Last Sunday’s liturgical feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph brings to mind the saving reality that our families are called to holiness.
The Gospel gives us a sound catechesis of what a family should be by representing a unique event. God incarnate was born and raised within a simple human family. Through the family he encountered us!
The mission of each member of the family is that of supporting the other members who constitute it. The secret of family life is that of living the spirit of communion with one another. And the unity, which every family seeks to promote, necessarily leads to the discovery of God together with the recognition of the plan he has set out for that family, both collectively and individually.
The encounter with God is always enfleshed into a tangible mission. In fact, Blessed John Paul II in “Evangelium Vitae” says that the “role of the family in building a culture of life is decisive and irreplaceable” (§ 92). In faithfully fulfilling this mission the family lives its God-given vocation for holiness. There are five ways how the family can do this.
First, the family is “sanctuary of life”. In “Centesimus Annus”, Pope Woytyla statest: “The family is indeed sacred: it is the place in which life − the gift of God − can be properly welcomed and protected against the many attacks to which it is exposed, and can develop in accordance with what constitutes authentic human growth. In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life” (§ 39).
Second, the family is an ideal place where children are educated. Children are “begotten” spiritually and physically. On their behalf, parents may discover together both the beauty and the responsibility of being servants of human life by the loving way they serve their children’s integral well-being. In his “Letter to the Families”, Blessed John Paul II explains that “the ‘principle of giving honour’, the recognition and respect due to man precisely because he is a man, is the basic condition for every authentic educational process” (§ 16).
Third, being born into a family means that one is born into a society. Consequently one is introduced into a network of personal relationships which give a context for him/her to discover his/her own unique personal identity. The “Letter to the Families” explains that “through the family passes the primary current of the civilization of love, which finds therein its ‘social foundations’” (§ 15).
Fourth, the family is the place wherein the destructive force of “Eros” is transfigured with God’s grace into the “agape” kind of love. The family is the ambience in which we learn how to be brothers and sisters, children and parents, collaborators instead of merciless competitors.
Fifth, a decisive role of a Christian family is that of giving birth to Christ by creating a spiritual environment where saints are bred. Deeds on their own are weak if they are not inspired and sustained by prayer. That is why family prayers, especially the Rosary, are essential for a family to navigate through the current disintegrating waves of a post-modern godless culture that is seriously threatening the very foundations of the family.
Blessed John Paul II notes: “The Rosary mystically transports us to Mary’s side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth. This enables her to train us and to mould us with the same care, until Christ is ‘fully formed’ in us... Why should we not once more have recourse to the Rosary, with the same faith as those who have gone before us?"
The Rosary is the formation school for our families. Let us pick up the rosary beads and start praying together as a family afresh so that the holy traits of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, are inscribed in the heart, mind and soul of each single member of our family. Time will certainly show us that the life-giving prayer of the Rosary will eventually heal, unite and renew our family!
Families, give it a serious try!
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
SAN GWANN