In the afterglow of Christmas, the Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Family. Today we are invited to reflect on the gift of life and the blessing of family life in particular.
Some of us come from the traditional family setting: a home with a father, a mother and siblings. Others come from a home that is missing a parent, due perhaps to death or divorce. Some of us live alone. I know some couples who are being parents again, raising their grandchildren or foster children. For some, the roles have been reversed, an adult child is now caring for a frail parent or two. In short, the makeup of a family varies widely from home to home.
Blood ties alone do not create a family. I have encountered too many examples of relatives who refuse to communicate with one another for any number of reasons. On the other hand, I have seen some people, although unrelated, who have bonded together very much like a family.
What makes any group of people a family? That word comes from the Latin word, familus, which means servant. Nearly any kid would agree with that definition, considering all the household chores they have to do! Serving one another is what keeps a family together. In the family, each person serves the needs of the others, placing the needs, interests, desires, and delights of the other before their own. What draws out the best in any family is love.
Many of us remember Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Bob Hope once said, “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for Crosby, and there’s nothing Crosby wouldn’t do for me. But that’s the trouble. We spent our lives doing nothing for one another.”
Hopefully, Mr. Hope isn’t describing your family. In your family, is love for one another expressed verbally or in a visual way? Or is the love you have for one another taken for granted and never expressed?
When was the last time you told your spouse, your parent, your children, your siblings, “I love you?” Failing to express love can spell trouble in due time. Many marriages fail because the love that once brought couples together had grown silent. Many adolescents, feeling rejected, either run away from home or have taken their lives because no one has ever said those three significant words until it is too late.
This feast, coming near the start of a New Year, provides an opportune moment for families to discern their bill of health by taking a look at the unintentional consequences of their choices.
As a parent, are you spending more time at work for the purpose of providing for your family yet finding yourself too busy to spend time with your children? As a spouse, are you too focused on caring for your children or your job that you are spending too little time with each other?
Those aren’t easy questions to deal with if they hit close to home, given the circumstances imposed on us by the pandemic. While we may not be able to control the economic forces that influence some of our decisions, we can decide what really matters in our lives. We can decide that God and people are more important than things.
We don’t know much about what life was like for the holy family, but I suspect they were more down to earth than we realize. If being a holy family means being open and accepting of one another, which I observe in Mary and Joseph, rather than expecting perfection, than being holy is a challenge every family can strive for.
Today, many families are basking in happy Christmas memories and enjoying the gifts they exchanged days ago. Others are not so fortunate, separated by the pandemic, broken homes, family feuds, or the loss of a loved one, so this feast may be somewhat painful yet for all of us, God is offering us wisdom through the insights of both Sirach and Paul, who urges us to clothe ourselves with kindness, humility, meekness, forgiveness, patience and love.
When parents seek to emulate the holy family in the manner suggested by Paul, they are doing what will enable their children to grow and become strong, filled with wisdom and the favor of God will be upon them.
Within our families, we experience the heights of joy and the depths of pain. Our belonging to a family means that each one of us, parent and child, reflects for the other the selfless, limitless and unconditional love of Christ, both in good times and in bad. The Holy Family in the sufferings they endured together is a model for us and our own families as we continue to confront the many tensions and crises in the year ahead that threaten the stability, peace and unity that are the joy of being a family.