The Heart of the Family

One

Family as the most important reality in society

The fourth commandment is a commandment that has to do with the family.

Immediately after the commandments directly concerning our relationship with God, the next commandment is not a commandment that has to do with our relationship to the state, or to some other individual. Because the family is the basic unit of humanity. And understanding that is the only way we can fight the two competing errors of statism and individualism, the idea that the state is the main thing in human society, or that individuals are the main thing in human society.

Neither is true. A family is the main thing in human society. 

That’s why, when God became human, He didn’t just appear on earth as a lone individual. And He didn’t appear as an official in the government.

He appeared as a child in a family. Because that’s the basis, the starting point, the foundation, for all human experience and all human achievement. Being a child in a family.

Everything starts there. Everything depends on that. But if the family is the most basic, most fundamental, most important aspect of a natural society, then it follows that the most important work in society is done by those who directly care for their families. 

And that means mothers.

Two

Power from without or formation from within?

In a post-Christian world, motherhood has fallen from its universal esteem to the point that now it’s almost a matter of embarrassment, as though it’s a mark of failure.

People try to justify their own mothers by mentioning something else they do outside the home – “She’s a mom, but she’s also very into volunteer work!”

Parents will be disappointed in their daughter. They’ll say, “You had so much talent, you had so much potential, and you settled for being a mom!”

It’s awful, this denigration of motherhood. 

How did it happen?

Maybe the main reason motherhood isn’t respected as it used to is because of two confusions.

The first is thinking that it’s more important to have Power from without than Influence from within.

Mothers who aren’t in executive corporate positions or political offices may not feel like they have power. And they’re right – if they mean they can’t fire people or enforce laws, or give orders to a bunch of subordinates. But that basically comes down to forcing strangers to do things they don’t want to do. But is that the kind of power that we should really idealize? The power to force strangers to do what we want?

What about the ability, the opportunity, to form people we love from within? To help cultivate a soul and body so that it can be fulfilled, beautiful, and happy? 

We say that God is all-powerful, but actually, the power He usually exercises is the one that’s most like the power of a human mother, the power of carefully and gently shaping and leading us to be good and happy people.

So who is more powerful? Who is more like God Almighty Himself? Someone who can enforce his decisions on others, right or wrong? Or someone who shapes souls, who channels the latent goodness in children until it flowers out of them in all its beautiful uniqueness?

Think of that, and then ask yourself: who’s really more powerful? A boss? A president? Or a mom? 

Three

A broad impact or a deep one?

 One of the other reasons motherhood gets so little respect is that our culture is constantly making the mistake of thinking that a meaningful life means having an impact on a lot of people.

Which is absolutely absurd, of course. Hitler had an impact on a lot of people. The guy who invented emojis had an impact on a lot of people. And who cares?  

A meaningful life isn’t a life that impacts a lot of people. It’s a life that really makes a difference for good on a few people. It’s someone that makes a deep impact. And, at the natural level, our mom is probably the one who makes the deepest impact on all of us

Did you know that the most common thing last word for almost anyone to say as they die, is some variation on “Mom”? Did you know that soldiers are almost always surprised to find that when they first enter a battlefield, thoughts of their mother suddenly come flooding to their minds?

The mother is the most primordial former of the human body, the human mind, and the human soul. What possible impact can compare with that?

Four

Love as power

At the end of the day, everyone knows that a mother’s love is the paradigmatic, the gold standard, of natural human love.

Aquinas uses the image of a mother’s love as the example for the virtue of charity, because on the natural level, a mother’s love is the best analogy we have for the supernaturally sacrificial and selfless love to which God calls all of us. 

So why has motherhood fallen out of fashion? Because love has fallen out of fashion. People don’t believe in motherhood because they don’t believe, anymore, in love.

If they realy thought love was the most powerful force on earth, if they really thought love was what made the world go round, if they really believed in any of that, they would believe that motherhood is the most important job because a mother is gifted with the power to infuse love into the world more than any other person.

This is precisely what Pope Pius XI wrote about mothers in Casti Cannubii. He said the woman is the heart of the family, and “she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.”

Five

The most important created person: a mother

The great confirmation of motherhood’s supreme importance, is, of course, Mary herself.

The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are Uncreated Persons. But Mary is the most powerful and important of all the Created Persons on Heaven and on Earth. She is the Queen of Heaven and Earth. 

She is the model for a life well-lived. A job well done. She is the model of the incalculable power of love, and the world-transforming energy that can exist at the heart of a nuclear family. 

And all this, because she chose to be a Mother. May she give all mothers, and all the rest of us, the grace to remember that love is what matters most, that families are the heart of the human thing, that mothers are the heart of human families.

So let’s honor mothers, and let’s support them, as we value the health of the human race and the happiness of our children.