Video Transcript
Edmund: If you were asked to pick one organization, group, or community with the potential to have the biggest impact on the world, what would you pick?
Emily: Well, there’s an amazing quote that comes to mind from Mother Teresa: “If we truly want peace in the world, let us begin by loving one another in our own families.” And that’s coming from someone who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize!
Edmund: Yeah, I would consider achieving world peace to be a pretty big impact. And I have to agree with Mother Teresa, because the most powerful, universal, and foundational relationship on earth is that of the family.
Emily: We’re made for relationship. And this truth makes everything else fall into place. We’re created to love God, and this is the most important relationship.
Edmund: But God also revealed that we are called to love one another in a radical way. Jesus said to his disciples: “Love one another even as I have loved you.” And the first people we should have the opportunity to love and be loved by are our parents.
Emily: The first three Commandments are about our relationship with God. And then the next seven Commandments are about our relationship with everyone else. The Fourth Commandment is about this most universal, powerful, and foundational relationship – the one we have with our parents. The Fourth Commandment is to “Honor our mother and father.”
Edmund: Even Jesus, who is God, saw obedience to His parents’ authority on earth as honoring God’s authority. The Catechism says in paragraph 2197: “The fourth commandment opens the second table of the Decalogue. It shows us the order of charity.” The order of charity means that God wants us to honor and love Him first, and then to honor and love our parents. We honor God by honoring those whom God has given authority over us.
Emily: This Commandment is SO important because it is the foundation of the human community. To love our neighbor means to love others, and the foundation of this love should be found in the most important human relationship dynamic: a family. This starts with the relationship we are responsible for honoring with our mother and father, to the best of our ability.
Edmund: This is why in paragraph 2198, the Catechism says, “This commandment is expressed in positive terms of duties to be fulfilled. It introduces the subsequent commandments which are concerned with particular respect for life, marriage, earthly goods, and speech. It constitutes one of the foundations of the social doctrine of the Church.”
Emily: The Fourth Commandment is addressed expressly to children in their relationship to their father and mother, because this relationship is the most universal. We were all raised by someone. It likewise concerns the ties of kinship between members of the extended family.
Edmund: God reveals a resemblance of His own life of communion through the relationships we can experience between members of a family. And by honoring our father and mother, we honor God.
Emily: The family, which the Catechism calls “the conjugal community,” is a special human relationship that should be founded on unconditional love. In this way, it reflects the communion of life and love of God as the Trinity of persons in relationship: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Edmund: The relationships of a family are founded on the unconditional love of the spouses. The spouses’ unconditional love for each other is the foundation created for the procreation and education of children.
Emily: Of all the ways that Jesus could have come to his people, he was born into a family. In a way, the family is like a little Church, or the first Church. This is why the Catechism also refers to the Christian family as the “domestic Church.” By caring for their children, educating them, and handing on the faith to them, parents are the first way that a child comes to know the Father’s love.
Edmund: The family exists within the broader context of the Church and the human society. The family is the original cell of social life. It is a natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternal love within society.
Emily: The family is the special community in which, from childhood, we can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of our freedom. Family life can be an initiation into life in society.
Edmund: Families are a school of charity, where we can discover and learn to live our vocation, or the unique purpose God has created us for.
Emily: So what does honoring our parents and following this Commandment mean practically? It means doing the best we can to respect our parents, to love them, and support them, especially as they age.
Edmund: But this Commandment also means that parents have a responsibility to live in a way that fosters and supports this honoring from their children, and allows their children to experience God through their role as parents.
Emily: God knows being a parent is a very important calling. Parents are called to be the first ones to take care of a human person physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They can be the first ones to introduce a person to Jesus, and are uniquely called to teach, evangelize, and catechize their children.
Edmund: Our families might not be perfect. Our parents, our children, and all of us have flaws. And we don’t all have families that look the same or have the gift of a father or mother or children. But, since we’re made for relationship, we honor God when we do our best to love and honor the most important relationship, next to God, that we are given… our family.
