Celebrating family!
If this past year has taught us one thing, it is that family is important! The ordinariness of visiting families, giving and receiving hugs, of being able to say goodbye to loved one when they passed, all became rarer because of the inability to travel, to meet, to gather in numbers. During these days of the Christmas season, with the restrictions of COVID-19, not everyone has been able to spend a little time with families. For some it is simply not safe to gather, there are travel restrictions or curfews, others are on the front line of fighting the pandemic and cannot put family at risk, especially those most vulnerable and the elderly. There are difficult choices to be made but we are in this together.
If you do have the possibility to spend time with family- see it 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)
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