues like courage and toughness are vital.

So, our vocation is to live God’s love with courage. Courageous, self-giving, and grace-assisted love makes possible our mission to be missionaries. This is the vocation of every Catholic and every Catholic family.

The family needs the parish and the parish needs the family

As St. John Paul II put it, the mission of the family is “to guard, reveal, and communicate love. [This love is] a living reflection of and a real sharing in God’s love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church, his Bride” (112).

In the family, this love radiates first between husband and wife, then in their children, then in the wider community. We could say that husbands and wives are first: missionaries of love to each other. Then they are missionaries of love to their children. Then, together with their children, they are missionaries to the wider world.

Finally, the family needs the parish and the universal Church to nurture it. This is not surprising: It is hard for a family to love as God loves.

What is surprising is that the parish and the whole Church need families to nurture them! Think about it. Your parish and, in a way, the universal Church needs your family. Your non-Catholic neighbors need your family, too. The nation needs your family. The world needs your family. Even people in the future need your family!

The catechesis tells us that this is a “paradigm shift that awaits full flowering in the Church; the unleashing of the Christian family for the work of advancing the Gospel” (114). It is up to us, Christian families, to “unleash” the love God shares with us.

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2 thoughts on “Chapter 10 of Love is Our Mission: “Choosing Life””

  1. Thank you for these articles. I am also reading these catecheses and they are great. It is totally worth it to draw attention to them.

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