Celebrating family!

"The family: we were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing chickenpox and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together." ~Erma Bombeck
During these days of the Christmas season, most of us are blessed to be able to spend a little more time with our families. See this time for what it is: a blessing. Sometimes that can be a difficult task. But God asks us to look not for reasons to complain, but for reasons to praise and to number our blessings, not our difficulties. Find those reasons. Count your blessings and praise and thank God for all of them - especially for your families. Remember always that the family is the oldest of human institutions and is God's most basic building-block for the building up of his Kingdom. Furthermore, as St. John Paul II taught, the family is a "school of love." Learn to love in your family. If necessary, love to learn your family. On this feast of the Holy Family, take time out to thank God for your family,those here on earth, those already in Heaven, pray for those who need healing, those who are suffering, those who may make us suffer. Remember the Holy Family was fairly dysfunctional but they worked out okay!
A blessed feast of the Holy Family to you all!
(Holy Family Picture by Sr. M. Angelica Ballan, pddm)