Today we
celebrate the feast of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I can
only wonder at what it was like, their prayer life, their daily work, and the
love that they shared. It must have been pretty amazing, but I would also
assume in many ways it was quite regular as well. I am sure there was
something magical about it, but just like everyone else they had to work, do
their chores, and simply just work at being a family. I am sure there
were moments of worry, concern, and even frustration.
We all know
that the Holy family was holy, we have depictions, art work, icons, statues,
and every other form of art telling us this, and they truly were holy for Jesus
was full of grace and Truth, Mary was Immaculate and Joseph a good and
righteous man. Nevertheless they were not without suffering, worry or
concern as all of us are from time to time.
What does
this model of the Holy Family mean for our families? Obviously we are to
imitate the Holy Family as much as we possibly can. However, our families
also have concerns, worries, and even suffering. We can go even further;
our families have problems, be they small or great. Many times we will
hide our problems from others, we keep our dirty laundry to ourselves, because
God forbid someone finds out my teenage daughter is pregnant, or my son is
divorced and has remarried outside of the Church with no annulment and
continues to receive the sacraments, or my father is an alcoholic, or my sister
addicted to drugs. No family is exempt from problems, some may not be so
severe, but problems nevertheless.
What is the
answer to these problems? The answer is perseverance and prayer.
St. Paul calls us fighters fighting the good fight, he knew life was not easy,
sometimes far from it, and fighters get knocked down but a good fighter will
try to get up each and every time, I often pray that I will be a strong
fighter, for I too have been knocked down, harder than some and some harder
than me. A holy family continues to get up. Families will try to stay together, for the
most part, even with severe problems, they try to stick it out, but sometimes a
family falls apart because it is dealing with a hurt that they think cannot be
healed and it usually centers on forgiveness or the feeling of why God allowed
something terrible to happen to us.
St. Paul in
his letter to the Colossians writes, “. . . bear(ing) with one another and
forgive(ing) one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has
forgiven you, so must you also do.”
How many
times do we hear of family squabbles that get out of control and before you
know it brother stops talking to brother, daughter stops talking to mother,
father abandons family, and all the rest? Most of the times not being
able to forgive deals with betrayal. Someone has betrayed me, broke
trust, or given up on me and the hurt that – that brings is sometimes too much
and causes a break between blood, marriage or friendships. We just find
it impossible to forgive.
Feeling
abandoned by God is also a heavy cross and people will sometimes feel this in
the passing of a loved one or the ending of a marriage. How did Mary and Joseph feel when they were
basically on the run trying to find a house so that Mary could deliver Jesus? How did they feel when they lost him in
Jerusalem for three days? How did Mary
feel when Simeon said her son would be the rise and down fall of many and that
a sword would pierce her heart or when she actually walked the way of the Cross
and saw her Son crucified? How did she
feel? We can probably guess, but one
thing is for certain she never doubted God’s love. Mary and Joseph were not exempt from life’s
suffering, neither are we, but if we want to be truly like them we will
continue to be persons who believe and live the resurrection even in the midst
of life’s difficulties, it’s what holy people do, it’s what makes us a Holy
Family, to love equally both in moments of joy and of hardships. God bless you and Happy Feast Day!
