reflections
 

Holy Family
Sirach 3:2-6,12-14; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:22-40

"Holy Families"

by Fr. John Martin Shimkus, O.S.B.

Sunday Gospel Reading    The readings of this feast are filled with wise admonitions to family members.  From Sirach we read: “Whoever honors his father atones for sins . . .  he stores up riches who reveres his mother . . .  take care of your father when he is old”.  And St. Paul insists that: “Children obey your parents in everything” and “Fathers do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged.”

     One can legitimately wonder how these sayings are heard by those who attend this Sunday’s Eucharist.  While presenting a certain idyllic ideal of family life, I suspect that, often as not, these directives call to mind hurts and failures within families, the ways in which the wisdom of mutual love and care has sadly been violated or neglected.

     For this reason, I think it’s good to consider that this feast dedicated to the perfect family, the “Holy Family” is just as much dedicated to all families, as perfect or imperfect as they may be.  The invitation to care, reverence, kindness and obedience proclaimed so clearly is not just an impossible ideal against which to measure our poor efforts.  It is also a curative to the wrongs of the past.  To embrace the life of the Holy Family within our families means that we never give up on God’s grace; it means that we continue to believe healing and the renewal of love are possible because of the God who makes this possible and the Child who came to bring reconciliation to this world.

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