Today, as we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, we pause to consider how God saw fit to begin his earthly mission within a family. It was within the family that Mary and Joseph modeled for Jesus their great faith, trust, and hope in God. It was in that family that Jesus observed his parents humility and obedience before God. It was in that family that Jesus experienced love and affection. And it was in that family that, as He grew and matured, Jesus came to a full understanding of God’s love and compassion.
We are called to imitate the Holy Family. Whether it be in our immediate families, our extended families, our communities, or our world, we are called to freely offer ourselves into relationship with others, and to reflect God’s love within those relationships. As Saint Paul reminds us in today’s second reading (Colossians 3:12-21), we are called to bring compassion, kindness, humility, patience, and forgiveness to all our relationships. We are called to help correct dysfunction and heal divisions whether that be in our own homes or in the larger world we live in. We are called to help others come to know the love and peace that can be found in God.
In these times, with all the pressures and distractions, and our world’s tendency to push God to the periphery, we ask God to help us to always place Him at the center of our families and our relationships so that His love can permeate our world.
We sometimes forget that each of us is directly related to both everyone who has ever lived and to everyone who is currently alive; and that all who come after us will be able to call us ancestors, and so on, until the end of the world. Each and every person we have ever met or will ever meet is, in fact, a ‘blood relative’– relatively speaking (pun definitely intended), a near kinsman. How much better would the world be if we took our familial obligations to one another more seriously, if we lived our lives in imitation of the Holy Family? If we saw ourselves as both the children of God and as a cousin of God Incarnate? Many thanks for this reminder and for the important questions it engenders.