10. Repair My House

0.     George Weigel, Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 17.

0.     Benedict XVI, Remarks to the Convention of the Diocese of Rome, May 26, 2009.

0.     Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), 26.

0.     E.g., Gaudium et Spes, nos. 24, 41; Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 7.

0.     See Christifideles Laici, no. 55.

0.     Lumen Gentium, no. 33.

0.     Quoted in Christifideles Laici, no. 55.

0.     Quoted in Christifideles Laici, no. 2.

0.     “Catholic action needs to be driven by contemplation in order to be Catholic. It needs to have the expansion of the kingdom of God as its end. We have to participate first in the Church’s contemplation and then we can participate in her apostolate.” Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics, translated and edited by Mortimer J. Adler (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2011), 198–99.

0.   Benedict XVI, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times; A Conversation with Peter Seewald, translated by Michael J. Miller and Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 176.

0.   “By this new birth the Divine Shechinah is set up within him, pervading soul and body, separating him really, not only in name, from those who are not Christians, raising him in the scale of being, drawing and fostering into life whatever remains in him of a higher nature, and imparting to him, in due season and measure, its own surpassing and heavenly virtue. Thus, while he carefully cherishes the Gift, he is … ‘changed from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’” John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, 652. Newman also writes: “How the distinct and particular words of faith avail to our final acceptance, we know not; neither do we know how they are efficacious in changing our wills and characters, which, through God’s grace, they certainly do. All we know is, that as we persevere in them, the inward light grows brighter and brighter, and God manifests Himself in us in a way the world knows not of. In this, then, consists our whole duty, first in contemplating Almighty God, as in Heaven, so in our hearts and souls; and next, while we contemplate Him, in acting towards and for Him in the works of every day; in viewing by faith His glory without and within us, and in acknowledging it by our obedience. Thus we shall unite conceptions the most lofty concerning His majesty and bounty towards us, with the most lowly, minute, and unostentatious service to Him” (653).

0.   See Apostolicam Actuositatem, no. 3.

0.   Anderson, Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition, 6–7.

0.   Ibid, 8.

0.   Ibid., 3–4.

0.   Ibid., 182–84.

0.   Ibid., 189.

0.   “Therefore, not too steep or unnatural does the ascent appear from Christ, as the inspiration of the love by which we love our friend, to Christ giving himself to us as our Friend for us to love, so that charm may follow upon charm, sweetness upon sweetness and affection upon affection. And this, friend cleaving to friend, in the spirit of Christ, is made with Christ but one heart and one soul, and so mounting along through degrees of love to friendship with Christ, he is made one spirit with him in one kiss.” Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, trans. Mary Eugenia Laker, S.S.N.D. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 3.20–21.

0.   Aelred, Spiritual Friendship, 3.133–34.

0.   Gaudium et Spes, no. 48.

0.   John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 13.

0.   Love Is Our Mission: The Family Fully Alive (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2014), no. 105, catechism of the 2015 Eighth World Meeting of Families.

0.   Ibid, no. 32.

0.   “Christian marriage also represents for both consorts a way to attain an ever-increasing union with Jesus. As the bond has been concluded in Jesus and toward Jesus, the increase of conjugal love also means a growth of the love of Jesus.” Dietrich von Hildebrand, Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1984), 61.

0.   Gaudium et Spes, no. 49.

0.   Familiaris Consortio, no. 59. In this way, marriage is deeply connected to the Eucharist: “The Eucharist is the very source of Christian marriage. The Eucharistic Sacrifice, in fact, represents Christ’s covenant of love with the Church, sealed with His blood on the Cross. In this sacrifice of the New and Eternal Covenant, Christian spouses encounter the source from which their own marriage covenant flows, is interiorly structured and continuously renewed. As a representation of Christ’s sacrifice of love for the Church, the Eucharist is a fountain of charity. In the Eucharistic gift of charity the Christian family finds the foundation and soul of its ‘communion’ and its ‘mission’: by partaking in the Eucharistic bread, the different members of the Christian family become one body, which reveals and shares in the wider unity of the Church. Their sharing in the Body of Christ that is ‘given up’ and in His Blood that is ‘shed’ becomes a never-ending source of missionary and apostolic dynamism for the Christian family.” Familiaris Consortio, no. 57.

0.   In a dialogue with engaged couples, Pope Francis stressed this: “Matrimony is also a work of every day; I could say a craftwork, a goldsmith’s work, because the husband has the task to make his wife more woman and the wife has the task to make her husband more man. To grow also in humanity, as man and as woman.” “Francis’ Dialogue with Engaged Couples,” Zenit, February 14, 2014.

0.   Love Is Our Mission, no. 62.

0.   “At its roots, a happy marriage—the kind that endures over a lifetime—has more in common with the generous, patient, self-giving powers of celibacy than what Pius XII called ‘a refined hedonism.’” Love Is Our Mission, no. 126.

0.   Lumen Gentium, no. 11.

0.   Gaudium et Spes, no. 52.

0.   Gaudium et Spes, no. 48; see also GS, no. 50.

0.   Nathaniel Peters, “The Domestic Church,” www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/10/the-domestic-church, First Things, October 2014.