“The family is the basic cell of society. It is the cradle of life and love, the place in which the individual ‘is born’ and ‘grows’” (Pope St. John Paul II, “Christifideles Laici”).
In our first installment in this seven-part series on Catholic social teaching (CST), we unwrapped the biblical roots of CST and discussed the first theme on human dignity. Today, we will delve into the second theme—the family—which flows naturally from the first. Pope St. John Paul II writes that the family is the “basic cell of society,” in which human persons learn how to love as Christ loves, recognizing the givenness of the other, and offering themselves as a selfless gift in response.
Marriage and the Trinity
“The Lord God said: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him” (Genesis 2:18).
After creating the wild beasts, tame animals, soaring birds, sea creatures, and beautiful vegetation, the Creator found none fit to walk side by side with man. So, out of the side of man (Genesis 2:21), God created woman. It is of this pair that in the first account of creation, God says, “Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Here, the divinely inspired author of Genesis uses the first-person plural, which the Church teaches reveals the plurality of the one Triune God.
“If that is so,” writes Anthony Esolen in “Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching,” “we may say that without woman, or rather without the union of man and woman in marriage, there is something still lacking in the image of God that we are to embody and make manifest. The three-personed God we worship is Himself a society of love; and the prime society He creates is the marriage between man and woman.”
In the dogma of the filioque, the Church teaches that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. In his 1930s work “The Divine Romance,” Archbishop Fulton Sheen beautifully describes the Trinity as the sigh of love shared between the Father and the Son:
“The Father loves the Son … The Son loves the Father … They give themselves in a love so infinite that, like the truth, which expresses itself only in the giving of a whole personality, their love can express itself in nothing less than a Person, who is Love. Love at such a stage … expresses itself as we do in some ineffable moments, by that which indicates the very exhaustion of our giving—namely, a sigh, or a breath. And that is why the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is called the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost.”
As we pray the Nicene Creed as the Body of Christ at Mass, we take for granted the words “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” Often forgetting that we are created in God’s image, we also miss the fact that we are to imitate this eternal exchange of divine self-giving love on this side of eternity.
It is for this reason that St. John Chrysostom instructs his congregation on the sacrament of marriage, saying:
“[Husband and wife] come to be made into one body. See the mystery of love! If the two do not become one, they cannot increase; they can increase only by decreasing! … Likewise, husband and wife are not two, but one … How do they become one flesh? … The woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure, and within her it is nourished, cherished, and refined. It is mingled with her own substance and she then returns it as a child! The child is a bridge connecting mother to father, so the three become one flesh.”
If a family is unable to conceive children, he asks, “Do they remain two and not one?” His response is, “No.” He goes on to explain, “Their intercourse effects the joining of their bodies, and they are made one, just as when perfume is mixed with ointment.”
The Family: Sanctifying the World
The Second Vatican Council is clear that for the children God entrusts to its care, the family is the “school of virtue.” Speaking of the Christian family this way reveals something of the nature of Christian virtue. It is not simply the cultivation of the powers of the soul in accordance with right reason, as Aristotle would have it. Instead, Christian virtue is nothing short of the reflective imitation of Christ crucified, as St. Thomas Aquinas tells us in “The Sermon-Conference of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed”:
“Whosoever wishes to live with perfection should do nothing other than despise what Christ despises and desire what Christ desires. Not a single example of virtue is lacking from [the example of the] cross.”
It is in this school of virtue that children are instructed to be “fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19). Far before Christian parents are responsible for teaching their children how to thrive in a worldly sense, they hold the profound responsibility of teaching them how to be saints.
The saintly family par excellence is the Holy Family. In his plan for the salvation of humanity, God willed that the Savior be born into a human family. In Scripture, we are told that Jesus’ adoptive father, St. Joseph, was a “righteous man” (Matthew 1:19) and that Mary, Jesus’ mother, was “full of grace” (Luke 1:28). As devout Jewish parents, Joseph and Mary were obedient to the laws of God, such as completing the circumcision of their son after eight days and presenting him in the temple after the prescribed 40 days. Luke tells us the family returned to their hometown of Nazareth, and “the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom” (Luke 2:40).
When Jesus was 12 years old, the family traveled to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. After the scene of staying behind in Jerusalem to teach in the temple, Luke tells us that Jesus obeyed his parents and “advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man” (Luke 2:51-52). It is within the garden of his human family that our Savior’s humanity was cultivated.
As we endure the struggles of raising our children, we may feel discouraged at the realization that, first, our child is not Jesus, and we are certainly not Joseph or Mary. We can find some solace in looking to saintly families that endured similar struggles. Saints Zélie and Louis Martin, the only married couple to date to be canonized together, were business owners who not only raised their five daughters in the faith but also modeled a life of self-sacrifice in every aspect of their lives. For example, although he was a watchmaker, Louis oversaw the bookkeeping for Zélie’s lace-making business and even traveled to Paris to manage orders, such as the successful delivery of more expensive goods, according to Fr. Stephane-Joseph Piat’s book “A Family of Saints.”
That said, perhaps the best evidence of their self-sacrificing love is demonstrated not by their own actions but by the fact that all five of their surviving daughters gave their lives to Christ by joining religious orders. Their youngest daughter, St. Thérèse, is famous for her “Little Way,” which earned her the rare title of Doctor of the Church. It isn’t too much of a stretch to suggest that the Little Way was derived from the way her parents exemplified the Christian family life in their home. St. Thérèse is also known for her naughtiness as a young girl, and yet she is celebrated today as a beloved saint who inspired St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and Servant of God Dorothy Day.
Calling Catholic Businesswomen
This second principle of CST focuses on the family and its responsibility to raise virtuous children worthy of their heavenly homeland. That said, as Catholic businesswomen, we need not be biological or adoptive mothers, or even married, to draw key insights from this principle for our role in the workplace. As women, we have the unique destiny of being called to the motherhood of humanity, as Edith Stein writes in “The Significance of Women’s Intrinsic Value in National Life”: “To be mother is to nourish and protect true humanity and bring it to development.”
Whether we serve as formal business leaders or not, God is entrusting to our motherly care the nourishment, protection, and development of every person we encounter. We nourish others with our truthful words and virtuous examples, such as by offering to pray for someone who is suffering or by defending someone who is being scapegoated. We protect others by not provoking them and by not engaging in heated arguments. We develop others by seeking their success and well-being before our own, such as by mentoring someone for a position we hold and performing that role in a truly virtuous way.
By reflecting the self-emptying love of Christ crucified (Philippians 2:7), as Catholic businesswomen, we are called to do nothing less than nourish the people we work with and the organizations we serve with the help of God’s grace. In this way, we bear new life in the world, bringing it one step closer each day to full reconciliation in God (Colossians 1:20).
Vanessa Crescio is an accountant with Lipic’s Engagement. She earned an MBA from the University of Notre Dame, an MTS from Newman University, and worked in the real estate and banking industries prior to serving in business roles at the parish and archdiocesan levels. She is interested in thinking through co-responsibility in the Church and developing lay pastoral leadership programs to form Catholic leaders to serve the Church with not only their knowledge, skills, and abilities but with the servant heart of Christ. Read more of her writing at FRESHImage, and follow her on Instagram.