Holy Family - December 28, 2014

Feast of the Holy Family

December 28, 2014

On the Family

 

            One of my favorite Christmas traditions is to watch The Christmas Carol, the old Charles Dickens story about Scrooge. When I was in high school I was in that play, and ever since, I have enjoyed the story. It’s an interesting contrast between Scrooge – this friendless miser who is tremendously rich but miserable – and his employee, Bob Cratchet – who is poor, and works hard, but is deeply happy. What’s the difference between Scrooge’s misery and Cratchet’s happiness? I think the difference is that Bob Cratchet has a family. He is able to endure his poverty and difficult job because he is motivated by love for his family.

Family. The word can evoke so many emotions for people. For some, it is a place of peace, security, and love. For others, it provokes anxiety and stress. But what was God’s plan for the family?

            The family was meant to be the “domestic Church”. In other words, this is the place where we grow in holiness the most. Families should be communities of faith, hope, and love – like mini-churches! Think about it – in our families, we first learn about the love of God for us through the love our parents have for us. We also learn about virtues – good character traits – in the family: virtues such as patience, forgiveness, self-sacrifice…all of these are played out in the family.

            I think sometimes a great definition of family is: “Those people, related by blood, who you would do anything for…except take out the trash!” It’s precisely in the everyday life of the family that we learn how to love with true self-sacrificing love. Yes, taking out the trash can help us grow in holiness if we do it out of love…and so our families – as crazy as they can be – are the method through which we can become saints!

            The family is the fundamental building-block of society. Society is made up of families – therefore, as the family goes, so goes society. When families are weak and divided, when they break up easily or are “redefined”, then society itself becomes weak and divided and corrupted.

            I realize that nowadays, in 2014, especially in this community, there are not a whole lot of intact families left. Many families have suffered the pain of divorce or abandonment. And I do not intend to judge anyone who lives in a family that has been broken – please understand that God has great compassion on all those whose family situations are difficult.

            But God has intended, from the beginning of time, for a family to be a husband and a wife, united in marriage, with their children. When we start breaking up the family structure through divorce, or when we try to redefine it to be a union of two persons of the same gender, we not only harm the family but society as well. If someone were to try to build a brick house but kept using bricks that were broken, or tried to use Styrofoam instead of bricks, the house wouldn’t be very sturdy, and at a certain point if enough solid bricks were missing, the whole house would collapse. In the same way, if we try to build a solid society on broken families, it won’t work. Society will be weakened, and eventually collapse.

            So how do we build a happy, holy family in the modern world? Here are three suggestions to strengthening your family life for 2015.

            First, make God your first priority. That is shown in many ways – making sure than nothing else gets in the way of Sunday Mass, praying together daily as a family, having religious articles such as crucifixes and saint statues in your home, teaching your children their religious education, and coming as a family to other spiritual opportunities such as Stations of the Cross or Eucharistic Adoration. When God is the bedrock on which your family is built, then nothing can ever shake your family.

            Second, eat dinner together every night as a family. A series of studies looked at the effect of eating meals together as a family and they found that children whose families eat together have better social adjustment, less delinquency and drug use, less psychological problems, and a better overall sense of well-being than those who do not eat together regularly. The daily dinner gives families a chance to truly communicate, to get to know each other. I’m convinced that’s why God made us with the need to eat three times a day – so that we can have three opportunities to get to know each other better. So if you want a happy, healthy family, make sure that dinner is eaten together as often as possible, at least five times per week. If you’re too busy for this daily ritual, then you’re just too busy, period.

            Finally, learn sacrifice. It has been said that “family” is an acronym which stands for “Forget About Me – I Love You.” Families only work when each member is more concerned about the others than about themselves. That means that kids have to seek to obey their parents, even when it’s difficult. That means that spouses have to put the other first. Sacrifice is the purest form of love.

            Now, I know that families are very messy, and no one’s family is perfect. But what can we do in this new year to strengthen our families? All of us have family – even if we are widowed and alone, we hopefully have extended family that we can reach out to, or neighbors who are families for us. Let’s do our part to build up happy, healthy, holy families!