Holy Family 2017
The institution which most immediately responds to the nature of the human being is the family. It alone ensures the continuity and the future of society.
1994 Message Day of Peace
These words were addressed to the world by the late Pope Saint John Paul II on Jan 1, 1994, and they express a theme which was absolutely central to Pope John Paul’s pontificate. The critical importance of marriage and the family for the very survival of our society is certainly not a new theme in the teaching of the Church, for she has always taught that the family is the very foundation of human society. However, no pope ever spoke with greater eloquence or more frequently on this theme of marriage and the family than did Saint John Paul II. He spoke so often on this topic because he knew that our world is in a desperate condition today and that we are threatened with destruction far worse than an economic collapse or even a brutal war. Today, we are threatened with the collapse of our societal bonds and structures, the destruction of social unity and social peace because we are seeing the collapse of the true pillar of society, that is, marriage and family life as God designed them.
Today, we in the west live in a culture in which the destruction of marriages and breakup of families has been taking place on a scale perhaps unprecedented in human history. Ours is a society experiencing rampant divorce which strikes at the heart of marriage as a permanent communion of life and love; a society which has embraced a contraceptive life style that undermines both conjugal love and its procreative purpose; and now a society that approves same-sex unions which contradict the very nature of marriage as well as its divine procreative purpose. All of these evils have resulted from our cultural elites’ blasphemous attempt to take total control over human life and to redefine the natural institutions that most closely affect human life; marriage, conjugal love and the family.
Revelation teaches us that God established the human family to be the basis of civilization and the great educator in the values that make a stable human society possible. When the family, which is divinely ordained to be the sustainer and nourisher of life, becomes the place where life is denied by contraception and abortion and where the value of life is subordinated to other values, society itself is threatened with its own self-destruction. And since this rebellion against the God of life is taking place today on a world wide scale, the future well being of whole world is truly threatened.
However, today’s feast of the Holy Family holds out a real hope for us in the midst of this cultural and political darkness. The feast of the Holy Family presents us with a most important aspect of the Christmas Mystery, for it reminds us that there is most certainly a divine plan for marriage and the human family, and the Son of God confirmed this plan in the way he came into this world. Jesus Himself was born into a real family, and he grew up in a family setting where His mother and foster father taught Him how to live as a man in this world.
Now none of this was by accident, for Jesus, unlike us, actually chose to be born into and grow up in a human family. It could have been different, and many Jews expected it to be different, that the Messiah would just suddenly appear. So what Jesus chose is very important for us, giving us a much needed corrective to certain false ideas regarding the nature of the family being strongly propagandized in our society. While Jesus also chose to be born of a Virgin – to confirm both His divine origin as only-Son of the Heavenly Father as well as the radical newness of the recreation beginning in His own humanity, nonetheless, He also chose to be raised normally, that is, as a child raised and formed by both a mother, Blessed Mary, and a foster father, St. Joseph.
In other words while His conception and birth were outside the course of nature, a true miracle of the new creation, nonetheless God chose to be reared within the course of nature by becoming a son of an integral human family and married couple. This is God’s plan for the nature of the family, and the normal, integral setting for the rearing of children. I stress the word “integral” here because there are true families that are not integral, because one parent is missing for whatever reason, death, separation, etc. But the integral family, according to the divine plan, is for children to have the nourishing environment provided by man and wife, living the full fruitfulness of their married love and life in caring for each other and for their family.
That model of man and wife and the family as the foundation of human society and human civilization is part of the divine plan, and this is the reason God chose not to bypass the normal course of nature when it came to the nurturing and education of the Eternal Son made as a human son. It was God’s marvelous way of reaffirming the critical importance of marriage and the family for human society. Likewise, the family of Nazareth provides a perfect model for all families to imitate, even if we can never perfectly imitate that model. Meditation on the Holy Family enables us to discover the secrets of a happy and solid family life. Their totally unselfish conjugal and parental love, their undoubted mutual devotion and loving family prayer, their unquestioned humility and dedication to home and family are always the keys to the successful and happy family, no matter what age we live in.
How much we can learn from just a limited reflection on what the daily life of the Holy family must have included. Surely family prayer had to be central to their common life; one simply cannot imagine a day passing where Jesus and His parents did not pray together. Mutual help with the daily household chores in a spirit of generosity was surely also a part of their daily life together. And this was God in the flesh taking part in all this ordinary family fare which the world considers of little value. And how loving and respectful must have been the ordinary conversation in that blessed home.
Beyond this, the model of the Holy Family, which teaches us the true nature of the human family, is also a powerful corrective for certain insidious and destructive notions of the family being advanced in our world today. Powerful voices are trying to assert that there really is no divine plan for the family and no established “natural” constitution of marriage and family. These propaganda efforts are trying to convince us all that alternative, man-made forms of marriage and of family life must be recognized and given equal rights and protection by society. Thus, marriage and family are coming to be seen as purely artificial institutions, created by man and whose purposes and constitution can change whenever any society chooses to change them.
The most extreme example of this assault on the divine plan for mankind and on divine law has been the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages having the same value as marriages between a man and woman along with the right of same-sex partners to adopt and raise children on an equal basis with married men and women. The Church s constant teaching on these institutions is increasingly condemned as a malicious attempt to undo what society has now embraced as a legal right. And there is increasing pressure on the Church to recognize what she has always taught to be an unnatural and immoral life style as morally acceptable and equal in standing with marriage and family life rooted in the natural complementarily of man and woman. But we Christians have a duty to resist this deviation from God’s plan, for no society can survive which permits this kind of attack on marriage and family,
On the more hopeful and positive side, we Christians also proclaim that the possibility for renewal is always available because we know that God has purposefully designed marriage and the family for man’s personal happiness and for the good of society. And we also know that marriage and family life, as God designed it, can always be restored to its original constitution with the grace that Jesus provides in the Sacrament of Matrimony. Jesus always provides his powerful grace in abundance for all the baptized who receive the Sacrament of Matrimony and who also take full advantage of the sacramental graces of the Eucharist and Confession.
Finally, we must be confident that nothing so natural in this world as marriage and family life, perfected by the supernatural life of grace, has greater importance for preparing us for Eternal Happiness and for earthly happiness than a profoundly Christian family. Jesus very deliberately chose to give us this great witness of just such a family in His own family. Thus, wise Christian couples will frequently return in prayer and meditation to reflect on that Holy Family of Nazareth and to seek the meaning of that divine model for enriching their own family life. They will not go unrewarded.