The Human Family – the genius idea of God Greetings and God’s blessings on you and your family on this Christmas and Feast of the Holy Family. Perhaps, for some, Christmas seems to take a long time coming and then ends quickly. Well, we don’t let this happen in the Catholic Church. Like Garfield hugging the Christmas tree to keep Jon from throwing it out, we hold on to the celebration all the way until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, on January 9th. Our focus, now, is on the time from Christmas to the Epiphany, which includes today’s Feast of the Holy Family, Solemnity of Mary on January 1st, and next Sunday’s Solemnity of the Epiphany. When you come into the Church, peep into the crèche and pause and reflect! The first people to experience the coming of the savior were shepherds, those lowly, uneducated ones who lived among the animals. They were not the only ones, of course, but they were the first to welcome the savior. They are joined by the wise men from the East who travelled a long distance to get to Bethlehem. Do you have the virtues of simplicity and wisdom to get close to the Divine presence.
Annie Dillard once suggested that we always find God in our lives as Jesus was found in Bethlehem on Christmas: a helpless infant in the straw who must be picked up and nurtured into adulthood. “God’s works are as good as we make them. That God is helpless, our baby to bear, self-abandoned on the doorstep of time, wondered at by cattle and oxen.” Mary gave birth to the baby, Jesus, but what she ultimately gave the world was the adult, Christ. Like all mothers she had to spend years nursing, cajoling, teaching, and nurturing an infant into adulthood. In that pattern, the incarnation, looking at how Mary gave birth to Christ, we are given a blueprint that invites imitation not admiration. Mary is the model of faith. What she did each of us too is called upon to do, namely, give birth to God in our lives. Christmas is for marveling at what once took place, but it is also for imitation, for continuing to give God flesh in the world. On this first Sunday after Christmas every year when families are reunited again, the Church places before us for our reflection the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Families did not come about by accident. The family is part of God’s plan for us. God wants our families to be holy. The family is the basic unit of society and the Church; we could say the family is a little church. It is in the family that we first learn to communicate. It is in the family that we learn what love is. It is in the family that we first learn to forgive and to pray. It is in the family that we first learn about God and Jesus and Our Lady. It is in the family that first we learn our values and what is good and bad. Respect, Gratitude and Forgiveness which form the framework of an authentic family are all learned through lived experience. The future of humanity depends on the family because it is through families that society continues. There are many attempts to destroy the family in our times but if the family will be destroyed in western society, the western world will crumble because all humanity comes through the family. There are many attempts today to redefine the family, but they do not reflect God’s plan for the family. As the Church places the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph before us this weekend for our reflection we should not think that they did not have challenges. Just like every family, they had to face and overcome difficulties, like misunderstanding, flight from enemies, loss of a child and poverty besides other problems. What helped this family through all these tests was their seeking God’s plan in prayer and faith just as prayer and faith help our families through difficulties. God wants our family to be holy. In our quest for providing the best of material things for our family, we might run the risk of loosing out on the most important duty of cultivating virtue and moral character. “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do…but how much love we put into that action.” – St. Teresa of Kolkata.