Learning From One Another

Manny’s grandparents were immigrants from Portugal. Because they spoke very little English, it was difficult for him to understand them. He dreaded going to their house because he thought it smelled funny and he didn’t like the way their food tasted. Whenever Manny’s parents would take him there to visit, he would spend the whole time asking his parents, “Can we go now?”. He would rather do anything else than spend the afternoon there.

When Manny started high school, he had to take a foreign language. He assumed that Portuguese would be the easiest one for him to take since he was already somewhat familiar with it and he could always ask his parents for help with his homework.  The next Sunday after his first class, his family visited his grandparents. Manny told his grandfather that he was studying Portuguese and said some of the phrases he had learned. His grandfather helped him with the pronunciation of some of the words he was struggling with and taught him a few more phrases. They laughed together as they helped each other communicate.

Manny saw a different side of his grandfather that afternoon. He had always assumed his grandfather was ignorant because he didn’t speak English. For the first time, he realized that it was the other way around. He was the ignorant one. He was determined to learn Portuguese as quickly as he could so that he could learn more from his grandfather.

During their weekly visits, Manny learned a lot about his family’s history. He learned about his grandfather’s career in Portugal and how he left it all behind to give his children a better life. He enjoyed hearing the stories about the village he grew up in and what life was like back then. Manny would even pray the rosary with him from time to time and would go to Mass in Portuguese at his grandfather’s parish. The time he spent with his grandfather became the best part of his week.

When his grandfather passed away several years later, Manny felt gratitude for the opportunity to get to know him while he was alive. He had a fuller sense of himself and of his family history because of the time he spent with him. Not only did he learn a lot about Portuguese language and culture, but he learned a lot about life and faith. No education could have given him what his grandfather had.

Today we celebrate the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Jesus needed a family to protect and provide for Him during His life on earth. Just so, all of us need a family to bring us into the world, to provide for us, and to teach us how to live fuller and happier lives. Our families can be a source of great joy for us and also a source of great pain. Either way, there is no way to replace what only a father and mother can give to us.

Today’s first reading encourages us to honor our fathers and mothers. Throughout His life, Jesus was obedient to Joseph and Mary. No matter how old we are, we should be respectful and obedient to our parents as well. We might think we know more than they do and they might even drive us a little crazy. Still, they are our parents and the first people to love us. Out of respect for all the sacrifices they’ve made, we should be thankful for them and take care of them.

As we look ahead to a new year, perhaps a good resolution for us would be to spend more time with our parents or other family members. Perhaps there is someone in our family - a grandparent, aunt, or cousin - whom we’ve never had a chance to get to know. The new year might be a good time to change that.

Perhaps there is someone in our family whom we have hurt. This Christmas Season might be a good time to ask for forgiveness and reconcile that relationship. Or there might be family members who have hurt us. It would do us a lot of good to let go of our grudges and forgive them.

Jesus came to earth to bring healing and reconciliation. The best place for that to take place is within our families. If this year is not the best time to ask for forgiveness from a family member or to extend it, we can always begin with prayer. God wants our families to be havens of peace and love for us. He will make a way even when it seems impossible. Perhaps our families seem to be broken beyond repair. God can bring reconciliation and healing into the worst of situations. If we need it, our Heavenly Father will provide it for us. We just need to keep believing, hoping, and praying.

The Church is also a family. Jesus tells us that the bonds of faith are even stronger than the bonds of blood. He says, “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and carry it out” (Luke 8:21). Like any family, the members of the Church can hurt us. Those wounds can run very deep and seem impossible to heal. If we have been wounded by someone in the Church, let us ask God to help us forgive. Let us also pray for those whose relationship with God has been damaged because of the insensitivity and carelessness of our leaders. Jesus wants nothing more than that they be healed and reconciled with the Church He founded to be a mother and a family for all believers.

As a family, we gather in this place today. The Church is our home. Here we learn our family history through the Bible. And here the greatest of all Sunday meals is prepared for us - the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. We are challenged here to make faith the cornerstone of our family life - to look to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as an example for our own homes. We cannot change the past but we can create a future of hope and healing for ourselves and our families by choosing love and forgiveness.

Holy Families Produce Great Saints

If you decided that you wanted to become a saint, where would you have to go to make your dream a reality?

Would you have to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land or Rome? Would you have to go to a monastery? Would you have to visit renowned people of faith around the globe? Would you have to visit all the world’s great libraries and read the works of faith handed down to us over the generations?

While all these pursuits might be helpful in nourishing our faith, they are not absolutely necessary to becoming a saint.

If we want to become saints - and all of us are called to be saints through our baptism - then we need to look no further than our families and our homes.

It is through our family that we first come to learn about our faith. Our parents are the ones who bring us to church and teach us our prayers. By their example, we learn what it means to be men and women of faith. And in the home we learn and practice virtues such as patience, kindness and love which are necessary for living a godly life in this world. It is through our families that God forms our minds and hearts to serve Him as women and men of faith.

There is no doubt that all the great saints had their beginnings in a family. Jesus Himself needed Mary and Joseph to teach Him how to speak, how to pray and how to obey God. One of the Church’s greatest saints, Saint Augustine, was converted by the ceaseless prayers of his mother, Saint Monica. In more recent times, Saint Therese of Lisieux learned her faith from her godly parents both of whom are also canonized saints. In fact, they are the first saints to have been canonized as a couple. Blessed Pope John Paul II spoke frequently and fondly of how his parents nurtured a sense of faith, courage and integrity in him.

All of us, no matter where we are on our journey of faith, are called to make our families a priority. It is in our homes and among our loved ones that God wants to make us holy.

Today’s readings are rich with advice and encouragement for us in relationship to our family members. We could be here until next Sunday going through every line of these Scriptures and reflecting on their meaning for marriage and family life. In fact, it would be a good idea for all of us in the coming week to look these readings up in our Bibles or online and pray over them so that we can begin to act on them. They give us a beautiful blueprint for how God intends us to live. However, today, for the sake of time, let us focus on what the role of each member of the family is.

Our first reading tells us that “God sets a father in honor over his children.” In any family, the father is irreplaceable.  It is by the father’s words and example that daughters come to know that they are beautiful and worthy of being protected. Sons learn from their dads about courage and integrity and about the dignity with which they should treat women. Not only do fathers bring economic security to families, they bring psychological and emotional security as well. Also, it is through our earthly fathers that we learn to relate to our Heavenly Father. If our father on earth is stern and distant, we will perceive God the Father in the same way. However, if our father is warm, affectionate and loving we will relate to God the same way. So all fathers have a very important role - a true vocation from God - to be examples of love to their wives and children.

Mothers also have an irreplaceable role in the home. All new life comes through the mother who shares her body first with her husband and then with the children which come from their loving union. This is a beautiful reflection of Jesus who gives His own Body and Blood to give us live and nourish us in the family God. Mothers teach their children how to be gentle, how to take care of themselves and how to care for each other. When children are hurting, their first instinct is to run to their mothers because they have a special touch in bring comfort and making the pain go away. As Jesus honored His Blessed Mother, we should all honor our own mothers no matter how flawed or imperfect they may be, because they are God’s gift to us reflecting His own tenderness and mercy.

Children also have a very special role to play in the family unit. It is for the nurturing of children primarily that God created the family. It is through children that parents experience true self-sacrificing love. By facing all the challenges that come with raising boys and girls, parents grow in patience, love and gentleness. Also, children grow in virtue by sharing in chores around the house. By emptying the dishwasher, raking the leaves, cleaning their rooms, they learn diligence and the satisfaction that comes from doing a job well. When they interact with their brothers and sisters, they learn how to share and to put the interests of others before their own. Through their families, children learn to become good citizens of their country and holy saints in God’s Kingdom.

No families are perfect and not every family is whole. Many times through death or divorce, homes cannot always have both a father and mother. However, God provides the grace to overcome the shortcomings and weaknesses of our families. So the other essential element of any home is Jesus. When we put Jesus at the center of our family lives through prayer and through attending Mass, He will provide us with all we need to grow in love and faith.

In no other time of human history has it been harder for the family. However, through faith, we can reclaim the blessings that God intends to offer us through the home. It requires us to make a renewed commitment to our own family, taking up whatever challenges may come our way with determination and courage. When we embrace it all with the grace that God gives we will find ourselves growing in holiness and, in the end, becoming saints.

A Family At Prayer

 “The family that prays together, stays together.”

This well-known saying was coined by Fr. Patrick Peyton. He grew up in a very devout Catholic home in Ireland. During his youth, he prayed the rosary every evening with his parents. It was clear to him that the love in his home was a direct result of the time they spent as a family every evening in prayer.

When Fr. Peyton was studying for the priesthood in the United States, he contracted tuberculosis. In hopes of recovering so that he could continue with his studies for the priesthood, Fr. Peyton began praying a novena to Our Lady. In the course of that prayer, his tuberculosis was miraculously cured. From that point, he decided that he would dedicate his priesthood to spreading devotion to Our Lady. In particular, he would promote the prayer of the rosary within families so that they could experience the same warmth and togetherness in their homes as he did throughout his childhood.

Father Peyton’s insight that prayer keeps families united in love is also supported by science.

We are probably all familiar with the statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce. However, only 1 in 50  couples that are married in church and who attend Mass every Sunday end up divorcing. When a couple introduces prayer to their home by praying the rosary or other regular devotion, that number drops to 1 in 1,150. Imagine that. Simply by praying as a couple and with your children, you can significantly increase your chances of having a loving, emotionally fulfilling and successful marriage. The family that prays together does indeed stay together.

Today, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. They were certainly a family that prayed together. In today’s gospel, we learn that they traveled to Jerusalem every year for the Passover. Jesus felt so at home in the Temple that He called it “my Father’s house.” It is clear that Mary and Joseph passed their faith on to Jesus because His knowledge even impressed the teachers of the Law. And it was in their humble, faith-filled home in Nazareth that Jesus “advanced in wisdom, age and favor before God and man.” The Holy Family was a family that prayed together.

If our families are going to be strong households united in love then prayer must be an integral part of our homes. Husbands and wives, are you praying regularly for one another and your children? Young people, do you join in willingly and are you attentive when your parents say grace before meals or sit by your bedside to pray with you before you go to sleep? If grace and bedtime prayers are not yet a part of your daily routine, today’s feast in honor of the Holy Family is a great day to change that. When you bring God into your everyday lives as a couple and as a family, you can expect to see many blessings as a result. It is so simple. Why put it off any longer?

Along with praying together every day, coming to Mass together as a family every Sunday is critical. Gathering together with people who share the same faith as we do, hearing God’s word and being nourished by the Bread of Life makes us grow as individuals and as a community. God’s wisdom sinks into us, penetrating our hearts and enlightening our minds. We begin to see things as God sees them. Our worries and concerns become less intense because we begin to trust that our Heavenly Father has everything under control. In turn, that trusting attitude makes our homes less tense and more playful. Coming to Mass every Sunday chips away at our pride and self-centeredness making parents more attentive and children less rebellious.

Along with praying together, families should also be learning about their faith together. Our religious education should not end when we are children or at our confirmation. Rather, we should consider ourselves life-time students of our faith. None of us ever get to a point at which we have learned everything there is to know about Jesus, the Church or the Bible.

A good practice would be to spend some time on Sundays talking about the readings at Mass. Along with talking about how the readings spoke to us, we could also talk about what we might not have understood. Perhaps, we could even make a list of our questions and work together to find the answers on reliable Catholic websites or by speaking to someone who is more knowledgeable. Working together to grow in our knowledge of the faith as a family will help children learn that the faith is something we should be devoting our whole lives to learning more about.

Of course, no family is perfect. It happens that even families who go to Mass every Sunday and pray at home run into trouble. Prayer is not a guarantee that bad things won’t happen to us or that tragedy will never strike. However, prayer helps families weather the storms of life. It gives us courage to rise above the challenges we face and the perseverance to work together to solve them rather than allow them to tear us apart.

Prayer also helps families to find healing. Many single parents find their daily time of prayer with their children is a way for them to connect and find peace in the midst of a hectic life. Divorced parents find in prayer healing for their hearts and the confidence to believe that they are loveable and that their life is worthwhile no matter their marital status. Prayer helps those who have lost a husband or wife to continue to feel connected to them. It also helps parents who have lost children to find the strength to bear their unimaginable grief. Prayer might not always change the circumstances we face but it does change us so that those difficulties do not break us but help us to grow in wisdom and grace.

Father Peyton once said, “Countless families the world over invite Mary to their homes through the family rosary. She comes. They sense her presence. They solve their problems because where Mary is present there is Christ, her Divine Son.” Our homes are meant to be places of peace where we can retreat from the noisy, hectic world and connect with those who love and accept us unconditionally - our family. When we welcome Jesus into our homes through daily prayer, our families become that much more loving and joyful. When Jesus has a place in our home, we too become a holy family. 

The Holy Family

Today's gospel reading, the finding of Jesus in the temple, is the last word we hear about Jesus until he appears on the banks of the Jordan River to be baptized by John. From the time he is twelve until he turns thirty, the gospels are silent about his life. These twenty years are called the "hidden years" because Scripture gives us no details about the life of Jesus during that time. What little we do know is summed up at the end of today's gospel: He lived in Nazareth. He obeyed his parents. And he "advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man."

Though we have few details about their life together, the Holy Family of Nazareth - Jesus, Mary and Joseph - have served as a model of what the Christian family is meant to be. Like most families, they lived ordinary and unremarkable lives. We can presume that they worked, shared meals together and prayed. As a good Jewish family, they would have attended their local synagogue and made pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem. It was in this simple, uneventful home, however, that Jesus, our Savior, grew and was formed into the man who would one day shoulder the burden of our sin, die on a cross and rise from the dead. It was in these humble and simple surroundings that this great man spent most of his life on earth.

Most of us, like Jesus during his hidden years, are not called to do remarkable acts of charity or heroism. Rather it falls to us to live simple and humble lives with our families. Whether we are parents or children, we grow in age, wisdom and grace through the joys and trials of our everyday lives. We learn the beauty and power of God whenever a new baby is born into our families. When the anxiety of paying bills or dealing with illness mounts, we grow in trust of our Heavenly Father who always makes things work out for our good. By doing our chores around the house cheerfully and with love, we learn about serving others. At family gatherings, we learn to be patient and kind by biting our tongue whenever our cranky uncle starts talking about politics or our teenage cousin double dips his tortilla chip into the salsa. Each family, no matter how imperfect, is a temple where we can find Jesus present and a school where we can learn the ways of God.

It is for this reason that prayer is so important for family life. We need to acknowledge that Christ is at the center of our lives as a family and to remind ourselves that our home is a holy place. One great way to do that is by having our homes blessed. Whenever we bless something, we are setting it apart for God, we are declaring that it is holy. By blessing our homes, we are saying that our home life is consecrated to God the Father, that it is now under his protection and that his word will be the guiding principle of our family life. Another vital way of bringing prayer into our homes is by making it a point to say grace at every meal, even when we are eating in a restaurant or have guests over. Grace at meals teaches us to be thankful for what we have and to be mindful of those who go without. It also sets a tone for the meal, making the behavior and conversation at the table more courteous and serious. No matter how we choose to do it, prayer is vital to family life so that we may have the strength to deal with the pressures of modern life and to help us recognize God's grace working in small and subtle ways in our home.

It should not surprise us that Jesus, the sinless one, obeyed his parents, Mary and Joseph. As children in catechism we learn that obeying our parents is our first duty. No doubt, whenever we went to confession, disobeying them was at the top of our list of sins. We learned that God gave our parents to us to protect us and to teach us. As imperfect as they may be, our parents are the first to introduce us to our faith and our primary models of what it means to live a Christian life. For this reason, the fourth commandment - Honor thy father and mother - is the first one which deals with our responsibilities to our neighbor. And it does not expire when we turn eighteen or move out of the house. Rather, God intends that we love and honor our parents throughout our lives, especially when they are older and most need our attention and help. Older people in our society increasingly feel that they are a burden to their families and that their lives lack meaning and purpose. They need our affection in their old age more than ever. All of us have much to learn still from our parents no matter how old we are. Most especially, teenagers and younger children need contact with their grandparents and older relatives  so that they can learn their family history and grow in their sense of personal identity. Along with prayer, honoring our parents as Jesus did is one of the pillars

of a strong family life.

Like Jesus, each of us is called to grow in age, wisdom and grace through our family life. As children, we are called to honor our parents as the ones given to us by God to teach us. As parents, we are to recognize that our children are gifts from God, entrusted to our care, so that we can nurture them into strong followers of Christ. There has perhaps been no other time when family life has been under so much pressure. We see the effects of our weakened moral climate and a difficult economy all around us. Divorce has touched just about every family in one way or another. Now more than ever it is time for us to turn to God for strength to make him the cornerstone of our homes so that the strains of modern life will not break our families. We should also turn to that model of simple faith and humility, the Holy Family, and ask for their prayers to help us follow their example in our lives. Then our families, no matter how broken or imperfect, will be holy temples where we find Jesus, a safe place for children and a school of love and faith.