The Most Holy Family of Nazareth -Holy Family Sunday Year C.
Readings: 1Sam. 1:20-22,24-28, 1Jn. 1-2,21-24, and Lk. 2:41-52.
“Family Members are Responsible For their Well-being.”
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
1. Today, the universal Church celebrates Holy Family Sunday. This celebration is within the context of the Holy Family of Nazareth as the ideal Family with all it takes for all other families to emulate. The Family comes into existence out of love that originate between a man and a woman. They come together through mutual consent in genuine love for each other, to commit themselves in marriage, to conceive and bring forth children out of love. Thus, a man and a woman united in marriage, together with their children, form a family. This institution is prior to any recognition by the public authority, which has an obligation to recognize it. Family members are persons equal in dignity. (CCC2202/2203). Apart from the ideal family after the pattern of the Holy Family of Nazareth, we have other families that lack this pattern in one form or the other. There are families with Mother and Children only, or Father and Children only or husband and wife without children, or only children that have lost both parents. We know that these other families exist, but their responsibilities are not less than those of the regular families. Our reflection will presume a regular family, and its application can be extended.
2. In our first reading, Hannah conceived and brought forth Samuel and willingly handed him to the Lord as she had promised she would prior to his conception. In the 2nd reading, St. John reminded us of the sole commandment of Jesus Christ – faith in Jesus Christ and love of one another. This is met in concrete terms in the gospel text when Joseph and Mary in understanding dialogue and collaboration returned to Jerusalem in search of Jesus when they noticed they lost him. Through God’s mysterious design, it was in The Holy Family of Nazareth Jesus spent long years of hidden life. This is the prototype and example for all Christian families. It was unique in the world. It underwent trials of poverty, persecution and exile. It will not fail to help Christian families in the world – to be faithful to their day-to-day duties, to bear the cares and tribulations of life, to be open and generous to the needs of others, and to fulfill with joy the plan of God in their regard. (Familiaris Consortio, No. 86). All husbands and fathers must have Joseph for an ideal husband and father. As ‘“a just man’, a tireless worker, the upright guardian of those entrusted to his care” he is the model. After his example, a man must therefore be:
- A loving husband/father.
- A hard-working man to cater for the needs of the family.
- Focus and available to his spouse especially when in need.
- Caring and supportive of his spouse.
- Provides protection, guidance, and blessings for the wife and children.
- Provide good neighborliness.
- Guide and respect the children to choose their profession, vocation and state in life in accord with God’s will for them.
- Ensure proper education of the children; this includes choosing the right schools for them.
- Conducive environment for solidarity and communal responsibilities at home.
- Faithfulness to his spouse. Etc.
3. The virgin Mary is the mother of the Church, also mother of ‘the Church of the home’. She is the Handmaid of the Lord, an example of generous acceptance of the will of God. She is the sorrowful mother at the foot of the Cross, comforter of the sorrowful and drier of the tears of those in distress because of the difficulties of their families. (Ibid.). All mothers and wives, ought to have Mary for their model in:
- Humble, dedicated and hardworking to cater for their husbands and children.
- Proper care and follow up of the children in collaboration with her husband.
- Initiate the children at early ages into mysteries of faith and support them in the practice of this faith all through life.
- Openness and frequent communication with the husband.
- Relate well with others (neighbors, acquaintances, other family members, teachers of your children …).
- Follow up for the provisions at home, meeting up with the needs of others.
- Faithfulness to her husband…
4. Jesus was an obedient Son both to God the Father and his parents as he lived under their watchful care in Nazareth. Among all others, he bestowed light, joy, serenity, and strength. The children must then have Jesus for their model at home. The 4th Commandment of the Decalogue states that: “Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you and be blessed.” This Commandment, when kept, provides temporal fruits of peace and prosperity. The children must do this in:
- Living in total obedience to their parents.
- Loving their parents, showing appreciation to them through hard work at school, at home and elsewhere.
- Avoiding all forms of arrogance, allowing themselves to be controlled in taking to corrections.
- Taking advice.
- Engaging in sincere dialog in total openness to their parents.
- Always being respectful and orderly in speech and action to their parents, teachers and elders.
- Building good relationships with their friends and peers at all levels or stages of growth.
- Taking proper and fitting care of their parents at older ages or when they are ill.
- Always respecting their parents for the gift of life, their love, and their work to help them grow in stature, wisdom and grace.
- Ensuring harmony, among themselves, their siblings.
- Gratitude to parents for the gift of faith received in baptism, by keeping to the baptismal promises and everything in keeping to the practices of their faith.
5. All said and done, always remember that a house that eats together stays together and I dare add that a house that prays together stays together. Worthy of our attention is the fact that, in countries of the so-called Third World, families often lack both means necessary for survival, such as food, work, housing, and medicine, and the most elementary freedoms. In richer countries, on the contrary, excessive prosperity and the consumer mentality, paradoxically joined to a certain anguish and uncertainty about the future, deprive married couples of the generosity and courage needed for raising up new human life: thus, life is often perceived not as a blessing, but as a danger from which to defend oneself. (Familiaris Consortio, no.6). Family communion can only be preserved and perfected through a great spirit of sacrifice. It requires, in fact, a ready and generous openness of each and all to understanding, to forbearance, to pardon, to reconciliation. There is no family that does not know how selfishness, discord, tension and conflict violently attack and at times mortally wound its own communion: hence there arise the many and varied forms of division in family life. But, at the same time, every family is called by the God of peace to have the joyous and renewing experience of ‘reconciliation’, that is, communion reestablished, unity restored. Participation in the sacrament of reconciliation and in the banquet of the Body of Christ offers to the Christian Family the grace and the responsibility of overcoming every division and of moving towards the fullness of communion willed by God, responding in this way to the ardent desire of the Lord: “that they may be one”. (Ibid. No. 21).
To God be the glory and honor forever and ever. Amen.
Fr. Anthony D. Lawir
Pastor, St. Agnes and Our Lady of the Snows Parishes, Pittsfield and Dexter.