Ask Gina: What is the Domestic Church?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, an extensive reference work summarizing the richness and wisdom of our Catholic faith, tells us that “The Christian home is the place where children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this reason, the family home is rightly called "the domestic church," a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity.” (CCC 1666) The Domestic Church, also known as the Ecclesia Domestica, is not just a catchy name but a theological reality with deep roots in Scripture and Tradition. The Christian family mirrors the trinitarian love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through the loving union of husband and wife who bring forth new life in the birth of their children.

The family has such a powerful role in communicating the life of God to the world that Jesus himself chose to enter the world through one!  And in doing so, revealed to us through the lives of the Holy Family, St. Joseph, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Jesus, that the journey of the family is one seasoned in trials and tribulations, triumphs and joys.  St. John Chrysostom, Doctor of the Church, and well-known to those in the exorcism ministry for composing prayers still prayed by exorcists today, encourages the lay faithful to "Make your home a church in order to put the devil to flight.” He urges husbands and wives to turn their home into places of prayer and virtue, saying “The family is a little Church, where love, prayer, and forgiveness must reign as in the great Church.”

More recently St. John Paul II in his Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio, Latin for The Fellowship of the Family, proclaims that “At a moment of history in which the family is the object of numerous forces that seek to destroy it or in some way to deform it, and aware that the well-being of society and her own good are intimately tied to the good of the family,[7] the Church perceives in a more urgent and compelling way her mission of proclaiming to all people the plan of God for marriage and the family.” The battle waged against the family today is nothing new, and neither is our adversary, our opponent, the devil, who is prowling around like a roaring lion looking to create division and disunity in the midst of family life. So let us look to the intercession and example of the Holy Family and let us get battle-ready, strengthened and fortified for the task at hand, raising our own holy families!