FAMILY FIRST AND BASIC CHRISTIAN CHURCH
“The family, is so to speak, the domestic church.” This is the image the Second Vatican Council’s on the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: (Lumen Gentium #11) paints for us.
In the family, we first learn who God is and prayerfully seek His will for us. According to Pope John XXIII, “The family is the first essential cell of human society.” In other words, a functional family begets an effective society. On the contrary, a dysfunctional family produces a dysfunctional world, community, country, Church, and so on.
CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE AND FAMILY UNDER SIEGE
The family is the most fundamental nucleus of human society. We all exist because of family. This is why God chose to come into the world through the human family. This is also why the family is under attack from the evil one.
Today, the institutions of marriage and family and their values are under siege from all sides and angles: – religious, cultural, social, moral, ethical, and economic. The destruction of humanity and its society is only successful with the destruction of the human family.
OUR THEME
The celebration of this feast of the Holy Family invites us to reflect on our family virtues and values.
One of the strongest and indisputable facts of our Christian faith is that God is the creational family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He also created the human family through the institution of matrimony. As if that was not enough on coming to redeem the failing human race came through a family: Jesus, Mary and Joseph. This is the feast of Christmas.
Any form of association can become a family of ties, interests or goals. What makes a Christian family unique is faith and its relation with god as its Author, “Sustainer”, and Finisher.
FIRST READING: 1 SAMUEL 1:20-22
The first reading, taken from the First Book of Samuel, describes how Elkanah and Hannah presented their child Samuel in the Temple. They consecrated him to the service of the Lord as a perpetual Nazarite and left him in the Temple under the care of Eli, the priest.
In today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 83), the Psalmist reminds us that happy homes are the fruit of our faithfulness to the Lord and dwelling in his love.
SECOND READING: 1 JOHN 3:1-2, 21-24
In the second reading, John reminds us that, as children of God the Father, we are members of God’s own family. As such, we are expected to obey God’s greatest commandment: Love one another so that we may remain united to God in the Holy Spirit.
THE GOSPEL OF LUKE 2: 45-51
In today’s Gospel, Luke concludes his detailed story of Christ’s infancy, with the events of Jesus’ visit to the Temple in Jerusalem at the age of twelve to become “a son of the Law” and take up the obligations of the Law.
Jesus lingered behind in the Temple, attending the Sanhedrin classes on religious and theological questions as an eager student of Mosaic Law.
Finally, after three days of anxious searching, Mary and Joseph found him in the Temple. Jesus reminded them that He “had to be” in His Father’s House. It was as if Jesus had had a blaze of realization about His Divine Sonship.
Hence, Luke presents us with a loving image of a family through daily life’s thick and thin moments. As well as, the right and adequate approach to youthful exuberance of adolescent and youthful children in a family cycle. Mary and Joseph were kind, lovely, patient, and understanding of the excesses of Jesus’ inclinations.
PARALLEL BETWEEN TODAY’S GOSPEL AND THE BOOK OF SAMUEL
According to Jewish tradition, the boy Samuel was 12 years old when he went into the Tabernacle, was called by God, heard His voice, and began to prophesy.
Jesus, in the Temple speaking with the learned rabbis at the age of 12, is also coming into his own as his priest, prophet and king.
Luke says that Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and favour with God and man. This is almost a direct quotation from the Book of Samuel, (1 Sm 2:26):
Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favour with the Lord and with men”; Luke says that Jesus “advanced [in] wisdom and age, and in favour before God and man” (Lk 2:52.)
HOLY FAMILY MODEL OF CHRISTIAN FAMILY
1. To model our family after the lowly, humble, and simple family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph full of love, grace, and peace.
2. A model of family that makes their home and family the first domestic Church of God´s dwelling presence.
3. It is the model of mutual respect, understanding, and acceptance of every family.
4. It is also the model of parental responsibility to educate and enrich the lives of their children: that is, in human knowledge and divine or godly knowledge as they grow and develop spiritually and humanly.
5. The Holy Family is a perfect model of an exemplary lifestyle and living the best Christian testimony of a Christian father and mother as well as a godly husband and wife in holiness, sanctification, and faithfulness to God and each other.
6. A model of family that learns to rely on God´s divine providence, intervention, and guidance.
7. Model of forgiveness, love, and patience that makes their home a place of fraternal correction rather than a courtroom of fighting and settling disputes.
8. The Holy Family teaches us that marriage and family are correlated to fulfil God´s divine purpose.
9. God is at the centre of the Holy family and must be the centre of our family too. In a truly holy family, all members are respected, cherished, nurtured, and supported, united through love.
10. Finally, forgiveness is the lubricant of daily family life amidst tension, difficulties, conflicts, failures, pains, disappointments, differences, misunderstandings, and misjudgement.
GOD AT THE CENTRE OF FAMILY LIFE
God is at the centre of the Holy family and must be the centre of our family, too. In a holy family, all members are respected, cherished, nurtured, and supported, united through the bond of love. Finally, forgiveness is the lubricant of daily family life amidst tension, difficulties, conflicts, failures, pains, disappointments, differences, misunderstandings, and misjudgements.
The deepest and most loving way to celebrate the Holy Family is to live as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did besides God, the second most important thing in the world is family and love. Indeed, it is through the spirit of love, respect, obey, cherish, support and forgive in our imperfect but striving families.
GOD’S CHOICEST BLESSINGS
There is a two-fold reward that God promises to those who honour their father and mother:
- Riches and prosperity
- A long life.
NOTE WARNING TO THOSE WHOSE DESPICE PARENTS: BRANDING AGED PARENTS AS WITCHES AND PAYING TITHE TO A CHURCH OR PASTOR WITHOUT SUPPORT TO AGED PARENTS IS A GENERATIONAL CURE NOT A BLESSING.
NOTE OF WARNING TO PARENTS WHO ARE IN THE HABIT OF PRONOUNCING CURSES ON THEIR CHILDREN: NO AMOUNT OF PROVOCATION SHOULD PUSH A PARENT TO CURSE HIS CHILDREN BECAUSE GENERNATIONAL CURSES AND POWERFUL ESPECIALLY CHILDREN ARE NOT INNOCENT.
A family of parents and children should nurture each other through loving and tender care to grow and develop to full maturity. A fruitful life of love and respect with a PROVIDENT AND CARING FATHER LIKE JOSEPH, AND A HOLY AND DEVOTED MOTHER LIKE MARY.
Children should learn the sense of duty, responsibility, obedience, faith practice, and faith living in their family like Jesus and the home of Nazareth. Let us pray that the example of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph will help families under the attack of modernity to have recourse at every moment to God.
OUR PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, You came to us through a family. May our human families always be a place of peace, love, and harmony. Help our families to be a place of mercy, grace, forgiveness, growth and development humanly and spiritually! Amen
