Consecrated Families in Western Christian History: Their Presence in and Significance for Christian Spirituality (original) (raw)

Msekenyuyfo'on K. M., The idea and components of family spirituality (1)

Duchowość w Polsce, 2019

Whether or not living in the circumstances of family life can make one holy is a question that Familiaris consortio answers readily and in the affirmative. The canonization of Zelie and her husband Martin, and the existence in the martyrology of other men and women who lived the Christian virtues to a heroic level in the context of their families are facts that support the position of this document. During their canonization, Pope Francis stated in his sermon: “the holy spouses Louis Martin and Marie Zelie Guerin practised Christian service in the family, creating day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters, among whom was Saint Therese of the Child Jesus”. Far gone, therefore, are days of supposing that one has to go to the desert, the monastery or perform some extraordinary work to become a saint. In fact, the call God addresses to his people to be holy is described as universal precisely because it applies to all people, everywhere, at all times and in every circumstance of life. Whoever lives his or her life according to the promptings of the Holy Spirit is answering that call. For those who live in the context of a family, be they spouses, parents, children or other relatives, the call to be holy consists of carrying out the task of the family – forming a community of persons, serving life, participating in the development of society, and sharing in the life and mission of the Church. By showing how Christian families can carry out their task, John Paul II, by that very fact, charts out the way of sanctity for the families or family spirituality whose components this article makes a modest attempt to highlight and explain.

The Secular Family in Monastic Rules, 400-700

Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 2019

This article is an inventory and discussion of the interaction between monks, nuns, and their secular kin in the monastic rules produced between the fifth and the eighth centuries, from Egypt to Cappadocia, Italy, Spain, as well as southern and northern Gaul. It begins with admission into the community and moves inwards from contact with one’s kin outside the monastery to the relationship between family members inside the monastery. Though its results are preliminary, this survey demonstrates a significant amount of interaction between the monastery and the secular family, thus reaffirming the centrality of kinship to the monastic project.

Bishops, Wives and Children: Spiritual Capital Across the Generations

"Christianity as a cultural force, whether rising or falling, has seldom been analysed through the actual processes by which tradition is transmitted, modified, embraced or rejected. This book achieves that end through a study of bishops of the Church of England, their wives and their children, to show how values fostered in the vicarage and palace shape family, work and civic life in a supposedly secular age. Davies and Guest integrate, for the first time, sociological concepts of spiritual capital with anthropological ideas of gift-theory and, alongside theological themes, use these to illuminate how the religious professional functions in mediating tradition and fostering change. Motifs of distant prelates, managerially-minded fathers in God and rebellious clergy children are reconsidered in a critical light as new empirical evidence offers unique insights into how the clergy family functions as an axis of social power in an age incredulous to ecclesiastical hierarchy. Bishops, Wives and Children marks an important advance in the analysis of the spirituality of Catholic, Evangelical and Liberal leaders and their social significance within a distinctive Christian tradition and all it represents in wider British society."