As we celebrated this past Sunday the Feast of the Holy Family, I began to consider what I have learned about the families who keep up with me from their Christmas cards, letters and photos. I remember getting a family photo about 3 years ago from a couple whose wedding I celebrated in the mid 1980’s. The card had 3 generations of their family in the photo. I thought to myself, “Who are these people?” I had to look at the return address and then discovered that theirs was one of the first weddings I had celebrated as a priest. Here they were now the grandparents in the photo! How is that even possible? Time marches on!
Each year I discover new additions to families, more children or grandchildren have been born, or new in-laws were welcomed through marriage. Sadly, too, there are those who had lost spouses, children or grandchildren because of advanced years, accidents or things like cancer or some other illness. Photos and letters indicate changes in life through retirement and vacation destinations near and far. They reveal that sons have grown taller than their fathers, once toddlers are now in middle school and the some of the once slender gentlemen are now gray on top and rounder in the middle! Christmas photos show off new hair styles and what bridesmaids wore this year for weddings. They include new family pets, kids in sports uniforms, large group family reunions, graduations and more.
These family photos are a glimpse of what glues family life together. Simply put, it’s togetherness! Time spent together is what enriches family life. We make memories together. We share memories when we are together. We renew memories by going to the same lake resort, the same mountain campground, the same beach destination, the same fireworks show on the 4th of July, the same cemetery on Memorial Day and the same Mass on Christmas eve. With ongoing activities that mark the seasons of our lives, we enrich the lives of one another by our commitment to come together, even when personalities might clash or preferences might greatly differ. All these family photos I receive at Christmas thankfully show me how much good is going on in family life.
Yet life pulls and tugs at the fabric of family life as we all try to participate in way too many things. And when personalities clash, or priorities shift to activities that draw our hearts to choose other things over family life, not only do we short-change our families, but cumulatively, we undermine what keeps our society healthy: strong families. For it was in our earliest years at home that we first learned to “get along.” And while that didn’t always go well, we couldn’t just run off to some other place. When I was growing up, if we disagreed on what to watch on the only television in the house, we learned to work it out or no one saw any television that evening.
In our world today, wherever there are differences we tend to avoid coming together. Rather than focus on what is good in each other, we tend to notice the speck in someone else’s eye and miss the plank in our own. (Matthew 7:3-5) If we start with the premise that no two people are alike, we shouldn’t be surprised when those in our own family don’t always see eye to eye with us. Yet, when we strive to work at getting along it can often be surprising how well it goes. At the same time, when we anticipate friction, its arrival will surely not disappoint us.
Life is complicated and there are no easy fixes to all the struggles that take place in family life, often painful circumstances that cannot be detected in the happy photos we receive at Christmas. Nevertheless, we must always keep striving for the virtue of magnanimity, defined as: loftiness of spirit enabling one to bear trouble calmly, to disdain meanness and pettiness, and to display a noble generosity. St. Thomas Aquinas defines love as: to will the good of the other. First and foremost, we must always pray for the good of one another, rather than wish ill of them. Willing the good of each other in our families raises the bar of behavior to fulfill the command of our Lord to “love one another.” It takes work, but it also brings about our own growth in holiness.
My refrigerator is about to get a face lift, literally, with the many family photos I received this Christmas! I pray for each of them that the Lord may continue to bless them in their lives together and heal whatever is going on that the photo does not reveal. I am truly blessed to know so many great people and to know these families in a more personal way as they often share with me in conversation both the joys and sorrows of family life. Having celebrated the Feast of the Holy Family this past weekend, may we pour ourselves into our own family life and enrich one another with the unique person God has created us to be, At the same time, let us receive the gift of others with all their gifts and quirks, trusting that they will do us the same favor.
