HOLY FAMILY

DECEMBER 31, 2006

The Church traditionally celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, on the first Sunday after Christmas. God intended every family to be holy, yet, most of us probably don’t think our own family is very holy. The very word "holy" may seem a little unreal. Yet, people who live together, are related to one another, and squabble over trivialities like who's going to take out the trash or what to watch on television - can this family be called holy?

We call Mother Teresa holy because she cared for people she found dying in the gutters of Calcutta, but to call the typical family holy sounds strange, because no one in the typical family seems very perfect. Nonetheless, whenever a family recognizes God's lordship over them and seeks to follow his ways, God dwells in its midst, and its life is made holy by his sanctifying presence.
The word "holy" means whole. The word comes from a Hebrew word that means "to heal" and "to be healthy". The real meaning of being holy, then, is to be healed by God from the damaging effects of sin, so as to be free to be fully human, spiritually healthy, and whole. The family is the first place where, by God's design, this healing and liberation take place.

The point is not that a particular family is a gathering of morally superior individuals or saints; rather, it is that family life, as a way of living, is a holy way to live. To commit oneself to a marriage is a holy commitment, and to belong to a family is conducive to holiness, because in the family that is centered on God, each member is able to provide the others with the love, protection, and support necessary for them to develop the strength of character and virtue necessary to renounce selfishness and follow the way of love. To live with the members of your family, accepting all their imperfections and faults out of love, is holy.

A family becomes holy when the love among its members is strong enough, with God's grace, to preserve them in unity, to inspire them to forgive past injuries, to motivate them to share what they are and have, to enable them to respect the dignity of each other and care for each other’s needs, and to lead each other to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to live in truth and charity.

Even families that have to cope with severe problems like alcoholism or drug abuse, criminal activity, infidelity, or the abandonment of the family by one of its members - these families, too, are blessed and loved by God, and possess the basic seeds of holiness, which need only to be cultivated.

How can we insist on the holiness of the family even in the face of all the imperfections and moral failures of its members? Maybe it is better to say that the family is the basic school of holiness, and that its members are at various stages of growth, some more advanced than others. But everyone somehow has to learn how to be human, how to love, forgive, share, work alongside others, suffer with and for others, and serve. The family is the school of holiness where these things are learned.

Christian faith presents a vision of family life modeled after the life of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph that calls for living together in love, compassion, forgiveness, and joy amid the stress of everyday life. To embrace this vision and strive to live it is a holy project.

Experience shows one of the hardest things to do in life is enter into communion with another human being and sustain that communion. There are many indicators today that countless individuals are afraid of the sacrifices that marriage and childbearing entail. Yet, without such communion as can be found in families, we die of loneliness. The family makes such communion possible. It is God’s plan for our happiness on earth. God does not want us alone in life, and we never have to be, as long as our family stays together by staying close to God.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap