[I am in Europe doing graduate studies in Aquinas, so I thought I would share some of the things he says about family life:]
The fundamental question of family life is, “Where are we going?”
Every family is going somewhere, whether or not the parents have chosen the destination. Aquinas teaches that everything we do is ordered to an end—the end governs the act as the archer’s target governs the shot—and man has one final end which is happiness.[1]
The whole of parenting, then, hangs on a correct understanding of happiness.
Now, you may be scratching your head saying, “I thought our final end was Heaven.” We will get there; but Aquinas is a philosopher as well as a theologian, so you have to follow his logic in steps:
We are created for happiness; but most families are chasing the wrong kind of happiness. The list has been around for thousands of years—riches, honor, fame, power, health, pleasure, even the soul’s own natural excellence—but they all fall short.[2]
Aquinas explains that true happiness is the perfect good that leaves nothing further to be desired, thus “it is impossible for any created good to constitute man’s happiness,” because the human will can be satisfied only by unlimited good—and every created good is limited.
So “God alone can satisfy the will of man.”[3] You had it right. More money will only make a man more of what he already is. No career, no college acceptance letter, no retirement portfolio, no reputation, no psychologically “well-adjusted” bill of health can completely fulfill a person, who is made to find his happiness in God.
What, then, is happiness? “Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence.”[4] As St. John the Theologian promises: “we shall be like to Him; because we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn 3:2). This is what Aquinas calls the Beatific Vision—heaven not as a permanent vacation but as communion with God.
Yet there is an obstacle to our happiness because this end is supernatural, and we are not. The vision of God’s essence “surpasses the nature not only of man, but also of every creature,” and consequently “neither man, nor any creature, can attain final Happiness by his natural powers.”[5] We were made for a joy we cannot reach by ourselves.
Now stay with me because we are getting to how this relates to family life:
Adam lost communion with God for the entire human race through his Fall. Original Sin has cut us off from the one thing we were made for—happiness with God. This is the tragedy of man, but there is good news. God the Father so loved the world that He sent His Son to restore the relationship. Jesus Christ is true God and true man, and because He is both, He bridges what we could not cross on our own.
The Word became flesh, lived among us, taught us, was betrayed, suffered, and died on the cross, and on the third day rose again, destroying death by death. The gap between God and man has been bridged once for all. And restored unity comes through baptism, which unites us to the life of Christ, infusing the soul with sanctifying grace, whereby man becomes “a partaker of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4).
What was impossible to attain on our own is now made possible. This is why Aquinas, despite teaching that no one is perfectly happy in this life, also teaches that some are called happy in this life already—on account of the hope of obtaining happiness in the life to come: “we are saved by hope” (Rom 8:24).[6]
Hope is the family’s proper atmosphere. The parent who knows the final destination acts and parents differently. Christians live in confidence, joy, and peace.
Happy Family Life
Yet man does not attain his end alone. Man is naturally social, and the perfection of the human person is achieved within communities. The individual is part of the household, and the household is part of the community, for “the good of one man is not the last end, but is ordained to the common good.”[7]
The supernatural end, though attained by each individual soul, is not a private end—it is a common end, shared by all who are called to communion with the same God.
The family is the first community in which this common destiny is either fostered or forfeited.
This Christian understanding of society gives family life its purpose. The supernatural end is the end of every baptized person; but the family has its own proper end: the common good of the family, i.e. the good life of the household, living in justice and prudence together, embracing the resources required for its maintenance, the virtuous life of its members, mutual help and assistance among them, and education.[8]
A family is not a monastery. It is a domestic community entrusted with temporal goods, mutual obligations, educational needs, and a shared common life befitting its nature.
Yet in the Christian family two ends are intertwined. The common good of the family is elevated by grace and ordered to the sanctification of its members. As grace does not destroy nature, so the supernatural end does not abolish the common good of the family but rather perfects it.
But the family is an imperfect society, because it needs the help of wider society—and, above all, of the Church—for its perfection. The Church’s help is not optional because there is no salvation outside the Church. The family does not perfect its members by itself. God chose to perfect families through the Church, His own perfect society.
The child does not come to God alone. Catholic parents bring their child to the priest for baptism and later for confession, and the Church administers the sacraments; parents teach the child to pray, and the Church feeds him with the Eucharist; parents catechize him under the direction and assistance of the Church, and the Church confirms him for spiritual battle.
Thus, the faithful family pursues its common good—bread on the table, virtue in the children, help in old age—which is the God-given natural end of the domestic community; and the family also orders all its works toward heaven, in light of our supernatural end. That is what makes a happy family.
[1] Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 1, aa. 1–6
[2] ST I-II, q. 2, aa. 1–8
[3] ST I-II, q. 2, a. 8
[4] ST I-II, q. 3, a. 8
[5] ST I-II, q. 5, a. 5; ST I, q. 12, a. 4
[6] ST I-II, q. 5, a. 3, ad 1
[7] ST I-II, q. 90, a. 3, ad 3
[8] ST I-II, q. 90, a. 3