My, oh my! Jesus seems a little insensitive, doesn’t he? “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” Then Luke adds these interesting words: “But they did not understand what he was saying to them.” Is there anyone in this room who has not felt at some time in your life that your parents did not understand you? Of course not. All of us have had times when we felt like our families didn’t understand us. Conflict within families, particularly between the generations, is as old as time. It’s not easy being a parent at any age nor is it easy being a young person. One mother said, “Doctor, I’d like you to evaluate my 13 year-old son.” “OK,” said the doctor, “He’s suffering from a transient psychosis with an intermittent rage disorder, punctuated by episodic radical mood swings, but his prognosis is good for full recovery.” The woman was surprised. “How can you say all that without even meeting him?” she asked. The doctor said, “Didn’t you say he’s 13?”
The Feast of the Holy Family provides an opportune time for us to reflect on the significance of family in our lives. Most likely, no other group of people has shaped our lives more than the family we grew up in. We tend to idealize Jesus, Mary and Joseph as the perfect family, but as today’s gospel reveals, their lives were filled with misunderstandings, stress, and sorrows, along with joys, reconciliation, and heartfelt experiences.
Having never been awakened at three in the morning to feed a crying baby, I do not consider myself an expert on raising a family. Like the sportswriter who has never played football, I can offer some worthwhile insights gained over the years from others.
To begin with, blood ties alone do not create a family. As a pastor, I have encountered too many examples of relatives who refuse to communicate with one another. What transforms a group of people into a family is love. No wonder John urges us to love one another. Without love, there is nothing to really bind a family together.
When was the last time you told your spouse, child, parent or sibling, “I love you?” Failing to express love for someone can spell trouble down the road. Many marriages have failed because the love that once brought couples together grew silent.
Children especially need to see and feel that they are loved. Many teens who feel unloved make their needs known too late when they either commit suicide or a serious crime or both, sometimes in the home, the very place where one would expect to find love, as that young man did recently in Connecticut when he shot his own mother before killing 20 children and 6 adults. British author, PD James, put it this way, “What a child doesn’t receive, he can seldom later give.”
While in the seminary, I readThe Road Less Traveled, in which Dr. Scott Peck made a point I have never forgotten. Parenting is our most awesome responsibility, yet few parents have received any formal training in how to parent their children. Instead, for better or worse, they are likely to parent their children in the manner they were once parented themselves.
Dr. Lee Salk, in his book, My Father, My Son, observes, “Don’t be afraid of your emotions, of telling your father or your son that you love him and that you care. Don’t be afraid to hug and kiss him. Don’t wait until the death bed to realize what you’ve missed.” What is true for fathers and sons is equally true for mothers and daughters, and for that matter, mothers and sons, along with fathers and daughters.
Today’s gospel reveals that the holy family was a real family, one that understood the anxieties and sorrows of family life. They are a model of how every family can be holy and real. By real, I mean respecting, encouraging, affirming and loving.
Think of the family as a garden in which whatever is planted in it will grow. Planting these four values in your family will bring forth a harvest of abundant family life. I am not much of a green thumb, but I have learned the law of a fallow field: if nothing positive is planted, the garden will always revert to weeds. So, if nothing of value is planted, then nothing of value is harvested.
Like a garden, a healthy family needs time, attention, and cultivation; sunshine of laughter and affirmation to off set the rains of difficulties and tense moments of anxiety. Its areas of hardness such as envy, bitterness, anger, and unforgiven hurts need to be turned over.
In this family garden, plan to plant these 17 rows:
• Five rows of p’s: perseverance, politeness, praise, peace making and prayer.
• 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 criticism, and squash indifference.
• Five rows of “turn ups”: turn up on time for school plays, scout meetings, and baseball games. Turn up for family gatherings. Turn up with a better attitude. Turn up with new ideas and determination to carry them out. And last but not least, turn up with a smile.
If you plant and nurture these values in your family garden, you will bring to a bountiful harvest a real family as well as a holy family.