The Feast of the Holy Family always makes me stop and think about my own family... we are perfect, mother and child are sinless, father leads his family by dreams, basically the same as the Holy Family, just like all of your families, perfect, right?

Well not so much. In my family, I have 8 nieces and nephews, and three of the boys are 4, 5, and 6 - at some point they gave themselves the nickname "The Tiny Boys" and it has stuck with them. You can probably imagine what that is like when The Tiny Boys get together… they play so rough with each other, they run and yell and fight... in fact just last night, the 4 year old literally punched my 7 year old niece in the nose and gave her a bloody nose.

Their uncle tries to slow them down, to no avail.  Their parents tell them to settle down, but inevitably one of “The Tiny Boys” gets hurt, I have seen them all crying at one point or another.  Less than perfect.

And in a few years, I think about those tiny boys going to confession, and I'd bet they will tell me or another priest, “I disobeyed my parents, and I fought with my siblings and my cousins.” They know it is wrong but they do it anyway. So in my family, we are less than perfect, but we are trying to grow. Here is what we have to remember, two main things:

First, we obey our parents because they love us.  It isn’t because they don’t want us to have any fun, it is because they want to keep us safe.  They don’t want to see us get hurt and start crying.  

In that first reading we heard, “Whoever reveres his father will live a long life; he who obeys his father brings comfort to his mother.”  In the second reading we heard, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord.”

Why is this pleasing to the Lord? Well, if we can be obedient to our parents, then we can be obedient to God.  What we have to recognize is that both love us unconditionally, and both ask us to obey them because they love us and ultimately know what is best for us.

So we obey our parents and our God out of that loving trust we have in them, that they do know best, even if it seems to limit our fun in the moment.

Second, we need to be kind to our siblings.  We have to realize that we are on the same team, we both want the same things, or at least we should want the same things, which is ultimately growth in holiness and salvation.

We heard in that second reading, “Brothers and sisters: Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,”

If we were to act with those virtues with our family members, especially our siblings, how much better would that be? 

But Paul goes on, he says, “bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.”

Forgiveness is very hard for people to do, but we are called to forgive because God forgave us.  Yes, we should be on the same team and we should want the same thing, but oftentimes we don’t, and then, we have to forgive.

Now I see a lot of parents smiling down at their kids or poking them to pay attention because I’m telling them exactly what you try to teach them every day. But I’m not just preaching to the children. These lessons are important for adults too!

Family dynamics change from childhood to adulthood. And then what about those of us whose family members have passed away? What if we don’t speak to our siblings? Haven’t seen them in years? What do we do to honor our families in these situations?

Well we need to move from being Tiny Boy and Girls to being Big Boys and Girls. Adulting. We must face the tough situations, own up to what we have or haven't done, and do our best to reconcile with each other out of our love for God.

In a family we learn how God loves us, we see how He forgives us even when we don’t really deserve it, we see how He loves us unconditionally as a good father does, and it is through seeing how God loves us that we are able to love more like God.

The Holy Family is an ideal, there is no doubt.  But we have to strive for ideals or else we settle for mediocrity, so it is in the family that we learn to love like God loves us, and then we grow in virtue, virtues like “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” and we grow in forgiveness, knowing that God first forgave us.

We heard at the end of the Gospel, “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” Our families help us to grow in holiness on many levels.  They are not perfect like the Holy Family, but they do not have to be for us to grow in wisdom, and at some level it is better that they aren't so we can grow in virtue, but we have to make the effort to grow.  

That is so much of what this life is about, growth in holiness, which is really growth in love.

My encouragement is to thank God for your families, whatever your family is like, and recognize that you are helping each other to grow to be closer to God in holiness, growing in obedience, growing in forgiveness, growing in virtue, growing in love.