The Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
Dear brothers and
sisters,
Up until a relatively short time ago, we,
as a society, recognized the family as the most important institution to the
building of a just and harmonious society. The family was seen as the place in
which we learned fundamental values: how to love one another, how to forgive
one another, and how to put others before oneself. The family was seen as a
school of love and self-forgetfulness. This selflessness was learned from
watching the example of a husband and wife whose principle task was to
“establish between themselves a partnership of their whole life, … which of its
own very nature is ordered to the well-being of the spouses and to the
procreation and upbringing of children” (canon 1055 § 1).
We knew that for a happy and successful
marriage, a husband must put the needs of his wife ahead of his own. We knew
that for a happy and successful marriage, a wife must put the needs of her
husband ahead of her own. We knew that for a happy and successful marriage, a
husband and wife had to safeguard their relationship and look to it before
anything else. We knew that parents needed to put the needs of their children
ahead of their own and that children should honor and respect their parents,
just as parents should honor and respect their children. We knew that if each
member of the family looked to the example of Christ Jesus, family life would
be beautiful, joyous, and lifegiving.
But something happened along the way and we
decided it was acceptable and good to ignore centuries of wisdom. Rather than
continuing to protect and safeguard the family because of its importance to the
common good, we decided it was acceptable to redefine and to refashion the
family because of our selfish desires.
We first decided that no longer should
children be received and welcomed as gifts and blessings from God, but that we
should instead be able to determine when and how many were accepted. When
contraception was widely used and considered good, despite its clear violation
of the law of nature and of God, husbands and wives decided they could separate
the two aims of the marital act; they changed its primary focus from that of a
complete gift of self to each other and turned it into the satisfaction of
individual desires. No longer would marriage be about the mutual well-being and
unity of the spouses that increased their love and made it fruitful; marriage
would no longer be about each other, but about what others can do for me. From
here, a second decision that children could be done away with if they were not
wanted seemed an obvious – even if grotesque and deplorable - consequence.
Once marriage was no longer seen as the
full sharing of life and love between the spouses, it was an easy jump to say
that marriage was also no longer permanent. First we decided that marriages
could be dissolved in difficult and tragic circumstances. Then, quite against
the very clear words of the Lord Jesus, we decided that marriages could be
ended for any reason, or even no reason at all, if one or both of the spouses
wanted to end it. We continued to make marriage about individual wants and
desires and not about the mutual sharing of life and love.
As these changes to the long-standing and
accepted definition of marriage were made over the course of just a few
decades, most Christians regrettably and scandalously went along with them and
even welcomed them gladly. From this, as many rightly warned, the family
received a very great wound from which it has not recovered. Family life began
to fall apart and, with it, society, as well. These are not popular words
today, but the truth is not always very popular.
Christians accepted these changes, and even pioneered them, because we largely forgot that
The
Bible is full of families, births, love stories and family crises. This is true
from its very first page, with the appearance of Adam and Eve’s family with all
its burden of violence but also its enduring strength (cf. Gen 4) to its very
last page, where we behold the wedding feast of the Bride and the Lamb (Rev 21:2, 9).[1]
We forgot that
family life – and even life generally – is not necessarily meant to be easy,
but rewarding. We forgot that marriage and the family is to be the school of
love and selflessness. We forgot that the family is not about me, but about us.
It is a curious
reality of the inner workings of the mind of God that he continually chooses to
allow us – weak and sinful as we are - to be instruments of his grace.
The ability of human couples to beget life
is the path along which the history of salvation progresses. Seen this way, the
couple’s fruitful relationship becomes an image for understanding and
describing the mystery of God himself, for in the Christian vision of the
Trinity, God is contemplated as Father, Son and Spirit of love. The triune God
is a communion of love, and the family is its living reflection. Saint John
Paul II shed light on this when he said, “Our God in his deepest mystery is not
solitude, but a family, for he has within himself fatherhood, sonship and the
essence of the family, which is love. That love, in the divine family, is the
Holy Spirit”. The family is thus not unrelated to God’s
very being.[2]
We came to
reshape marriage according to our own desires because we forgot that we are
made in the image and likeness of God and that marriage is meant to reflect the
inner life of God, to make his love the foundation of our lives.
This is, in part,
why the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity chose to be born of a woman to
take on our flesh at Bethlehem.
In the Gospel we do not find discourses on
the family but an event which is worth more than any words: God wanted
to be born and to grow up in a human family. In this way he consecrated the
family as the first and ordinary means of his encounter with humanity.[3]
The importance of
the family is intimately involved with the mystery of Christmas and gives us
good reason to ask how well our families reflect the love of the Triune God.
Husbands and
wives, strive to love each other well and freely, not because of what your
spouse gives you, or does for you, or brings to you, but simply for the sake of
your spouse; love your spouse because
of your spouse. If you do, you will imitate the love of God who loves us not
because of what we can do for him, but because we are his. Follow the counsel
of Saint Paul and
Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and
beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing
with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against
another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these
put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ
control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And
be thankful (Colossians 3:12-15).
Allow your
marriage to be marked by gratitude, forgiveness, and love so that you may
always reflect the merciful love of the Christ Child to a hurting world. Let
your marriage always shine out as a beacon of hope to the suffering. Teach your
children how to forgive one another and how to let go of grudges. Teach them,
through your own example, the beauty of a life lived for God and for others.
Teach them to trust in God and not in themselves. Teach them to open their
hearts to God and to allow him to dwell in them richly.
If you do this,
if you make your marriage a full sharing of life and love and a true and
complete self-gift to your spouse, your marriage will be happy, successful,
and, more importantly, a reflection of
God’s own love. You and your children, by the grace of God, will be able to
begin slowly rebuilding and refashioning society by restoring a recognition of
the beauty of marriage and of the family.
Standing today at the threshold of a new
year, we can look forward in gloom or we can look forward in hope; we can look
at the wound that we have inflicted on the family and on society, or we can
look at the remedy. Some sixteen hundred years ago, Saint Augustine said, “Bad
times! Troublesome times! This men are saying. Let our lives be good; and the
times are good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times.”[4]
Let families, then, be again schools of
love and selflessness. Let them place the Child Jesus in the center of their
hearts! Let us always give thanks to the Father for the gift of his Son and,
like the prophetess Anna, speak of him to all who will listen, both in our
words and in the manner of our lives (cf. Luke 2:38). Let us strive to conform
our lives to him and so change the times in which we live that we may all come
to dwell in the joy of the Father’s house. Amen.
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