Merry Christmas!
We have just celebrated Christmas Day and thus we continue to celebrate with joy throughout this Christmas season, the joy that Christ our Lord who has been born into this world. Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph which allows us to further mediate upon how God through the event of the Incarnation came to dwell with us in the very fabric of society which is the family.
So often we think of the Sacrament of Marriage as simply being the joining together of a man and woman in a lifelong bond of love. This facet of marriage is true and is something that is important for us to defend, but we must also realize how marriage brings together a man and woman and thus they become one flesh through the conjugal act and new life is brought forth. Therefore marriage creates through the joining together of two and the begetting of children, the family which is the fabric of our society. This is precisely why the sanctity of marriage must always be defended. If this sacrament is not defended we in return see the death of our culture's understanding of the family's role within society.
The family is important because through family life one enters into a community which at its core should desire to support one another and to ultimately lead one another towards God. The focal point of Christmas is Christ and thus the focal point of the family must be a love for Christ. Parents have been bestowed the sacred duty to lead their children to encounter Jesus Christ and His love. This means that they have been extended the sacred duty to do all which is possible to pass on the Catholic faith which has been established by Christ to them.
The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is the family to which we should raise our gaze. In both Mary and Joseph we see a love for Christ which is found to be perfect. Concerning the years of Christ's childhood we don't know much, but we can say that He was raised within the context of a family by the loving care of Mary and Joseph. Here He was taught the importance of prayer through the loving example of His parents and here He was taught an understanding for Sacred Scripture.
Our first reading from the Book of Sirach instructs children to not only have love and concern for their family, but to also learn to pray. This love for prayer must be fostered within the home. This means coming to Mass as a family and frequenting the sacraments together (this includes confession). This means that despite the busyness that exists within the modern world that families learn to sacrifice time in order that they may join together to pray (maybe before a shared meal, a family rosary, time before the Blessed Sacrament, or some other practice). There are many things which families make a priority within this world, but is God one of them? Colossians further explains the love that must exist within the family. This is a love which respects all persons and thus helps to direct them towards Heaven no matter the difficulty which might lay in wait. Mary and Joseph search out their Son in our Gospel as we must continue to do each day of our life no matter the difficulty. They had great concern to find Him once they had realized that they had been separated. This love shown by Mary and Joseph should encourage us to always trudge onward in searching for Christ with the desires to be placed at the center of our life and our family.
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