Family Spirituality

Living Faith: a collection of columns from Catherine O’Connell-Cahill that appeared in At Home with our Faith.

Get to the point

I once had a professor in college who told us that he and his wife had chosen a motto for their family: "Do what love requires." They tried to measure their behavior against this motto, to challenge themselves to live up to it. (Actually, I recall they had a second motto, too, which went like this: "Crap is crap no matter who says it." I think the prof said his wife had made a banner of that one and hung it on their living room wall.) You wouldn’t have to be with them long to see that they believed and lived out both of these sayings.

Motto may be a corny word, but it points to something deep: The Meaning of Life. Why did God put us here? What’s the point of living? What will make us truly happy?

Even if you’ve never chosen a motto for your family in words, your choices, big and small, speak loudly to your kids of what you believe about life. Still, your children deserve to hear it directly from you. Consider that each day they hear, loud and clear, mottoes from ad agencies and bumper stickers, billboards and beer commercials and T-shirts:

When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.

I did it my way.

Life is short. Play hard.

Where’s mine?

You can never be too rich or too thin.

The sayings of Jesus have no ad agency to trumpet them:

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Thy will be done.

Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.

Ask and you shall receive.

Forgive 70 times seven.

Blessed are the poor.

The last shall be first.

Theologian Sidney Callahan recently wrote, "What we imagine, attend to, and imitate we become." In fact she was talking about the Mass, but what she says is true in more tragic examples, too. Like the Littleton massacre. If we pour our imagination and attention into revenge or money or status or acquiring things, that’s what we become.

So what were we created for? William Willimon, chaplain of Duke University, says we were created "to worship the true and living God whom we have met in Jesus Christ." The old Catholic Baltimore Catechism said God made us "to know Him, love Him, and serve Him . . ."

Getting waylaid by "false gods" (take your pick–they’re all over the place) ultimately makes us miserable, because we’re not being who God created us to be.

Saint Augustine said it this way: "Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." (Now there’s a motto for you!) It’s as if we were created with a hole that only God can fill. No matter how much other stuff we dump in, we stay hungry for God alone.

It helps a family to have a guiding principle, to remind us of what will truly fill that hunger. Your motto can lead you toward life-giving choices or away from them. A motto of, "What can I bring to this world that I’m a part of?" will lead to vastly different choices than "What’s the world done for me today?" "Less is more" will produce a different family than "He who dies with the most toys wins."

So stick your motto up on your refrigerator, your kitchen table, or your screen saver. Mention it from time to time. Remember, if you don’t tell your kids what you believe about The Meaning of Life, the T-shirts and billboards and bumper stickers of America will be happy to step in. COC

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