The Feast of the Holy Family

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“They hurried away and they found Mary and Joseph, and the babe, lying in the manger. When they saw the child they repeated what they had been told about him, and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds said to them. As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds went back glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as they had been told” (Luke 2:16-20).

Today is the Feast of the Holy Family, a very beautiful feast the Church places just after Christmas.

The shepherds came and they were the first to discover the Holy Family—that Holy Family that God wants to use to light up our lives and the whole of society. The family is the first cell of society.

These days as we enter with intimacy into the stable in Bethlehem, we enter into that family, because that's our family. It's to that family that we belong.

St. Josemaría liked to say how good a teacher Our Divine Master is. He wants us to be totally committed and involved in a ceaseless struggle that requires complete self-denial on our part.

Our family, the Work, is a militia. And at the same time, the Work is a family—so many homes that form just one home. So many homes that are informed by the home of the Holy Family and the family atmosphere of Bethlehem—a home endowed with human and supernatural affection, but not soft sentimentality.

All the Supernumeraries and Cooperators, and everybody who attends our activities or somehow comes in contact with our apostolates—God wants them to pick up something of that family atmosphere. The centers of Opus Dei are not religious houses. That's not just a nice idea; it's part of the foundational charism.

St. Josemaría saw very clearly that God wanted Opus Dei to be a family, so that every family that comes close to the supernatural family of Opus Dei might learn something, and might be enriched to bring those gems and treasure family life back to their own family, that they try and foster and grow.

He says it's a place where each one can find, in company with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, a renewal of strength and vigor to persevere in the struggle to give his life to Christ.

In Bethlehem, we find a beautiful family. But it wasn't easy. Joseph had to do a lot of work to convert that unlikely stable into a focal point of warmth for all families all over the world. So beautiful, so attractive.

Our Lady had to put up with a lot of discomfort, rejection in Bethlehem. No support, no material benefits—just totally supported by the love and care and affection of St. Joseph, and very focused on the treasure and the wealth of the Christ Child.

Looking at the Holy Family we learn how to have family values, and family values really mean family priorities. Family comes first. There are times when we have to be at home, times when we have to be with the family. We just set aside time for each member of the family.

There was a man in Ireland many years ago who came in contact with some of the recollections and other means of formation of Opus Dei. He was a very prestigious, professional man. He had eight children. And he always thought that the most important thing in his life was his work, because that was how he supported his family.

But from the Christian formation he received at not such an early stage in his life, he came to see that really, the most important thing in his life was his family. He began to have a paradigm shift.

He set up his home in some ways a bit like his office. He brought a filing cabinet home. He opened a file on each one of his children. He had board meetings with his wife where they set out daily goals, weekly goals, quarterly goals, and yearly goals for each of the children.

He had regular meetings with his wife about each one of the children. He sat down to have reporting sessions with each one of the children on a weekly basis. Each child got five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. Sometimes they went much longer. He discovered that his children had an awful lot to say, and he did an awful lot of the listening.

With that, he built up a great friendship with his children. He knew what was happening in the lives of each one of them.

St. Josemaría gave it as a goal that we should try and be very good friends with our children. Often it's an easy thing to say, but it's not such an easy thing to achieve. It means sitting down with each child, person to person, and talking with them, and listening to them, and spending time with them—this great treasure that God has placed in your life.

The soul of each child is a jewel that has been entrusted to you—to take care of that jewel, to polish it up, to form it, to shape it, so that that jewel can take its place in heaven for all eternity.

Lord, may we never lose sight of this great formative role that you want for our lives in building up great families, great children, men and women who can take their place in society, who can build a culture of life and a civilization of love.

The Church places so many wonderful and beautiful goals before our eyes. Somebody said once, if the answers to the problems of the family in the world don't come from the Catholic Church, they're not going to come from anywhere, because we have all the truth. We have all the light. We have the “tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people” (Luke 2:10).

We can ask the Holy Family that we might burn today with the desire to bring quality family life and formation to all the areas of society so that we get involved in organizations that foster the family and that strengthen families, so that we can change the way the world thinks.

In these areas, St. Josemaría used to say that in the matters of education and morality, marriage and family, we have to go all the way. We have to fight to the end and Christianize society with values, with morals, with customs.

Everything that we can read and inform ourselves in relation to the family is time very well spent, so that we learn new ways to do things, and we learn how to bring values in a more effective way to our children—first and foremost, with our values, not with our lectures.

By the time your children are fourteen, they know what all your lectures are about. Often the greatest lecture you can give is your silence. Children can't argue with silence.

A person who is silent—it's because they know the truth. And often that's the witness that we have to try and give the people that God has placed around us.

St. Josemaría used to say that we are a small corner of the house of Nazareth. We have to try and bring the atmosphere of that small corner of the house of Nazareth into every family that we may come to know in society. He says we're called to share a home with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, because we belong to that family. We belong to the family of Nazareth.

Every little detail comes to be important. At Christmas, there's very much a time for family, for detail, to see how we can make that message more effective.

We all form part of that home. “We've received the same vocation to bring within our soul the warmth of Christ's love to our family life, whether it's in the houses or centers of Opus Dei, or in the family homes,” he says, “in which most of my daughters and sons live.”

In this way, the home of Nazareth is made present in many physical places in the world which have been prepared by God to give a fitting welcome to His Son.

Try to plan and organize and think of family activities these days. Or in those planning sessions with your wife, plan family fun so that your children see that our family is a great place to be. We really enjoy ourselves.

If you find that many other children in your area enjoy being in your home, that may be a bit of a nuisance sometimes, but it's quite a compliment. If they find that it's a fun place to be, something is going right.

We can ask Our Lord for that grace to see how we can build up our family a little more, physically and humanly, often using human things to go to the great spiritual messages.

Try and make this Feast of the Holy Family a special day in your family. Celebrate it, welcome it, do something exciting. Shoot the breeze. Make your home a fun place to be.

Have surprises for your children, have a little treasure hunt. Sometimes it doesn't matter what the treasure may be. It might be something very small. It might be something that doesn't cost money, but it's fun. They enjoy that fun.

“Don't think,” he says, “that the virtues and the tone and character of this home are confined to the physical buildings of our centers. I'm speaking to the hearts of all my children, no matter where they actually work, or rest, or spend their time after a day's work, or enjoy their family life.”

The home of Opus Dei, like the home of Nazareth, is not confined to a space enclosed by four walls. We have to try and bring that spirit with us, build up our family and other families, and to give our children the means, so that from our example, from our efforts and from our cleverness, thinking out of the box, they also learn how to build up their families, which will come in the course of time.

They learn to be all things to all men, or to make everything compatible with family life. Every family needs to have some rules. This is the time and the day that we're all here. This is something we do as a family, while at the same time, with older children, giving them a lot of room for freedom.

But at least when they're small, they grow up with those ideas: to teach children to be leaders in this area, of what's good for families and what's not so good for families, of how in our family we do certain things and we don't do other things. We don’t watch this type of program. We don't go to these places. Or we don’t smoke this type of drug.

We don't need to, because we have so much fun in other ways that we don't look for all these other things. We have values.

Our family tries to think a lot about other families, and in a regular way, thinks out of the box. It goes through our habits, our food as we bake or make or have, so we can bring some little bit of joy to some other family that doesn't have what we have.

Or we think of children in orphanages or in children's homes. Sometimes, with very little, we can bring a lot of joy. Sometimes by just being in these places, we can bring joy. And we have to try and infect many other people with these ideas.

St. Josemaría liked to emphasize that “the Prelature of Opus Dei is a militia, but also a home” (Josemaría Escrivá, De spiritu, Point 64). Struggle and peace, joyous renunciation, and charity full of tenderness. Nazareth and Calvary—that's what every home is all about.

We can ask Our Lord to bless our family. In spite of the crosses, the difficulties, the challenges—every family has those—or the heartbreaks, the pains of love, sadness which can also be accompanied by joy, as our family goes forward to fulfill the plans that God has for my family. We see everything in our family as coming from God.

I heard about a man who was the father of a family in Mexico and he had eighteen children. I think his wife had something like twenty-one pregnancies. Then one day, two of the children were involved in a car accident and they died.

They had their wake at home, but before taking the bodies in their coffins to the church for the Funeral Mass, he gathered all the rest of the children around the coffins of their brothers and sisters. The two who died, and many of the others, used to go to a center of formation of Opus Dei regularly. They used to go to regular Confession.

This father of the family said to all the other children, ‘One great lesson that you can learn in the passing of your brothers and sisters is to die in the state of grace. This is the most important thing—to live in the house of the Lord all the days of your life.’

Because these two children who were deceased in their teenage years had been attending those activities of formation regularly and getting to see a priest regularly, there was great confidence that they had died in a state of grace.

The father used this very painful occasion, sad occasion, to also transmit a message of joy. No matter what the circumstances we can always be thankful to God for the crosses that He sends us, because there is always something positive there. The grace of God is there. The providence of God is there. The hand of God is there.

We can ask the Holy Family on this day that the heart of each one of us might always be filled with charity, with the ascetical struggle; with the sentiments that follow from our being both a militia and a family; that we learn how to take the knocks and we teach others around us to take the knocks; to carry the cross, because there will be the cross.

But the cross is not something bad or something to be feared or punished. The cross is our pathway to eternity. We're all called to the eternal wedding feast, and to a large extent, the growth of family life is all geared towards that eternal wedding feast.

The goal is that we will all be together forever and forever in heaven, that this family gets together in heaven and we help each other to get there. And we do that through virtue, through holiness.

When the Church canonized the children at Fatima at such a young age, the Church was also stating that very young people can be saints.

Our call to holiness and apostolate is something we're called to live out in and with and through the family, to help others to carry the cross, to live the virtues of patience, kindness, cheerfulness, generosity, service.

We ask ourselves in these days of family life: What have I done to make this Christmas a happier place for the people around me? How have I gone out of my way? How have I served individuals within my family?

How have I gone out of my way to help other families that I know may be going through a difficult time, or who don't have the material or spiritual joys that I have these days?

These are all desires that we can place before the Holy Family. Ask them, that we might get answers to our questions and learn how to enrich our family life in this way, and help many others to do the same thing.

Nothing in family life happens outside the plans of God. Each family is an instrument of apostolate in the whole of society. We have to try and pass on our family spirit so that we raise up new horizons in society.

We spread this message. We help many people to feel part of this great family of Opus Dei—so united, so supernatural, so rich in spiritual things.

We can take those things and bring them to our own families. From the Christ Child in Bethlehem, may we learn how to give ourselves, how to place our hearts on the ground to help other people to walk easier.

We see from the knocks of Joseph and Mary how to handle those sorts of situations. The changes of plan. Go to Bethlehem, go to Egypt, remain there. The doors are closed in Bethlehem.

But then, in the middle of all these apparent contradictions, come the shepherds with their beautiful message. They entered in and they told the Holy Family, they repeated to them, what they had been told: the good news of great joy.

What a consolation the words of the shepherds must have been to Joseph and Mary, as though a confirmation of all the plans of God. The great enterprise of the Incarnation of God was taking place in the way that God wanted.

They must have lighted up their heart and soul in thanksgiving to God, precisely for those contradictions, for further difficulties of that early family life, for further changes of plans, for further discomfort—because there were greater things to be done.

All along their pilgrimage of faith in their family life, God gives them consolations.

There were times when St. Josemaría used to say about the consolations that God would give him, that they were consolations that only God knew how to give. Wonderful joys in the depth of the soul. Things that lift up the heart.

We know that if ever Our Lord permits some difficult period in our family life—the sickness, the contradiction, unemployment, lack of financial means—He also fills us with spiritual joys, helps us to see those difficulties from a different optical angle, or helps us to see other great graces that He's given to us, which really are worth much more.

Our Lord has said, “If you, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who love him?” (Matt. 7:11).

If you have just spent a lot of time and effort, and maybe money, on good gifts to your children, just imagine how much more Our Heavenly Father wants to give good things to your family.

Later on, the Magi come with a similar message: “We have seen his star in the east and we have come to worship him. We brought our finest gifts” (cf. Matt. 2:11).

On this feast of the Holy Family, we could thank God for our family, for the fact that we have been born in the family and raised in the family.

I heard about a priest who passed away recently and spent thirty years in a wheelchair. In an interview, he said he thanked God very much for the mother that He gave him on this earth. It's a very beautiful statement.

The mother of the priest, of all mothers, the mother is the Queen of the Holy. Try and see on this Feast of the Holy Family what you can do for your mother living on this earth.

In this coming year that's coming in, we'll try and see, this year and for the rest of your life, how we can help mothers. We hear an awful lot about women, women, women at the United Nations. But the Catholic Church talks about mothers, mothers, mothers.

We all have to do something more for mothers. Let them be more respected, more revered. In Christianity, maternity is something sacred. One concrete little thing: when you see a mother with small children, try and say something complimentary about the small children: ‘What a beautiful child.’ Or, ‘What a lovely little girl, the little baby.’

Or if you see a pregnant woman, try and help her to get on the bus first, or on the matatu first, or to go forward in the line in the supermarket—some little detail that doesn't cost anything, either money or time, but does show a great reverence for mothers.

There's new reverence for mothers. We sort of also lift up the Mother of God in her maternity, which is what these feast days ought to speak to us about: the divine maternity.

There's something divine in every maternity. We have to try and revere mothers, lift them up, help them, support them. If we can do something to help the maternity health services all over the country, which in some countries leave a lot to be desired, let's see what we can do.

We have to change the world in favor of mothers. Bring a whole new orientation.

As the Divine Mother speaks to us from Bethlehem, that surely must be one of the great messages that she gives to us, encouraging us to do something great for mothers in the time that's left to us in this world.

We can ask Our Lady that we might always find our place in that home, and also in that home of Nazareth. “He went down with them, came to Nazareth, and was submissive to them” (cf. Luke 2:51). Thirty years Our Lord spent in that humble subjection, living out His family life in a very ordinary way.

Mary, may you help us today to make all those great resolutions about our family life that you're expecting from us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

PKN