THE WORD AND THE FEAST

Family - School of life and love

Celebrating the Holy Family, as a family

Sir 3:2-6,12-14; Mt 2:13-15,19-23

The Holy Family is usually celebrated on the Sunday that falls within the Christmas Octave. This year, since Christmas itself fell on a Sunday, and because the next Sunday would be the Solemnity of the Mother of God, we remember the Holy Family today! That said, let us dwell on the strenna for 2017 from the Rector Major of the Salesians of Don Bosco. There has been a great insistence on the importance of the family from the moment Pope Francis decided to convene two synods, one extraordinary and the other ordinary and his encyclical Amoris Laetetia. Keeping with this spirit, the Rector Major proposes: We are a Family - every home a school of life and love.

Our life is one long learning; the first school is home and the first teachers are parents. Everything that happens is a learning experience, provided we take time and assistance needed to make sense of the events in the right perspective. Life and Love are connected - life begins out of love and only a life that is filled with love makes sense to the person and to the world. Family is the first place and the constant place where this meaning making can happen. Love is born in a family and it is nurtured right there. That is why we can confidently say, family is the first place where a person encounters God; if he or she fails to encounter God there, it is tough to do it elsewhere, be it a church or a basilica! Holy Family today inspires us with the right model - the birth of love into the Holy Family is a symbolic mystery for us to understand, what our families should become.

Finally let us raise a pertinent question: what really makes the Holy Family, holy? Apart from Sanctity and Simplicity, there are three other S's that we can notice, admire and follow from this Family of Nazareth: Spirit-filled personal lives, Selfless relationships, and Silence. These three qualities are essential for any family to grow in its holiness. May the Holy Family assist us and fill our families with love.