Families that Foster Holiness

12-30-2018Weekly ReflectionFr. Julius Kundi

For some few weeks now you must have seen many depictions of the Holy Family. Perhaps you saw Jesus, Mary and Joseph on Christmas cards, or perhaps in Crib scenes, or perhaps you were as lucky enough as l was to see them in action at a Nativity play here in Lake Havasu. Each depiction whilst telling the same essential story, conveys something slightly different, putting the accent on a different aspect of a story at times dangerously familiar. There’s variety, too, in the many beautiful paintings of the Holy Family, depicting in almost every conceivable geographic, climatic, racial, economic, and cultural setting. It is almost as if the Holy Family carry a kind of ‘everyman’ quality, as it were; standing outside of time.

It's important we first affirm that families are part of God's plan. They are the essential cells of society in which parents and children are sustained and grow into maturity. However, it's rather unfortunate that some families can be set-ups where children learn how to criticize, how to hate, how to never forgive, how to keep the score, how to be dishonest, to pretend there’s no elephant in the room, how to communicate without really communicating – where boys, particularly, but also girls, grow up without ever having been healthily fathered, or mothered; or where girls have been unfairly crushed by unquestioned, often unrecognized, patriarchal attitudes and behaviors, where domestic violence and sexual abuse go on, and nothing gets said.

It is clear that marriage and family are in crisis today. It is also clear that children are at the receiving end because they suffer the most. The modern Western world displays a mentality that is both deeply flawed and gravely harmful to children. The crisis is a result of the willful, sinful habits of the vast majority of adults in the areas of sexuality, marriage, and family life. The rebellion of adults against the plan and order of God has caused endless grief and hardship and has led to a cultural environment that is poisonous to the proper raising and blessing of children.

Today, reflecting on the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, we are invited to imitate the virtues displayed by this family. Among many, the outstanding of them all is the virtue of holiness. What then makes a family Holy? St Paul would tell us that a family becomes holy in the same way as the community at Colossi in our first reading becomes holy: through the working of the Holy Spirit. In fact today Paul calls his congregation holy; they are saints, because through their baptism the Holy Spirit has already begun to transform and shape their lives after the model of the crucified and risen Christ. They are now 'in Christ' and that determines all the different relationships that make up their family life. All the domineering, selfish forces which can tear it apart are restrained. It is as though they have been clothed after baptism with the transforming virtues like compassion, humility, patience, gentleness and then everything is held together in unity by a belt which is Christ's love.

As we struggle to grow Holy and happy in our marriage relationships, let us be clear about one thing: sin clouds judgment and makes many think that what is sinful and improper is, in fact, acceptable or even good. It is not. In our current culture, we gravely sin against God and against our children through repeated misconduct and by our refusal to accept what is obviously true.

We pray therefore for God to heal and protect all family units in our parish as they struggle to model their lives after that of the Holy Family in Nazareth.

Happy New Year!
Fr. Julius