When I was first Ordained, my pastor invited some of us to the lake for dinner.  He had just written a wonderful bulletin article about living as a holy family.  He waxed eloquently about the joys of children, good communication, sacrifice and revealing God's love to one another.  He spoke of respect of husbands for wives and wives for husbands, children for parents and parents for children.  It was a masterpiece!

We sat down to a wonderful dinner prepared by our wonderful pastor, and the peace was broken.  The next-door neighbors were having a full-fledged battle.  Kids were yelling at parents and parents at kids.  Then parents were yelling at one another.  Something came crashing out of the door onto the driveway and a car squealed away.  I suggested to the pastor that he might like to tuck a copy of his bulletin article into their screen door!  <smile>

We can imagine the lives of the Holy Family of Nazareth.  What a peaceful scene we can conjure, with Joseph working diligently in his carpenter shop and teaching the trade to Jesus.  We can imagine a smiling and serene Mary, caring for and loving her family so very much.  We can imagine Joseph teaching Jesus about the Law and the Prophets, and Jesus respectfully and eagerly soaking up all that was offered.  We can think of genuine quality time, of a family living together, praying together and doing God's work.  How tempting it is to make the Holy Family into a statue and hanging it on the wall of our minds as something inspiring but unattainable.

It is easy to forget how Mary, a teenager, was approached by an angel and asked to be the Mother of God, and how Joseph was ready to divorce her quietly.  It is easy to forget how Mary gave birth far away from home, in a place where only cattle stayed.  It is easy to forget the flight into Egypt and even the stress caused by Jesus as he stayed behind in the temple without telling Mary and Joseph.  We can even forget about the feelings of a mother as everyone important turned away from her son and betrayed him.  It's hard to forget the tender picture of the Pieta, as the lifeless body of Jesus is put into the lap of his mother.  The life of the Holy Family of Nazareth was anything but peaceful and serene!

But they hung in there ... together!  They knew where their strength came from.  They prayed together often.  They trusted that things would be all right if they did things God's way.  Those were the values they learned from their own parents and grandparents.  It had learned how natural it was to do the right thing, simply because it was right and that it was God's will.  Our families can be holier families if follow their example and do the same.

Our lives are stressful!  Things we would never plan or choose can come our way.  We may need to face illness and even the death of loved ones.  We can be deeply hurt by unfaithfulness.  We can be devastated when those we love behave badly.  We can be even more devastated by our own weaknesses and unworthy behavior.  All these things can bring great tension to our families and even threaten to destroy them.  Then, as the Holy Family did, we need to look to the source of our strength.  We need to look to God!

There are children all around us.  Some of us have children at home.  We have grandchildren too, nieces and nephews, neighborhood children and the children that our the treasure of our parish.  They look at everything we do and listen to everything we say.  The values we hold become their values as well.  We can lead them toward God or draw them away.  Our prejudices can easily become theirs.  Our honesty or dishonesty is passed on to them as well.  Our patience or our judgment can become very much a part of them.  God calls us to show them how to live as God's children, as a holy family.

The family that prays together stays together.  Those words are true.  Times of prayer together, as a family or as a parish, can bring us together and help us focus on what is truly important in life.  Things may not turn out the way we think they should, but we can make the best of them and not allow them to corrupt our peace of mind or the values of the little ones around us.  As we look to God we can come to understand that God understands our pain and disappointment completely.  We can hear God's call for us to hang in there ... together.  God calls us to use these challenges to build a holy family.

Many of us know people who have been estranged for a long period of time.  Many times those people have long forgotten what caused the problem.  Sometimes we need to admit that we act like five-year-olds.  We can easily allow something relatively small to become very large.  As time goes on we can remember with great pain how large we allowed the problem to get, but sometimes forget that it can be put back into a more realistic perspective.  Most of the time estrangement could end if at least one of the people became willing to become humble enough to think things through, and then to reach out and try to heal the division.

Holy families are families where reconciliation occurs.  We know the frustration of seeing a parent, child or friend deny they are wrong, even though everyone else on the planet would agree that they are.  What a wonderful lesson we can provide for our children when we admit our wrongdoing and ask forgiveness.  That takes more strength than fifty years of justifying our wrong actions.  It teaches a profound lesson to our children.  They're more likely to admit their own wrongdoing and make peace when we teach them to do so by our own example.

Even when we have been wronged or when we have wronged others, the time comes for us to let go and become friends again.  Take a look at our resentments page for some practical ways to do that.  It's a relatively simple process.  We can come to understand that we'll never be at peace within ourselves until we're willing to let go of the hard feelings we hold against others.

What joy there is in life when we live as holy families.  We can look forward with joy to holidays and to all the time we spend together.  We don't have to be perfect, and we won't be.  Sometimes we can resist the temptation to criticize or to respond to the criticism of others.  What goes around comes around.  Offering encouragement and affirmation even to those who don't encourage or affirm us can be transforming.  If nothing else, it can transform us!  We can look for the good in those around us and appreciate our similarities.  We can be enriched by our differences as well.  When we have problems with another person, we try to work it out.  We can spend lots to time praying for that person.  We can find that our new outlook will transform us and our relationships with those around us.

To be honest, we learn to live as a holy family mostly during times of stress, disappointment and difficulty.  Those life lessons are precious to us and precious to our children as well.  May we look to the example of the Holy Family of Nazareth for the strength we need.  May God bless us with a unity that comes most often amid our diversity.  May we do our part too, to pray, to understand, to reconcile, to hope and to consider what's truly important.  May the many families we belong to grow more holy this day because we're a part of them.  And may our children learn to build holy families by following the example we set for them!