The Lessons of Family Unity

In this installment of our Holy Cross Heritage month series, we reflect a little more deeply into the life, mission, and spirituality of Blessed Basile Moreau, founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, particularly his vision on unity. Moreau's legacy continues to shape Catholic education, parish life, missionary work, and the formation of families rooted in faith. Moreau was an extraordinary figure of the nineteenth‑century French Church—an educator, a spiritual leader, and a visionary who believed deeply in the power of unity, love, and the renewal of society through faith.

As we shared in an earlier reflection, Basile Moreau was born in 1799 in Laigné‑en‑Belin, a rural region of northwestern France marked by its resilience and deep Catholic identity, especially during the persecution of the French Revolution. The ninth of fourteen children, Moreau grew up in a tightly knit family whose hardships and fidelity helped form his lifelong conviction that the family is the “domestic Church,” the seedbed of unity, holiness, and Christian virtue.

From a young age, Moreau showed signs of a priestly vocation—studious, prayerful, earnest, and drawn to the liturgy. His local pastor recognized his gifts and encouraged him to enter the minor seminary, where he excelled academically and spiritually. He was ordained in 1821 and sent to Paris for additional formation with the Sulpicians, a community renowned for rigorous asceticism and the training of priests. These experiences shaped Moreau’s disciplined spiritual life and his dedication to forming others for service in the Church.

Engaging with the Modern World

Returning to Le Mans, he served as professor, rector, spiritual director, and retreat preacher. His reputation for insightful teaching and passionate preaching spread quickly. Moreau also demonstrated an innovative approach to education, requiring seminarians to study both sacred theology and contemporary subjects such as philosophy and physics. He believed the Church needed priests and laypeople who could engage intelligently with the modern world without compromising their faith.

This conviction extended beyond the seminary. In the 1830s, Moreau encountered the Brothers of St. Joseph, a lay religious community founded by Father Jacques Dujarié. When Dujarié became ill, he entrusted the brothers to Moreau’s care. Moreau soon brought together his own Auxiliary Priests with the brothers, creating the Association of Holy Cross in 1837—a unified community of educators, preachers, and missionaries.

Education became one of Moreau’s central apostolates. He believed education should form the whole person—mind, heart, and soul—and famously insisted that “the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart.” He also sent students and religious into the poorest neighborhoods of Le Mans to serve, learn from, and accompany the marginalized. Moreau envisioned education as nothing less than a “work of the resurrection,” capable of renewing society and forming citizens of both earth and heaven.

The global mission of Holy Cross today—its schools, parishes, universities, and ministries—flows directly from this vision. With more than 120 institutions worldwide, Holy Cross continues to form young people through the integrated, transformative education that Moreau pioneered.

Yet Moreau’s contribution extends beyond education. He lived during a time when French society, shaken by revolution, faced deep mistrust and social fragmentation. Moreau saw clearly that the Church could help heal these wounds and rebuild unity. His spirituality, therefore, centered on communion—rooted in the Trinity and modeled in the Holy Family. He believed unity was not merely practical but divine in origin, and that the renewal of families was essential to the renewal of society.

Unity Anchored in the Trinity

Over the course of his time leading the Congregation of Holy Cross, Moreau developed a rich spirituality of unity anchored in the Trinity and finding perfect expression in the Holy Family of Nazareth. To summarize, he believed that unity was not just a useful quality for accomplishing great tasks, but was rooted in the very life of the Blessed Trinity. As a communion of three Divine Persons united in essence, the Trinity is the perfect expression of unity.

Moreau believed that for human beings to live in true union, animated by love and possessing a harmony of wills and desires, is to be swept up into the very life of God. To put it another way, unity is nothing short of divine. If Moreau paraphrased the popular expression, he would say that unity is next to godliness.

Always practical, Moreau did not want this spirituality of unity to seem too abstract or removed from the everyday experience of Christians. In an everyday context, what divine love looks like for human beings is family. Family is the original place of belonging where we are loved and cherished unconditionally for who we are; it is the school of faith, hope, and love, where we come to know God, to learn virtue, and to practice self-sacrifice for those we love.

Family is where we learn to cooperate in harmony, where we first come to understand the common good, and where we draw strength for the long and arduous pilgrimage of life. A family united in love and purpose can change the world.

“Strength of numbers,” Moreau wrote, “when joined with unity of aim and action, is the greatest of all strengths and is limited only by the bounds of the possible.”