I don’t know if you saw the news story, it was in some of the local news stations a couple weeks ago. A pilot out of Bowling Green who had an idea, a little moment of inspiration. He wanted to trace with his plane the image of the Nativity. He took off one evening after it was dark, he went up into the sky, and he traced 500 miles it took him to make an image of the Nativity that everyone could see on the radar. Initially he was just sharing it with some of his friends, and it went viral. I reached out to him and asked him, “By the way, are you Catholic?” He said yes. I asked what inspired him to do that. He said, “Well, I try every year to think of something fun to do with my friends, and I thought my friends who are real believers would appreciate it. I didn’t think much of it. I had no idea it would go viral and I would be getting this kind of response to it. Certainly, the internet can be pretty mean sometimes but this time it was good.” I was thinking about that. It was 500 miles of drawing that he did. Does anyone know how many miles the Holy Family traveled from Bethlehem when they had to flee to Egypt? It was just under 500 miles, and he did it in five or six hours.
The Holy Family probably journeyed a month or so to reach their destination. I think of all of those moments of the angel coming to Joseph in a dream and completely redirecting their lives and their path in life.
As we celebrate the image of the Holy Family, we’re given these readings that talk about family life and the importance of us being the Holy Family. Sometimes it can be rather difficult because we’re not perfect. When we think of Mary, Blessed Mother conceived without sin. Jesus, son of God, no sin. St. Joseph, a little bit of sin but very, very holy. Now you put together a husband and a wife and children, all who have sin, and it’s a lot more difficult to be a Holy Family. But God does give us a flight path. He does give us direction and how to be a good and holy family.
In the first reading, it talks about fathers and mothers. First it says, “God set the father over his children”, and then I love this, “A mother’s authority he confirms over her son.” So, the mother has the real authority in the family. The father and mother are to honor their children. The word authority really means, if you take it from the true ideology, authority is authorship. It’s helping to author somebody’s life as you set them out in life. Then it talks about children taking care of their parents when they grow old. There is this mutual love between parents and children.
St. Paul, then, gets into very specific ways of holiness in the family. I love this verb that he says, “Put on God’s holy chosen and beloved.” He’s saying, put this on. What I like about that is, it’s like we have a choice. I don’t really when I get up and get dressed in the morning, it’s usually the same thing, but you have a choice when you wake up in the morning of what clothes you’re going to put on. Just like we can choose what clothes to put on, we can also choose different dispositions, different attitudes, different virtues. He says, “Put these on, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” To have a holy family, here is some of the guidance that we have.
I want you to think about your family right now. Can you put on heartfelt compassion? One of the greatest stressors in marriage, actually one of the greatest predictors of a marriage failing, does anyone know what that is? If you want to use the top stressor, money is a stressor, children and religion is too, but one of the greatest difficulties of a couple and one of the hardest things to work past is resentment. There is a wonderful psychologist, his name is Gottman, and he talks about resentment being the biggest sign that he would see in marriages that fail. Why is that? Because we dismiss the other person. It’s the roll of the eyes, saying things like how lousy they are.
The opposite of resentment is heartfelt compassion. Making a choice to treat your loved one with heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility and gentleness. Then he says, “Bearing with one another and forgiving one another if you have any grievance as the Lord has forgiven you.” Remember that God has forgiven us of all of our sins and out of that we can forgive 70 x 7 times sometimes in a day, our family members. Then he says, “If we do that, we can let the peace of Christ be in our hearts.”
Then we get to the end, and this is the classic one where usually wives nudge their husband, husbands nudge their wives, “Do you year this?” “Wives be subordinate to your husbands.” The husbands are like, all right. But then it says, “Husbands, love your wives.” This is a strange one for us to hear. Be subordinate to your husband? It sounds very patriarchal, right? What St. Paul is saying, subordinate is a word that means to place ourselves under the order, to allow ourselves, wives, place yourselves under the order of the husband. And what is the order of a husband, what is the purpose of a husband? St. Paul says, “To love their wives.” He’s basically saying, “Let your husband love you. Receive his love.” And husbands, “Love your wives. Cherish them with all of your heart.” He goes on to say, “Avoid any bitterness toward each other.” How deadly bitterness can be.
Finally, we get to the part about children. “Children obey your parents in everything.” Parents are like, all right, do you hear that? I like to tell kids when they go to Confession because that’s usually one of the struggles of children, obeying their parents. My advice is usually, “When your parents ask you to do something, do it immediately. Just do what they want immediately. They want you to clean something, stop what you’re doing and go clean it and then come back.” There are actually a couple reasons why this is important. First of all because we are honoring our mother and father in the Commandments. Secondly, it saves a lot of grief, right? If we as children just do what our parents ask us to do, it’s going to save a lot of arguing back and forth. Just do it and get it over with. But I think the best reason for that is if we listen to our parents and respond immediately, it’s going to help us to be holy. By that I mean that God is going to ask of us things in our lives and the more that we have listened and responded and obeyed our parents immediately, the more we are likely to listen and respond when God calls to us.
It ends with, “Fathers, do not provoke your children.” It goes back to the parents there. “Do not provoke your children. Treat them with gentleness, love and honor that they not become discouraged.”
We are given this beautiful image of the Holy Family today of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Just as that young pilot traced the image of the Holy Family in the sky, God does give us a recipe for holiness. He gives us a flight plan for holiness. I think that if we really try to let go of resentment and bitterness, and instead put on heartfelt compassion and love every day, our families would move toward holiness. The family is supposed to be the primary church. It’s in the family that we’re supposed to discover more than anywhere else, the unconditional love that God has for us.
I invite us to take a few moments to think about our families, and have we held any bitterness in our heart that needs to be forgiven as God has forgiven us? Can we put on heartfelt love and compassion? Can we bear with one another in patience and gentleness? I invite us to ask God for that strength and for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and as we receive Jesus in the Eucharist we may come home as transformed people, and that we may truly listen to the path, the flight plan that God has for us for each and every one of our families.
