Catholic News Service
Do you know any families who do not hope for happiness? I don’t.
But most of us have trouble defining “happiness” precisely. Though we relentlessly pursue happiness, it is difficult to state precisely what we’re pursuing. Perhaps, though, we know what happiness is not, and that could help.
“Happiness comes to us indirectly as the fruit of defeating the causes of our unhappiness,” Benedictine Father Christopher Jamison wrote in “Finding Happiness.” But when it comes to happiness, he cautioned, “careful work is needed to discern the real thing.”
It seems Pope Francis agrees that it is vital to defeat the causes of unhappiness. Consider his October 2013 remarks to a huge crowd in Rome participating in a Year of Faith celebration of the family.
“I have felt the pain of families living in situations of poverty and war,” he told them. He observed that “life is often wearisome, and many times tragically so.” Moreover, “work is tiring,” and “looking for work is exhausting.”
But “what weighs more than all of these things is a lack of love. It weighs upon us never to receive a smile, not to be welcomed. Certain silences are oppressive, even at times within families, between husbands and wives, between parents and children, among siblings.”
So, in one breath, Pope Francis not only encouraged families to displace the causes of their unhappiness but to replace them with love. Repeatedly, he insists it is love that gives rise to joy in life.
Thankfully, when love is present, life even can be fun. As the pope told the gathering of families:
“The life of a family is filled with beautiful moments: rest, meals together, walks in the park or countryside, visits to grandparents or to a sick person. But if love is missing, joy is missing, nothing is fun.”
“Living together is an art,” Pope Francis told engaged couples on Valentine’s Day in 2014. He suggested that for couples and families, living together entails “a patient, beautiful, fascinating journey.” The journey “does not end once you have won each other’s love. Rather, it is precisely there where it begins!”
It might be that Pope Francis had the art of family living in mind when he convoked a special assembly of the world Synod of Bishops to take place in October 2014. Underlying the synod’s stated topic — “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization” — is a question asking how the church can help couples, parents and children meet the unique demands of living together in these times.
The synod’s working document indicated that a number of special concerns related to contemporary family life would be on the assembly’s agenda — such as the situation of divorced Catholics who remarry without an annulment of their first union, cohabitation and legalized same-sex marriage.
But the working document also indicated that the assembly would pay close attention to ways the church can serve all families and help them succeed in their basic vocation, which is to love.
“The primary task of the church is to proclaim the beauty of the vocation to love,” the working document declared.
Again and again it asked how the church might offer “pastoral care” to families today and learn to look “at the family itself as a resource to renew the parish and the church.”
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin had pastoral care for families in mind when he spoke in June 2014 to a conference on “Marriage and Family at the Heart of the Parish.” The archbishop said, “We need to focus on how we build strong families. We need to focus on the fact that we have great families and that families bring joy and happiness to their members.”
It is one thing to invite families to replace the obstacles to their happiness with love. But Pope Francis goes beyond that. He encourages everyone to act upon love in specific ways.
It is essential to grasp two “characteristics of love” in particular, he suggested in a June 2014 homily. First, he said, love is expressed more in “giving than in receiving.” Second, love is witnessed more in actions than in words.
And by now Pope Francis is famous for the three little words he considers essential for love to grow in a family: “please,” “thank you” and “sorry.”
— Please: “Courtesy kindles love,” he said; it manifests “respect and care” for another person. Thus, courtesy is invaluable to practicing the art of living together, Pope Francis suggested in his conversation with engaged couples.
— Sorry: He exhorted the couples, moreover, never to “let the sun go down without making peace” in a marriage and a family. “Don’t let a day end without asking forgiveness,” he said.
— Thank you: Finally, gratitude. Spouses and family members should look upon each other as gifts from God, “and for the gifts of God we say thank you,” Pope Francis explained.
He recommended developing an “interior attitude” that prompts one person to thank the other “for everything.”
Gibson served on Catholic News Service’s editorial staff for 37 years.
