Family is fundamental
by Father Francis P. DeSiano, CSP
December 27, 2013

The following is a homily for Sunday, Dec. 29, the Feast of the Holy Family.

 

Learning a language has some hidden difficulties. We presume, for example, that sounds are the same. We also think we can easily make sounds in another language. So going from English to Spanish, my Latino friends had to constantly correct the way I said “con” because it sounded like “can” to them. And I had to practice the double rr sound and learn the double ll pronunciation. In some languages, sounds in English are entirely missing, and some people can never learn them. Every time I go near Chinese, it seems like a mystery to me.

The same is true in life. Certain basic experiences are like basic sounds we learn. We either learn them or we are crippled in life. Human experience is made up of certain fundamentals – dependency on others, respect, generosity, kindness, love, sacrifice, for example. We either learn these human, emotional fundamentals or else they become a struggle for us. We know people, for example, abandoned at birth and how hard life becomes for them.

Where do we learn this human language of emotion? Basically in the family. Through the rearing of children, parents transmit, in family life, these basics of human personality. And everything else in life is built upon these – even our faith. If we do not learn love as children, how we do grasp God’s love for us? If we do not know sacrifice, how do we understand Jesus’ life and death?

In this feast of the Holy Family, we see the implication of the Incarnation, the Word of God becoming human. To take on our flesh, is to take on our family lives. In our Gospel, we see Jesus the child being cared for by Joseph and Mary – the risks and sacrifices they made to protect the newborn Jesus. So Jesus, the Son of God, becomes part of the human interaction which our family lives express. To be human is to be part of a network of relationships; now God has become part of that network in Jesus.

However difficult family life is today – because of changes in society and expectations – it is an essential instrument of creation and human formation. Family life is something blessed by the infancy and growth of Jesus in the household of Mary and Joseph. Jesus adds to the vocabulary of family because he brings God’s grace and infinite love as a model and guide for how we live, and how we live in families. He pushes our human relationships into our relationship with God.

We are all dependent. We are all incomplete. God brings about new life through the love of two, making us all combinations of our parents. In my personality, I have something of mom and dad. We are all connected to others, and to each other. What grace, then, that God becomes part of this connectedness by sending his Son Jesus to be our brother, to make us part of the Holy Family, and to make us part of his family of the redeemed.