Family Day

Family Day

Gospel for the Feast of the Holy Family:  Matthew 2.13-15;19-23

Here in Alberta, we "celebrate" a day for families in mid-February. As a statutory holiday, government agencies, public services, and schools, have a day off so that families can enjoy a day together.

I'm thinking that there are very few families who can actually take advantage of the day as it was intended, but I guess it's the thought that counts.

We, as a Catholic Christian community, have been celebrating a different type of family day for a few hundred years. The Feast of the Holy Family became part of our liturgical calendar in 1893, and is celebrated in the octave (eight days) of Christmas, usually the first Sunday after Christmas.

It is really a good time to reflect on the relationship of Mary, Joseph and Jesus during this time when many of us have gathered together to feast and frolic with our families.

We have heard countless homilies on how the Holy Family is a model of family life. But what do we make of that? Is it too high a pinnacle for us to attain? A father who is a saint, a mother without sin, and a child who is the Son of God?? How can we possibly follow such a model??

The Holy Family is a model of Christ himself. At once containing both the divine and the human, our families can be in union with the Holy Family, by embracing their lived experience. Now we don't have very many accounts of this experience in Scripture, but look at what they went through:

1. There was confusion and anxiety from the beginning ( Matthew 1.18-25)

2.They experienced homelessness and poverty (Luke 2.1-7)

3. They lived as refugee immigrants and suffered persecution (Matthew 2.13-15)

4. They lost their child for three days (Luke 2.41-51)

The message is clear. The "holiness" of the Holy Family is found in poverty, alienation, and anxiety. And through it all, we see the parents of the Holy child trust in their God, above all else.

So, when we encounter alienation, anxiety and poverty of spirit, may we trust in our God, always.

And may we reach out to those families who struggle every day to survive- the separated and abused, the poor and displaced, the immigrants and the refugees, the lonely and forgotten.

Let us reach out in love.

For when we touch lives such as these, we

encounter the Holy Family.

For this week:

Consider a donation to Development and Peace, or L'Arche Canada