Dear Parishioners:
At the very beginning of His life, Jesus wanted to sanctify the human race. He began this sanctification in the heart of a family. It was a simple, ordinary family, a family in which life was quite ordinary. This family can teach us much about how our families should live._
The Holy Family should not be romanticized. This was a poor family without resources. No one today can complain that God does not know disappointment and poverty. No one who is persecuted can say that God is a stranger to suffering and fear. No one who is out of work can say that God does not understand searching for employment and struggling to make ends meet. God does understand and knows what it is like. If He had come into a wealthy and powerful family, we would be able to say that God does not know us, but He didn't.
Our families today should strive to take on the qualities of the Holy Family. In the family, The parents by word and example are the first heralds of the faith with regard to their children (Lumen gentium 11). Mary and Joseph raised Jesus with the traditions, customs and prayers of His people.
In Familiaris Consortio (the Apostolic Exhortation on the Family) Pope John Paul II writes: Do you teach your children the Christian prayers? Do you prepare them, in conjunction with the priests, for the sacraments they receive wen they are young-- Confession, Communion, and Confirmation? Do you encourage them, when they are sick, to think of Christ's suffering, to invoke the aid of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints? ... He continues with many other ways parents can bring the light of faith to the family.
Children too can support a family's growth in wisdom, age, and grace. God desires to work through children. Children help to make the family model the Trinity, the very source of family love. The love of the Father and the Son is the very person of the Holy Spirit. A child is the expression of the love of husband and wife for each other.
"It is in the family that we learn to practice obedience, a concern for others, a sense of responsibility, understanding, and mutual help, a loving co-ordination of essentially different characters" (In Conversation with God Vol. 1: 31.3).
Let us find God in our families and in our Christian lives each day. One wonderful way a family can open themselves up to Jesus' love is to attend a weekly Mass, or Holy Hour, or adoration time together. Parents must take the lead in these matters.
God bless,
Fr. Bill
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