Days ago on Christmas, we celebrated the birth of Jesus, the Word of God, as a human being. He entered our world as part of a family, so now we celebrate something we have in common with him. All of us grew up in a family. Typically, that included parents and for most of us siblings. For some, however, parents and or siblings may be missing, yet they too grew up in some manner of a family setting, perhaps being raised by grandparents or other relatives.
Each of the readings today speaks to the importance of families, those units that shape us throughout our lives from infancy onward. Sirach provides a beautiful reflection on care and concern for one’s parents and Paul urges us to bear with one another, forgive one another, love one another, and to be thankful. Today’s gospel portrays Joseph as a model of a caring and watchful spouse and parent.
We know that family life is complicated. This isn’t just a modern reality. Throughout scripture, we can read much about heartache, lies, cheating, and the like as much as we read about love, fidelity, and steadfastness. No family is perfect and all families are made up of imperfect people.
Most of us think of the holy family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus as being the ideal one, clean and lovely with halos reflecting a sanctity no other family could possibly achieve. Not so, this family had its share of struggles and hard times, perhaps even more so than your family ever did. As we heard in the gospel, fearing for their safety, Joseph flees to Egypt to avoid the wrath of King Herod and provide a safe haven for Mary and Jesus. When Herod died, he returned to Israel, not to his hometown of Bethlehem, but to Nazareth.
Look in the dictionary and you will find that holy and ideal do not mean the same. While no family is likely to be ideal, that is perfect, every family has the potential to be holy. When the Bible says “holy,” it means “separate” or “different.” The word implies striving to be healthy and whole in a world where much is unhealthy and fragmented. The English phrase, ‘hale and hearty’ sums up true holiness.
“Holiness,” according to Catholic author, Mitch Finley, “includes such concepts as humor and laughter, compassion and understanding, and the capacity to forgive and be forgiven, to love and be loved. That’s holiness.
“Holy families are not free from conflict, nor do they never hurt one another. Holiness in families, rather, comes from learning to forgive and to be reconciled, and learning to face our problems and to do something about them.
“In family life, holy means striving to surrender to God’s light within us when the darkness around us seems overwhelming. It means struggling day after day to bring creative order…if only a bit of it…to the chaos of our lives. When we work at cultivating forgiveness, reconciliation and community, we embody God’s holy will in the context of family life. A family embodies holiness by striving to be ‘hale and hearty,’ not by trying to be ‘perfect’ according to a set of otherworldly standards.”
Celebrating this feast invites us to look at the holy family as a real family, an earthly family, not some pious, out of this world type of family. As a family, they understood the anxieties and sorrows, the ups and downs of family life. By real, I mean respecting, encouraging, affirming, and loving.
Think of any family as a garden and whatever is planted there will grow. Planting these four values in your family will bring forth a harvest of an abundant family life. Respect one another, encourage one another, affirm one another and love one another. As any gardener knows, there exists the law of the fallow field. If nothing positive is planted in the garden, it will revert to weeds. In other words, we have to continually plant each growing season exactly what it is we are expected to grow. Think of the qualities that Paul mentions in our second reading: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. If nothing of value is planted, then nothing of value will be harvested.
So I offer these suggestions for your family garden. A family needs time, attention, and cultivation; sunshine of laughter and affirmation; the rains of difficulties, tense moments of anxiety, and serious discussions on important matters; areas of hardness to be turned over like bitterness, envy, anger, and unforgiven hurts.
In your family garden, I urge you to plant seventeen rows. Five rows of Ps: perseverance, politeness, praise, prayer, and peacemaking. Four rows of Let us: Let us be faithful in word and deed; let us be unselfish with our resources; let us be loyal; let us love one another. Three rows of squash: squash gossip, squash negative criticism, and squash indifference. And five rows of turn ups: turn up on time for school events, turn up for family gatherings, turn up with a better attitude, turn up with new ideas and the determination to carry them out, and turn up with a smile.
Plant and nurture these value seeds in your family garden in the coming year and you will bring to a bountiful harvest a real family as well as a holy family. You can imitate the holy family very nicely by tending to your family garden and raising your family uncommonly well.