“I used to have a great prayer life … until I got married and had kids.”
It’s one of the most common complaints my wife, Lisa, and I hear on More2Life, our daily EWTN Radio call-in advice program. If that sentiment seems familiar, you’re not alone. And it’s not your fault. The fact is, most of what we think of as “Catholic spirituality” is drawn from the monastic and clerical traditions in the Church. This tradition tends to suggest that the best and most direct pathways to holiness center on practices that promote silence, asceticism and meditation. Unfortunately, the crazy, busy, chaotic nature of normal family life is not conducive to any of those practices.
None of this is to say that lay people in general — and families in particular — can’t benefit from these types of spiritual practices. They certainly can. But rather than being the bread and butter of most family’s daily spiritual lives, they are most likely going to be spiritual treats in which families can occasionally partake. If you believe that you can only be a holy family if you consistently pray the Liturgy of the Hours, or spend hours at the parish in adoration, or pray a daily family Rosary, or spend several hours each week serving in parish ministry, or (insert another formal, spiritual practice here), there is a good chance that you are always going to feel like you are failing in your spiritual walk. And you might also struggle with feeling like you’re doomed to be less holy than all those saints you read about — because most of those saints lived in monasteries which — unlike family life — are built around supporting these kinds of spiritual practices.
When it comes to the spiritual life, many Catholic parents feel like it’s a choice between driving themselves crazy trying to fit a spiritual square peg into a familial round hole or doing nothing and feeling guilty all the time. I’ve even had clients in my pastoral counseling practice worry that they had chosen the wrong vocation because they couldn’t figure out how to attend to their family responsibilities and make time for God.
The Second Vatican Council sought to correct this problem by proclaiming the “universal call to holiness.” That’s the technical term the Church uses to assert that holiness isn’t just meant for priests and religious. It’s meant for lay people, too! Even couples and families with small, fussy children.
I’ve even had clients in my pastoral counseling practice worry that they had chosen the wrong vocation because they couldn’t figure out how to attend to their family responsibilities and make time for God.
The problem seems to be that announcing a universal call to holiness is largely where the effort began and ended. Instead of developing new models of spirituality for families, Catholics simply tried to pour new wine into the same old wineskins. “What’s that? Lay people can be holy, too? I guess that means we should teach them to pray the Liturgy of the Hours and do other things that priests and religious do!” The idea is certainly well-intentioned, but for all but a tiny number of families, the effort sets up families to feel like failures on the spiritual front. So how can we begin to articulate an authentic Catholic spirituality for the rest of us? A Catholic spirituality that’s rooted in the experience of family life and sees the chaos of family life as a feature — instead of a bug — when it comes to growing in holiness.
Knowing God through the body
I would argue that Pope St. John Paul II spent his pontificate trying to answer that question. In fact, I suggest that this is one of the most overlooked reasons he developed what we’ve come to call the theology of the body (TOB). A lot of people think that TOB is a teaching on Catholic sexuality, and, of course, it does touch on that. But I’ve come to understand it as St. John Paul II’s attempt to put flesh on the bones of the universal call to holiness, and develop a spirituality for couples and families that is separate from, yet complementary to, the rich monastic traditions of Catholic spirituality.
| Theology of the Body resources |
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Interested in learning more about how the theology of the body can help you cultivate a more meaningful marriage-and-family-based spiritual life? Check out these resources! “The Theology of the Body for Beginners” by Christopher West: Discover how the basic principles of the theology of the body can help you experience God’s love in your marriage and family life. The Theology of the Body Institute: An organization promoting in-person and online retreats and courses to discover the practical insights of the theology of the body. “Parenting Your Kids with Grace” and “Parenting Your Teens and Tweens with Grace” by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak: Not just a practical parenting guide. A book that outlines how parenting — when rooted in the principles of the theology of the body — is a little way of holiness. “For Better … FOREVER” and “Praying For And With Your Spouse: The Way To Deeper Life” by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak: Two books that explore practical ways to create a more intimate marriage and an authentic marital spirituality rooted in the theology of the body. The CatholicHŌM App: An online resource offering professional coaching and creative resources enabling parents to encounter Christ more meaningfully at home and experience their faith as the source of the warmth in their homes. |
In order to develop a coherent spirituality for any group of people, you need to have a focal point — something the group can share in common. That’s why, for instance, all religious orders take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. How they live out those promises will vary from order to order based on that order’s mission or charism, but every religious order has those promises in common. Developing a framework for holiness for the laity — and couples and families in particular — required St. John Paul II to find something that every person on the planet has in common and could relate to. But that’s not an easy task since everyone is so different. What could the focal point be for a comprehensive lay spirituality that incorporates marriage and family life?
John Paul II’s answer was the body. Every person has a body. In his theology of the body, he provides a system to help all people — especially lay people who either are married with children or aspire to marriage and family life — discern how God speaks to us through his design of our body and what that design can teach us about God’s plan for human flourishing, healthy relationships and holiness.
Historically, Catholic spiritual theology tended to view everything — salvation history, Scripture, the sacraments, the spiritual life — through the lens of “Christ the High Priest.” Through his theology of the body, John Paul II asked the question, “What would happen if we looked at all these things through the lens of “Christ the Bridegroom?” Through this lens, salvation history becomes the story of God pursuing, rescuing and sanctifying each one of us, his beloved bride. In return, the path of lay holiness involves building the kingdom of God — not so much by doing big things for Jesus — so to speak — but by filling each of our relationships with the sacrificial love that flows from the heart of our bridegroom, Jesus Christ.
In addition to using the theology of the body to lay the foundation of a spiritual framework for lay holiness, John Paul II canonized more lay and married saints than any other pope before him, thus giving us more varied models of holiness in everyday life. Moreover, he gave St. Thérèse of Lisieux the title “Doctor of the Church” because her “little way of holiness” showed how doing small, everyday things with God’s love could make anyone a saint. And he promoted the devotion to St. Faustina and the Divine Mercy as a reminder — especially to married couples and parents — that no matter how messy and complicated daily marriage and family life becomes, God’s mercy is greater. And despite our many failings, he can use those messes to make us great saints if we keep giving those moments to him.
Running the marathon of family life
Many people have missed the point of St. John Paul’s legacy. Progressives tend to dismiss his work as the product of an odd obsession with sexual morality. They fail to appreciate the clericalism that underlies this objection (i.e., any spirituality that focuses on the Sixth Commandment is much ado about nothing — especially since priests and religious aren’t concerned with sex). Instead they try to promote lay holiness by exploring torturously creative ways to clericalize the laity. And, for their part, many conservatives just scratch their heads and wonder why they should bother with TOB at all. They just keep insisting that monastic approaches to spirituality are “just fine” for everyone and if parents feel guilty for not spending enough time doing churchy stuff at church, then maybe that’s a good thing.
“St. John Paul the Great” … took the universal call to holiness seriously and dared to ask what a ground-up, organic, holistic, comprehensive, authentically marriage-and-family-based approach to holiness would look like in theory and in practice.
Those of us who refer to him as “St. John Paul the Great” don’t do so out of a misguided, ultramontane belief that he was perfect in everything he did. Rather, we believe that his speaking and writing benefitted couples and families like no Church leader has done since the first century of Christianity when holiness was almost exclusively lived in family homes. He took the universal call to holiness seriously and dared to ask what a ground-up, organic, holistic, comprehensive, authentically marriage-and-family-based approach to holiness would look like in theory and in practice. For the first time, he made it possible for families to stop feeling like “also-rans” in the spiritual race (cf. 2 Tim 4:7). Instead of stumbling along in that race wearing the ill-fitting shoes of our clerical betters, he created new shoes that enable lay people to run the marathon of marriage and family life and use all the messy, chaotic, crazy parts of loving our spouse and raising our kids to draw closer to God.
