Reflections on the Spiritual Vocation of the Family
With my voice unto the Lord have I cried,
with my voice unto the Lord have I made supplication.
I will pour out before Him my supplication,
mine affliction before Him will I declare.
When my spirit was fainting within me,
then Thou knewest my paths.
In this way wherein I have walked they hid for me a snare.
I looked upon my right hand, and beheld,
and there was none that did know me.
Flight hath failed me,
and there is none that watcheth out for my soul.
I have cried unto Thee, O Lord;
I said: Thou art my hope, my portion art Thou
in the land of the living.
Attend unto my supplication,
for I am brought very low.
Deliver me from them that persecute me
for they are stronger than I.
Bring my soul out of prison that I may confess Thy Name.
Psalm 141, from the Vesper Liturgy
The Psalmist David expresses the cry of the human heart. It is a cry in young and old alike, born of longing to be known in the depth of one’s being and recognizing that “there is none that did know me…none that watcheth out for my soul.” Gregory the Great (born in Rome c. 540), said that a friend is the guardian of one’s soul, custos animi.[1] Custos animi suggests that there are three elements that characterize spiritual friendship: responsibility for another person’s well-being and ultimate salvation, a knowledge of his or her inner life and, a spiritual dimension. Spiritual friendship undergirds my reflection and I will return to it in the latter portion of the discussion endeavouring to draw out its implications for the spiritual vocation of the family.
But first, I would like to begin this reflection on the spiritual vocation of the family at the heart of my personal formation, my mother and father, and in the life and sense of the world they sought to build together. It was in no sense an ideal. Yet I begin here because their stance towards me and my sisters, their nurture and initiation of us into the world, have come into relief and I see much more sharply how they have informed my thinking of family, the human spirit and our relationship with the stranger in our midst. They are my existential point of departure and, by implication, what I bring to this conversation.
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[1]Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community, The Monastic Experience, 350-1250 (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications Inc., 1988): xv. McGuire discusses Gregory the Great’s consideration of this theme and the seminal contribution to it by the Eastern Church Fathers in the first chapter of this book.
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