Ave Explores Series | Catholic Family Life | Week 1
The Creativity and Diversity of Catholic Family Life
by Katie Prejean McGrady
We met on Facebook: not the most conventional of romances, but definitely not too weird for two very online millennials. Then we dated long distance. It was fourteen months before Tom moved to Louisiana. We were engaged not long after that and married the following summer.
Ours was not a whirlwind romance—twenty-five months from our first conversation to saying “I do”—but definitely not long and drawn-out either.
As we sat in my childhood parish on that hot June afternoon with a humid rain pouring outside, I was trying to keep my mind off the details of whether the cocktail hour could be held outside. (A bride is never-not planning.) But then our dear priest-friend Fr. Jeff began his homily:
“Love is creative because God is creative. And God is love. So you two, who met on Facebook of all places, are products of his creative love and are now called to be creative with your love too.”
It was perhaps the most straightforward, punchy, and needed thing we heard on that beautiful day.
Love is creative.
When we think of Catholic family life in all its iterations and expressions, “creative” is perhaps the best word to capture what it can, and perhaps should, look like. By its very nature, any version of the Catholic family must be creative because it is a creation—the very design—of God himself.
More often than not, the circumstances of life demand we think outside the box to handle what’s thrown at us—caring for our kids, paying the bills, thriving in our faith life, and building a happy home that feels safe, welcoming, and stable.
The creativity and diversity of Catholic family life are the focus of this edition of Ave Explores. You’ll hear stories of couples with lots of children, no children, grown children, adopted children, and little children still underfoot. You’ll learn how engaged and newly married couples are preparing for and living the Sacrament. You’ll get to know men and women who have found great joy being single. You’ll meet grandparents, grown children caring for their parents, single parents, couples who have struggled with infertility, and those in the trenches of the foster care system. The family is the heart of society and every family is a unique, beautiful, and creative witness of God’s love to the world.
As St. John Paul II famously said, “As the family goes, so goes the nation.” Ave Explores: Catholic Family Life will share the impact of the family in the life of the Church, on communities, and on God’s plan for salvation.
Download this article as a PDF here.
Katie Prejean McGrady is a Catholic speaker and the project manager of Ave Explores and the host of the Ave Explores and Ave Spotlight podcasts.
Books to Consider
Based on Your Reading
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| Living in the World with Our Family by Lydia LoCoco | Liturgical Living by Rachel Bulman | Holy Pruning by Elizabeth Tomlin | Mary, Mother to Our Families by J.D. Flynn |