December 29, 2019

Feast of the Holy Family

Facets of Love that Can Change a Boarding House into a Home

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio

When the subject of having a large family came up, my mother with her characteristic wit and wisdom said, “Si, si, una grande famiglia—tante rose e alcune spine.” [Yes, yes, a big family—many roses and a few thorns!]
 
The family is the “cell” of society and today we turn to the Holy Family, seeing in Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the model of our own family life. No family is perfect or operates at its optimal level all the time. Every family is a work in progress. How can we be faithful to our call to form healthy and holy families?
 
LOVE of course is the foundation of family life but love shows itself in various ways. It has various facets. I’d like to suggest four:
 
The first of course is PRAYER but we know that finding time for prayer in our busy routines is a real challenge! Prayer is what allows us to enter the realm of heaven. It unites us to the Lord. Prayer keeps us from adopting those enticing but deceptive secular values. Prayer keeps us faithful to our vocation. It keeps the needs of our loved ones, living and deceased ever before us. Prayer is strength in difficult times!
 
A second facet of love is UNDERSTANDING. This means striving to put ourselves in another’s shoes. We can make rash judgments and forget that everyone wants to be understood. St. Thomas Aquinas said, “We do not see things as they are, but from where we are.” None of us can see the whole picture, but we can commit ourselves to opening our eyes as much as we can, letting God show us exactly what it is we need to see.
 
A third facet of love is PRUDENCE. This virtue allows us to choose the right means to achieve a goal. A prudent person chooses words and actions carefully. He or she chooses the right time and the right way to address an issue. Aren’t people more receptive to correction or counsel when the time and place is right and when the words and tone are appropriate?
 
Prudence helps us discern what the moment calls for. A prudent person also knows when to be silent and when to speak. At a recent funeral Mass, a gentleman told me that the deceased was the perfect mother-in-law—she knew when to be there and when not to be there. She was prudent!
 
The fourth facet of love, I suggest is the precious gift of TIME. Tempus fugit [Time flies] and so we should use it well. Most people treasure experiences, over material things. Some of the best experiences of family life come from time spent at the dinner table. It is the place we nourish our bodies but it can also be the place where our spirits are nourished, where hearts and minds connect.
 
Recently I observed at a restaurant, parents and their two children at dinner...each with a cell phone in hand. I could count on one hand the words they exchanged. They ate while looking at their cell phones. What a precious opportunity missed!
 
Pope Francis warned us about the dangers of this behavior. He said “A family that almost never eats together, or does not talk at the table but watches television, or looks at a smartphone, is a barely familial family. When children are engrossed with a computer at the table, or a mobile phone, and do not talk to each other, this is not a family, it is like a boarding house.”
 
My friends, the house of Nazareth was no boarding house but the home of the holy family. May ours be one as well...through the love we show by our prayer, understanding, prudence and indeed, dinners together!