The Holy Family

One of the hardest things to define is what makes a family a family and who belongs in it? Is it your relatives by blood? Your friends who you choose? Your immediate family? Your community? There are many definitions of what a family is and how people identify to and with a particular family. Yet, each family will have its fun and laughter, unique traditions, its sufferings and fights, its deaths and births.

The Holy Family is of no exception. From the very get-go of the family, they were faced with struggles and suffering, with joys and surprises. They are a family that experienced much that you and yours experience too.  They were a family who’s lives were marked by; great surprises, and tribulations. Visited by shepherds and magi, being refugees to be safe from evil and killings. The Holy Family had a rough start.

However, we find the key to their holiness written in the letter from St. Paul today. In writing his letter to the community in Colossal, St. Paul writes that  ‘whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father, through him.”  The Holy Family, Mary and Joseph were focused completely on Christ. Their entire lives were dedicated to Christ Jesus, and bringing about a life for him. They were a family, that accepted the call from God, listened to it, and put it into action. Everything they did was centered on Christ Jesus.

As Catholics, we are called to imitate the example of the Holy Family. In our families and in our personal lives we are called to hear, accept, and act on the call of our father. We must decrease and Christ must increase.  When we do, we will experience the divine love and peace of Christ, which, as St. Paul describes, ’binds everything together in perfect harmony.’ 

We too are called to center our lives on Christ. As a community of faith, we become one large family through our common baptism. When we gather to participate in this act of worship, we all begin marking ourselves with the sign of the cross, and being formed by the opening prayer. We lose our individuality, and become a family of believers before God. The great thing about our chapel is that is actualizes the theology of the church. As a family of faith, we are centered on Christ.  Our senses are constantly brought towards the altar which is placed wonderfully in the center of the church. As a family of Christ, we come to center our lives on Christ, who becomes present in the Eucharist.

On this feast of the Holy Family, may we come to  accept, listen, and act on the call of our God to center our lives on Christ. May we come to imitate the holy example of the Holy Family, and place our trust in the Christ, who is the center of our lives.