Interview | “Revolution of Love: The 21st Century Home”

Revolution of Love: The 21st Century Home is a book created to promote the home in today’s culture. Compelling photographs and quotations aim to capture with truth and love the ordinary and human activities of daily life in the family and in the home. Edited texts convey the warmth, affection, and depth of God’s love in his fatherly and practical concerns for his children. It is in the family, in the home, where we learn to love and to be loved.

Mrs. Carol Nail is one of a group of women who collaborated in editing and publishing Revolution of Love: The 21st Century Home.  The St. Josemaria Institute is happy to share this brief interview with Carol about how this newly updated and relevant-for-our-time book came to be:

Q: Who and what inspired this project and book?
Carol: Bishop Javier Echeverria, third Prelate of Opus Dei, was the primary inspiration behind the book. He supported and encouraged projects that “promote the home in today’s culture”, especially due to the global challenges to marriage, family, and home.  I was asked to help come up with a project.  Although very happy to do so, I did not know where to begin!  So I asked some friends who were also enthusiastic about the idea. We all were very aware that fewer and fewer children were being raised in a home as God intended it to be – the home of Nazareth being the example set for us all.  We were given some guidelines, including the recommendation that this project for the home in the 21^st century be in “the spirit of Opus Dei and of the Gospel”.  We were also given the suggestion to “ask St. Josemaria what he wants”, and this book came about!

Q: Why have you decided to focus primarily on Pope Francis and St. Josemaria Escriva as authors?
Carol: We focused on these authors because both St. Josemaria and Pope Francis preach the Gospel with such warmth, affection and authentic love which we tried to capture in the book. They also emphasize common inspiring themes, for example: every person is called to holiness and identification with Christ; the tenderness of God – Pope Francis wrote “the Son of God became man to summon us to a revolution of tenderness” (Evangelii Gaudium, no. 88); and, St. Josemaria wrote, “words cannot describe Jesus’s tenderness toward us” (Christ is Passing By, no. 59). Both authors present God as our loving Father, we are his beloved children in Christ. Divine filiation is the foundation of our faith—the immeasurable love of God in giving us his Son Jesus.

St. Josemaria received from God the “revolutionary message for the laity to bring Christ’s heart into the middle of world”. Similarly, Pope Francis recently published Gaudete et Exsultate (“On the Call to Holiness in Today’s World”).

Both authors deeply love Mary whom Jesus has given to us to be our Mother, too. Both teach about serving others, sacrifice, marriage and family life, work, and prayer as a continual conversation with God who makes his home in our hearts, the tabernacle, our family, and brings us home to heaven. And both bring to our attention the marvelous truth that Jesus wanted to launch the Redemption of the world from the heart of a simple, ordinary family. The first thing that Jesus sanctified with his presence was a home where he spent 30 years of his life.

Q: Who is the intended audience and why?
Carol: The book is intended for all who would like to bring more love into their home. Engaged, married couples, and parents will hopefully find in this book, as one reader wrote, “a wealth of wisdom about family life”, simply presented. She suggested that “we read one point a day, reflect on it, and talk to Our Lord about our family. He was there from the beginning”. The book could also be useful as a tool for Home Study/Discussion Groups providing valuable formation and offering friendships which could help women navigate today’s culture. Study Guides are in the Resource section on the website.

Q: What kind of conversations and discussions do you hope it will inspire?
Carol: We are hoping that this book will bring to the world the inspiring and transforming teachings of St. Josemaria Escriva and Pope Francis about the home where each member of the family learns how to love. This is the primary purpose of the book. As Pope Francis said, “our teaching on marriage and the family cannot fail to be inspired and transformed by this message of love and tenderness.”

Q: Where can the book be purchased? Is it available in other languages?
Carol: The book can be purchased from our website at www.rol21.com. It is available in English and Spanish. (The PDF is available for translating into other languages, or to be printed in countries other than the USA. Contact information is on the website.)

Q: What other resources are available now or will be in the future?
Carol: Resources are available on the website in English and Spanish, including Discussion/Study Guides, recommended reading, videos, and further topics for discussion that meet today’s cultural challenges to marriage, family and home. Get a glimpse into pages of the book on our website at www.rol21.com.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Carol: Yes. We are very hopeful, and actually excited, that the next generations in the 21^st century can take to heart, with lots of courage and love, the challenges to bring about in the culture a revolution of love and truth beginning with the home.

Here are some quotations that are in the book to encourage readers:

Father Javier del Castillo, Vicar of Opus Dei for the Chicago Delegation in the USA, offered a solution: “We need strong families to actually form the future generation of the Church – to form and transmit virtues…Where do we learn these virtues? All these things are learned at home. The Church begins at home. The Church is homemade.”

St. Josemaria reminds us: “Brief indeed is our time for loving. We mustn’t squander this period of the world’s history which God has entrusted to each one of us.” “These world crises are crises of saints.”

“One could say without exaggeration,” Pope Francis writes, “that the family is the driving force of the world and of history.”

We hope this book will either bring to mind and/or memory these words of St. Josemaria and Pope Francis, encouraging young people to embrace the “noble ambition” of creating homes. Pope Francis says: “A great and very exciting undertaking awaits us. Have the courage to be happy! Be brave and opt for marriage and family.”