Holy Spirit Catholic Church
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Feast of
the Holy Family
December 31, 2006
Bill Russell is a pro basketball legend. He led the Boston Celtics to 11 NBA titles. Five times he was voted the league's Most Valuable Player. Twelve times he was elected to the league's All-Star team.
Russell grew up in Monroe, Louisiana. There his father worked long hard days in a paper bag factory. But his father was a strong man, and would return home each night still full of energy. Bill Russell writes in his autobiography "Second Wind": He’d call out to my brother, mother, and me. We would follow him to the fields where the grass grew as tall as wheat, and the four of us would play hide-and-seek. When it was time to go home, my father would reach down and pick me up under his arm, pick my brother up under the other, and then lean down so my mother could crawl up on his back. Then he’d run all the way home, carrying his whole family, as if we weighed nothing.
There's something beautiful about Bill Russell's father "carrying his whole family, as if they weighed nothing." It recalls the famous Boys' Town poster of one boy carrying another boy on his back. The caption reads, "He's not heavy; he's my brother." That same beautiful spirit radiates from Bill’s father carrying his whole family back home.
That brings us to the Feast of the Holy Family. From a practical point of view, the Feast of the Holy Family is one of the most important feasts of the year. The reason? It focuses on the importance of the family, which, in the words of Pope Pius XI, is "more sacred than the state."
Approximately 30 years ago Alvin Toffler wrote a runaway best-seller called Future Shock. It dealt with the effect that rapid change was having on institutions like the family.
Toffler writes: The family has been called the "giant shock absorber" of society. It is the place to which the bruised and battered individual returns after doing battle with the world. It is the one stable point in an increasingly flux-filled environment. As the super-industrial revolution unfolds, however, this "shock absorber" will come in for some shocks of its own.
Already in his day, analysts were voicing concern about the family. One said bluntly, "Except for the first year or two of child-raising, the family is dead.” Another warned that the family was on the highway to "complete extinction." Today, the sanctity of marriage and family is under attack in the courthouses and statehouses of our great nation.
Rarely do the readings at Mass speak in such a practical, down-to-earth way, as they do today.
The first reading deals with our relationship to elderly parents. It impresses upon us our responsibility to revere, respect, and care for them, especially in their failing years. The second reading deals with both the relationship between spouses and the relationship between parents and children. It stresses the responsibility of all family members to contribute to family life. Finally, the Gospel reminds us that even the Holy Family itself was not immune to stress and misunderstandings.
Let's go back and take a closer look at the second reading. There Paul highlights several virtues that all family members need to cultivate. Two of those virtues are patience and forgiveness.
Laura Stafford teaches at Ohio State University. Each afternoon, for years, she joined the long line of cars whose drivers waited patiently…and often impatiently…to pick up their preschoolers. Doesn't this sound strangely similar to St. Peter Claver or St. Joseph Elementary School and Mount de Sales High School each afternoon around 3:00PM? Or at any of our public schools?
Laura says: I'd watch parents hurry their children into the car so they could beat the traffic home. Typically, a child would greet his mother, proudly carrying his artwork. "Mama", he'd say, "Look what I made!" And the mother would answer, "No! Not now! I'll look at it at home." She could have said: "Wow, that looks beautiful! I can't wait to get home so that we can look at it together more closely…"
There are times, of course, when every parent has to tell a child to wait until later. But a persistent pattern of putting them off can leave a lasting negative impact.
Impatience has always been a challenge to parents. Over 400 years ago, William Shakespeare wrote, "How poor are they who have not patience?" He might have added, "How rich are they who cultivate patience."
This brings us to the second virtue that St. Paul stresses: the virtue of forgiving. In a way, it is even more important than the virtue of patience. We tend to forget that the same Jesus who gave us the command to forgive also gives us the grace to forgive. All we need to do is open our hearts to it.
Let’s sum up the spirit of today's feast with this prayer. I pray it for all families, but especially our own here at Holy Spirit:
Lord, bless all families on this the Feast of the Holy Family. Help family members open their hearts to the grace you hold out to them when they truly need the patience of Job. Help them to open their arms to those who seek and need their forgiveness after having injured or harmed them. Help them discover the joy of doing for others what you have done for us on so many occasions in our lives. AMEN.