There are so many centrifugal forces today that pull us away from what should be the center in daily life. I often dwell on the need to be intentional and re-focus on what we do inside the home. Yet this focus is not only compatible with but demands an appropriate re-focus on what is beyond the household too.

The good life is a masterpiece of order; and we must never tire of working to discover and enact that order. Only when we get this right can we give each thing its due.

Looking to the good of others, and this especially in the form of the ‘common good’ of communities to which we belong, is perhaps the root moral disposition of a good person. My true good—my vocation as it were—is in looking to the good of others. Does not the reality of being a husband and father or a wife and mother make this evident?

It might sound strange, but it is more proper to say that my flourishing as an individual is for the sake of the flourishing of the household than that the flourishing of the household is for the sake of my private good. As a husband and father I must realize that the household is primarily something to which I give myself, not something from which I get something for myself.

Central to understanding this point is that the flourishing of the household is in a sense mine; it is ‘mine’ not in the private sense but in the sense that I belong to this community, and so its flourishing is my flourishing. This heady point is the conceptual key to a profound truth: the common good, rather than something ‘alien’ or other than my good, is in fact the highest instance of a good that is ‘mine.’ All forms of communism and tyranny get this wrong: they make the good of the community be something alien to its members, and this especially because the rulers seek ultimately to take for themselves.

This is, unsurprisingly, a very challenging and indeed dramatic reality. It is at the heart of the human drama. Parents who do not have an appropriately generous and community-centered approach can malform children from the start—conveying even if only implicitly that the good of the family is something they seek for their own sake. Herein can be a selfishness that cuts at the very root of human life.

One way that having the right approach here manifests itself is in the recognition that our household is not simply oriented toward itself. The household exists as part of something larger, something to which it seeks to ‘give itself,’ as it were. A central aspect of maturing as persons and spouses is that we realize more and more that everything we do in the home (including keeping a strong focus there, resisting centrifugal forces) is so that the household can take up its place in the broader communities to which it belongs, especially the political community and the Church.

To get this right is a masterpiece of order and crown jewel of human flourishing, on both the natural and supernatural levels. Thomas Aquinas says that men form a community precisely to “live well together,” that is, “to live virtuously,” something “which the individual living alone could not attain.” That for us virtuous living is always a ‘living-together’ is an essential feature of the gift of being human.

And this gives concrete direction for life in the household. The beauty of human life lived in community is the reason we must focus on intensifying our daily life in the home, especially in an age when household is threatened by the loss of the ordinary activities that should characterize it. At the same time, this is also the reason we must raise our sights to the broader community and always ask how what we do within our homes and beyond them contributes to the common good of society and Church. ~ ~ ~

NEW PODCAST HOUSEHOLD AND COMMUNITY: ARE WE TOO BUSY FOR BOTH? How do we integrate commitment to homelife with participating in the broader community, such as school, town, or parish? Join Sofia and me in discussing this key life issue; we offer some principles for thinking about it and suggestions for addressing it. Find and share all our podcasts HERE.

My NEW BOOK THE INTENTIONAL HOUSEHOLD is NOW AVAILABLE! Ask for it at your favorite bookstore.

John Cuddeback

Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.