Today is the Feast of the Holy Family, always the Sunday after Christmas. In today's Gospel reading from Matthew 2, we read about Joseph taking his family to Egypt to keep his son safe from a wicked king, then returning to Nazareth.
Joseph, like any good father, did whatever was necessary to protect his family. When times get hard, family is supposed to come through. Because, as they say, blood is thicker than water. Now, we all know that doesn't always happen. Some families are plagued with deep division. That's why we need to pray for holy families.
Most of us would probably not think of our family as “holy.” But the family is a divine institution. Your family is holy not because of the actions of its members (for most of us, many of those actions could be very unholy), but because it has been created by God. The same is true of the Church. While all of her members are sinners, the Church is holy because she was instituted by God. So, though it may be difficult to do, let us each look at our family as holy, and strive to imitate the perfect example of family, the Holy Family.
Father, we thank you for the gift of family. Help us to be holy, as you have created us and called us to be. Amen.
JMJ
Thank you Gus for providing me with some great insights for my “unholy” family. They left the Church and my attempts at bringing them back have not been very successful. It is hard to evangelize when people point all that is wrong within our Church and ask “why would I want that when they can’t even clean up their own act?”
You reminded of something Fr. Mike Schmitz pointed out (Catechism in a Year?) about how we have two churches; the perfect one from Jesus and the broken, flawed, imperfect one of Man.
Praying for our Church and All families🙏