Ave Explores Series | Catholic Family Life | Week 2
Liturgical Living
by Rachel Bulman
You’re only as holy as you are at home.
I can’t even remember the first place that I heard this but I can remember it etching into my heart and pulling away at the scar tissue that had grown from my own failures at home. I was only a teenager but keen to the reality that good evangelization really begins in the family. Other than the sacred space of the Church, the home provides the grounds for the most vulnerable hearts and the goodness of the human family can be wielded well, raising saints…or wielded as a weapon, distorting the goodness of the human person through generations of woundedness.
As a family of six (with one child praying for us in heaven), I admit that my husband and I weren’t aware of the profundity of parenthood when our family began to grow. Our first child was injured during his birth which took away any “first time parent” fears as we quickly had to shuffle between surgeons and specialists to give him the greatest opportunity for healing. Looking back on those days, I know that the Lord was at work. He was teaching us that the most important thing for our children was healing – for ourselves and for them.
Those initial moments of suffering introduced a greater understanding of liturgical living for us. All too often we confine liturgical living to the Church calendar, rote prayers, and the Mass. But, the Mass, the universality of the Church herself, and even the cosmos beckon us into the liturgy that exists within the human person in constant relationship with Christ.
Our baptism grafts us into Christ thereby introducing us into the constant love affair within the triune God – the liturgy per se. The Holy Mass brings that liturgy into time and space for us.
Our goal with our family has been to ingrain a Christocentric way of living for them or better said, a framing of the world through the lens of the liturgy of trinitarian relationship. We provide for them a sacramental worldview.
How do we do that with a 9, 8, 6, and 3-year-old? By living our lives as fully as possible with a keen awareness of opportunities for formation.
A brief of example of this: The eldest was arguing about bedtime. “Why do I need to go to sleep?’ And my husband masterfully walked him through why he needs to go to bed early using the Socratic method. The final answer was, “You want me to go to bed early because you love me.” If we would’ve ignored this plea as just another tug of war for going to bed later, we would’ve missed an opportunity to form his heart.
And another great example of this is through the group of young adults that enter our home every week. The kids go to bed even earlier for these nights, and my favorite bedtime question is, “Is everyone coming over to talk about Jesus?”
Three years ago, I recognized the need for young adults to gather for deep conversation with no real agenda other than God and no time table. I went home and asked my husband if we could invite a few people over to talk about theology and philosophy, and he said yes. To our surprise about 15 young adults showed up at our house that first night. We continue to meet (virtually and more sporadically as Covid dictates) and the gatherings can be anywhere from 3-35. But they are always fruitful.
Those young adults have now become our dearest friends and even our family. And the initial thought of evangelization beginning at home has spilled out through the young adults and back to us. Isn’t that what authentic love does? It grows and grows until it spills out into everything around it but giving it away does not empty the vessel. Instead, it fills it all the more.
One night, with about 20 or so young adults, we asked, “When did you first witness authentic love?” We were humbled when many of them answered that it was when they witnessed our marital love and the love that we give our children. Although humiliating in a good way, it was also heartbreaking.
I am convinced that the family can change the world. That theodrama of the incarnation plays out every day within our own homes. He desires to be birthed again and again in the human heart and ever more in the human family. He is not ours to contain but ours to emulate through holiness and sacrifice.
The world often views Christianity as a sort of heteronomy – as man obeying some outside force. But, the fullness of Christianity is better understood as a participative heteronomy – or our ability to participate with what already exists. And every moment is an opportunity to step in sync with the cosmic liturgy that exists within the trinity. It is an ever-growing understanding that these children, this husband, this ministry to the world and to the young adults, none of it is mine until I realize that it is first his.
Download this article as a PDF here.
Rachel Bulman is a lover of humanity, especially her husband and children. She is an author and speaker, avid reader, and below average homemaker. She regularly contributes to the Word on Fire Blog, the blog at CatholicMom.com, and is currently working on her first book with Our Sunday Visitor.
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