Feast of the Holy Family • Year A

St. Augustine said that “we make our times” … if our times are good or bad it is because we have made them so. No place is this more true than our family times. These are perhaps the most important and yet the most difficult of all the times of our lives.

They are most important because if we have family, if we have a community of other humans who care for us and whom we care about, we can put up with almost anything. Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the Holocaust, remarked that by and large those who survived where those who had some reason for living. He suggests we humans can stand any situation if we have a reason. We can endure any what if we have a why.

I would like to suggest that very often for most of us that why is a Who … that a lot of our reason for living comes from a Who, a person whom we love more than ourselves, a person who returns that love as best they can.

For the great saints, that person was God. For most others, on a day-by-day basis, that person is another human being … especially one who is bound to us as family. It is not that we do not love God. It is just that for us ordinary folk, the love or rejection that affects us most proximately is the love or rejection that we receive from those with whom we live daily.

We are not bothered that much by the lack of interest of passing anonymous strangers, if at least we have some who look at us and see us and value us. We are never completely alone in this world if we have some family who care for us. It is this love of family that we see that helps us believe in the love of God that we do not see.

It is for this reason that Jesus was born into a human family. He, like us, treasured the special love that comes from a mother and father who care for their child more than anything else. Even he wanted to express that highest of all purely human love … the love of a devoted child for his parents.

The model of a good family for all of us is the family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. A family that had very little in this life. But they did have each other … and that for them, as it is for us, was quite enough.

No surprise then, that the Bible offers so much good advice about families.

Paul, writing to the Colossians, took time to tell them how they should treat members of their family.

• he told husband and wife to love each other and be ready to sacrifice their own desires for the sake of the beloved.
• he told them to avoid bitterness at all costs, to not let their love go sour because of selfishness or boredom or other interests.
• he told children to be respectful of their parents wishes … especially when they are young … but even later, when they are making their own lives, to remember that though “they are on their own,” whatever they do has a positive or negative effect on their parents. They are free to give up the values learned as a child, but they are not free to avoid the effects of that decision … which often include deep pain in the hearts of those who raised them.

Paul told parents to be reasonable with their children … they are not pets … they must make their own way in the world … do not make them into little ponies jumping through hoops held by two old nags.

Finally, the book of Sirach completes the instruction by telling children to take care of their parents when they are old. He tells children:

Do not grieve them as long as they live.

Even if their minds fail, be kind to them.

Do not look down on them because you are strong and they are now weak.

Kindness to parents will never be forgotten … it will cover a multitude of sins.