Yet, atop this list of toys and treats, at the number one spot, was…can you guess? It was the request for a new baby brother or sister. The days of large families have come to an end, especially in Europe, whose population is in decline because the birth rate is so low. Our nation, as well, has tipped into negative population growth for a number of reasons including the breakdown of marriages, divorce, gross materialism, and the explosion in use of artificial contraception. Families are having less children, in fact, we are even seeing a decline in families in general—less marriages means less children.
And so this request for a new baby brother or sister is very telling—children are yearning, not for toys and electronics, but for real human experience, real family experiences.
Another item on this Christmas wish list is also very telling. In the number 10 spot, children asked..again not for electronic devices or material possessions, but for a dad. ‘A Dad’—‘a father’—is not something children should not have to put on their Christmas list. Children know that ‘a dad’ should not be missing from their life.
This is not to say that single-parents are not courageous and trying their hardest to provide for a healthy, loving, holy upbringing for their children. But as Catholics we acknowledge the Creator’s design for the family as being very important for the emotional and psychological and spiritual health of children.
Statistics show many of the consequences of fatherless households. Boys whose parents are divorced or never married are two to three times more likely to end up in jail as adults. Children whose parents get and stay married are healthier and also much less likely to suffer mental illness, including depression and teen suicide.
Many of us today may have more formal education, money and opportunities than our ancestors. Yet family life and marriage is also crumbling like never before. The fact that a sibling and a dad ranked so high on these Christmas wish-lists is very disturbing. But it is also a sign of hope. These children who long for a father, who long for a healthy family, seem to know that families should be healthier than they are, and we hope they will commit to starting and maintaining holy families when their time comes…which makes today’s feast so important, we turn our attention to what makes a Holy Family?
The Feast of the Holy Family is a relatively new feast to the liturgical calendar, it was added after Vatican II. Already in the 1960s the Council fathers detected the breakdown of families. They sought to the brace the Church for the upcoming cultural revolutions which would have even greater devastating effects, and to turn our attention to what will sustain us, guide us, and inspire us.The Holy Family of Joseph, Mary, and Joseph is the story of a family who trusts in God amidst quite difficult circumstances: a teenage mother conceiving a child before the wedding, a foster father grappling with God’s plan, even considering ending his betrothal, a poor couple forced to flee their homeland to a foreign soil because of a hostile government threatened their child. They lived as immigrants in the land that once held their ancestors as slaves.
But, despite their challenges, this family practiced absolute fidelity to God. The Holy Family stands beside all who worry, who struggle, who search, who pray. For they gave themselves fully to God, and made their family life a prayer and sacrifice for God.
The disintegration of the family I spoke about earlier is no doubt proportional to culture’s growing disregard for God and God’s plans. Unlike Mary and Joseph in the Gospel today who search desperately for the Lord when he became lost, searching for Jesus, making God the center of their lives, is often the last concern for modern families.
Last year, on the Feast of the Holy Family, Pope Francis commented on the need to follow Mary and Joseph’s example of searching for Jesus, he said, “That anguish [Mary and Joseph] felt in the three days of the loss of Jesus should also be our anguish when we are far from Him, when we are far from Jesus. We should feel anguish when we forget about Jesus for more than three days, without praying, without reading the Gospel, without feeling the need for his presence and his consoling friendship,” he said.
“Mary and Joseph looked for him and found him in the temple while he was teaching: for us too, it is above all in the house of God that we can meet the divine Master and welcome his message of salvation.” The Holy Father speaks about the importance of praying together and worshiping together as a family, particularly in the house of God, at Sunday Mass. Families that pray together stay together. Families, too, who are involved in some sort of volunteer work together, radiate with the light of God. But that key word is “together”. Praying together, worshiping together, serving together.
Separate televisions in separate rooms, separate meals at separate times, separate this and separate that, can perpetuate real and unhealthy spiritual and familial separateness if we are not vigilant. So, families need to nurture togetherness, spiritual and religious togetherness especially in a culture that is driving families apart. And really, all of us, single, married, celibate, widowed, grandparents and godparents need to be at the service of families, helping them to be holy and whole.
Today the Church calls our attention to not three separate people, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but a unity of persons, bound together by their love for each other and God. By imitating the love and virtues of the Holy Family may all of the woundedness and divisions in our own families be healed, as we like them, seek to place Jesus at the center of everything we do and everything we are.
Pope Francis said, “The family of Nazareth is holy: because it was centered on Jesus.” May all of the families of our parish and in our neighborhood grow in holiness by the same means, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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