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Being
a Holy Family
December
31, 2006
Luke
2:41-52
Fr.
George Smiga
No
family is perfect but every family is holy. We must appreciate
both parts of this statement if we are to understand the meaning
of today's feast, The Feast of the Holy Family.
No
family is perfect. Family life is often a challenge and sometimes
a burden. This was even true of Jesus' family. Look at the
mess that they made on their family vacation to Jerusalem
. Misunderstanding, harsh words, anxiety, characterized the
trip. It is no different in our families. It does not take
us long to become involved in hurt, misunderstanding, and
stress. Our families are challenged by divorce, by heartbreak,
by envy. Simply looking at the relationships in which we live
reminds us that flaws are present. We often wish that things
could be different. No family is perfect.
But
every family is holy. This is the harder part of the sentence
to appreciate, but it is true. Every family is holy because
God dwells in every family. Where God is present, there is
holiness. God calls us to live in family. Because of that
call it is in family that we discover God's will and that
we encounter God's presence. After communion today, I have
asked Marianne Slattery, our Director of Religious Formation,
to share with us some of her reflections upon family life.
But as we proceed in this Eucharist to the table of the Lord,
it is important to embrace both the imperfections and the
holiness of our families and to realize that one does not
negate the other.
No
matter what kind of flaws we experience in our relationships
of family, family is still the place where God dwells. It
is in the interactions of the relationships of family that
we experience God's presence and we become the people that
God calls us to be.
Mystagogium:
Marianne Slattery
All
families are holy. No family is perfect.
Have
you ever been late to pick up a child from an activity or
friend's house? Did you ever forget to pick up the child all
together? I have—and more than once. Of course, I didn't do
it on purpose and it doesn't mean I don't love and care about
my children. More likely it means I was distracted by something
else or that there was some miscommunication about the arrangements.
It
doesn't really excuse me, but it does help me feel better
to know that the Holy Family of today's Gospel had to deal
with these issues, too. Every family has miscommunications
and misunderstandings. There was a misunderstanding in the
Jesus' family. Mary assumed Jesus was with Joseph. Joseph
assumed Jesus was with Mary. The relatives probably figured
Mary and Joseph knew where their son was. Jesus is the last
person we would find fault with, but he did cause
some anxiety for his parents. For whatever reason, he didn't
follow the travel plans of his parents.
Often
without meaning to, we also cause anxiety and frustration
in our families.
Sometimes
the greatest frustrations happen when one person's expectations
are different from another's. Maybe you're the mother of a
young child and you get up in the morning with your day pretty
well planned out. But your baby is cutting a tooth or has
an ear infection . . . or both. The baby needs to be held.
Now it isn't that you don't want to comfort your child; you
know you will. But in the back of your mind, you still had
something else you were going to do with your day.
Maybe
when you were a teenager or young adult, you chose a school,
a career or a relationship that didn't coincide with the expectations
of your parents. Frustration occurs in no small measure when
one person is spreading his wings and the other is having
trouble letting go.
Imperfections
are just part of family life. They are part of being a family:
the family we are born into, the family we create, or the
family we adopt. We are made holy, made into holy families,
by God's grace. It is through God's grace that we can work,
if not toward perfection, at least toward improvement. Through
grace we have the strength, courage, and humility to grow
so that we might become better . . . even though not perfect.
Through
God we can claim both our imperfections and our holiness.
We honor the holiness of our families and relationships by
listening to others and trying to understand them. This doesn't
mean we always have to agree, just that we need to be open
to change, open to learning something new, seeing something
in a new way.
So
why are we holy? Because we believe that God's presence is
in us and between us. It's pretty easy to see the things that
make us imperfect. It's harder at times to remember that God's
presence makes us holy. Let's remember that this week in the
midst of all the things that demand our attention. God has
given us to one another and in loving one another we find
the holiness that God has placed in our families.
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