Holy Family!

Holy Family make our family like yours!

Ecclesiasticus 3:2-6,12-14
Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

Today we celebrate the feasts of the holy family comprising of the God-man Jesus Christ, His Most Holy Mother Mary, and her chaste spouse St. Joseph. Our world today is desperately in need of the intercession of the Holy Family. God directs the heart of St. Joseph as we see the gospels. God speaks to him in a dream and directs him on his future. He was prompt in obedience and sought the interest of the rest of the family. He trusts and obeys God’s command. I am again reminded of how the relationship must have been between Joseph and God. There is no question of the dream, there is no hesitancy. Joseph gets up and goes to Egypt. During all of the bumps in the road of Joseph and Mary, the birth in a manger, the flight into Egypt, they remain strong in their support and protection of their precious family.

Why are people not loving today as they should? Why do we have a lot of disintegrated homes and dysfunctional families today? It is because people are not learning true love from the right sources; from sacred scriptures, catechesis, etc. They are learning from the inordinate kind of love transmitted through the mass media. In every vocation and human relationship, there is the notion that love comes with sacrifices. To truly love, one has to sacrifice oneself for the sake of the beloved. In other words, without sacrifice, there is no love.

As we face a culture of evil and death in society so also family living is being endangered today. Just as we have crises in religious and priestly vocation, so also, we have crises within family life and marital vocation.
Many are living together not to get married but to live in sin. The reason is that people do not choose to love genuinely. If we truly love God and our neighbor, we will follow God’s commandments. Many have not absorbed God’s commands which is why there is so much selfishness in society today. St John Paul II says that Love is the total gift of self. People these days are not choosing to love. By cohabitation, people are holding themselves back from loving the way they should or ought to so that sooner or later they have the option to get out of the relationship.

May the Holy Family be our constant joy and help families to follow the love of God. Amen.

Fr Joseph Osho