Holy Family (2020-2021)

Today, the feast of the Holy Family, is a great opportunity for us to consider the great dignity of marriage and family life.

The family has always been at the center of the Christianity, at the center of the Church.

Jesus himself shared with us how important the family life is - maybe not direct with the words but we need to read it through his life. For thirty of his thirty-three years of earthly life, Jesus “was obedient to” his parents in Nazareth.

We cannot reject that we were most deeply shaped, mentally, emotionally and spiritually by the people in our families, less by leaders or politicians. Good moments and hard ones, births and deaths, marriages and illness. We were like clay - and the family shaped us.

When we look at the Holy Family - we think that they were perfect, and their life was a way far perfect from ours, and yes was holy, however was not excluded from the problems and difficulties - that we will never experience and we would not really want to.

Our Readings emphasis few things about the family that can help us to discover its call and protect it.

First - The book from the Old Testament - The book of Sirach speaks about human life as connected across generations. It says that we have responsibilities and relationships with the generations before us as well as those after us.

Today we hear a lot about the responsibility to the future generations - the climate change and other things. But we don’t hear too much about the responsibility to those who have gone before us. For example to respect and care for the parents as they become older, weaker, struggle with illnesses. In many places in Europe - there are ideas about eliminating those who in their opinion are unproductive anymore - euthanasia or assisted suicide.

Sirach in our first reading writes, “My son, take care of your father (and mother) when he is old; grieve him not as long as he lives. Even if his mind fail, be considerate of him; revile him not all the days of his life; kindness to a father will not be forgotten…”

The mistake is to think only about our responsibilities to the next generation, forgetting the generation that preceded us. We are to be instruments of Christ’s care and love to them as well. The Christianity always teaches that one generation cares for another.

The wisdom we receive from Sirach on this Holy Family Sunday tells us that the christian family is a bridge that connects generations and never reject anybody.

Our Second reading - shows that the family is a spiritual community, a community of faith. Saint Paul tells us that in this first community we have - our domestic church we can practise fully our Christian life.

The family is where we start to learn the virtues of patience, responsibility, cooperation, self-discipline, self-control and dealing with authority. The family, that first Christian community to which we belong, is really the testing-ground for how deep our discipleship really is.It is a place where we can learn to grow in Jesus Christ.

But what about those words today: "Wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything."

How it is even possible that in 21st century world - we hear those words. I don’t think that wives want to be subordinate the their husbands in everything. In the first glance it sounds like slavery. And yes literally reading is difficult to defend Saint Paul. But Church never interprets the Words from the Bible literally, She mediates, reflects and that is why we have also the Tradition - which Helps us to see the right meaning.

In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul gives a further explanation: Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church . . . So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

How does a husband love? In his book Love and Responsibility, John Paul the II said that man’s and woman’s ability to love “depends on his willingness consciously to seek a good together with others, and to subordinate himself / herself to that good for the sake of others, or to others for the sake of that good.”

So the Marriage is not a one-way street. They both are invited to willingly give up a part of themselves for the benefit of the other, in the efforts to seek a greater good together—eternal life in heaven.

My Brothers and Sisters,

This Holy Family Sunday is a chance to make a decision on how we can strengthen our own family’s life in the coming year, how to make it a stronger bridge that connects generations, how to make it a more effective community of faith.

That kind of decision cannot be made by someone else in Rome or in Washington D.C. but in each individual home.