There is a story told about a Native American Chief
who wanted to teach his three young children the importance of family.
He took the three children out into the wild
and gave each of the children an arrow;
he asked them to break the arrow.
Each one, from the youngest to the eldest
broke the arrow in their hands without much problem.
Then he took three arrows, tied them together
and handed it to the youngest.
She could not break it.
The middle-aged one took this as a challenge
and grabbed the bunch of arrows and could not break it.
The eldest boy was determined to break it
but could not break it when three were tied together.
The Chief said to his children,
“Alone, you can be broken and wounded
but tied together in the bond of love, you will never be broken.”
It is a rather beautiful way to communicate the importance of family
and the bond of love binding together.
Today, we celebrate the feast of the Most Holy Family.
We are just after celebrating two days ago the birth of Christ
and now we are celebrating the whole family as a unit.
The Church holds up the Holy Family as this ideal family unit,
a bond of perfection if you would, as the first reading says.
We hear in the first two readings talk about the virtues of family life
and the importance of children respecting their parents.
In particular, Sirach speaks about
how important it is to treat parents, particularly the father.
This would have been a patriarchal society
so they were trying to teach their children in those ways.
The second reading we heard today was from the Letter to the Colossians.
This is a beautiful set of virtues;
of heartfelt compassion, gentleness, kindness, patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another;
and over these put on love, the bond of perfection,
the blanket of love that wraps us.
This “perfection” is not the Greek understanding of perfection,
which means without flaw
but it is the Hebrew understanding of perfection,
which is to walk with each other, to stay together,
to be integrated with one another;
this whole idea of holding each other together, one of integration.
It is rather shocking for us to hear this last part of the letter;
wives be submissive to your husbands
but we have to understand the context of the time this was written.
It is not to go back to these times and
promote the patriarchal society that existed then.
Let’s understand how this would have been heard
by the original audience of that time.
Ironically it would have been heard the other way around.
For us today. “Oh whoa—that’s outrageous”
because we get caught on the first sentence
wives be subordinate to your husbands.
But in fact, it is the second sentence
husbands, love your wives.
Why? Because in this society at this time, wives were property.
Children were property.
But Christians husbands were to be different;
husbands, love your wives.
The men would have been shocked!
The way the author of Colossians wants them to be different
from the rest of society and be a witness to Christ.
He wants them to love their wives
and to love their children like they would love their own selves.
This is this integration, this bond of perfection that bonds a family.
The center part of it is love;
that no matter what happens love overcomes all grievances.
We know that as much as we hold up this ideal of the Holy Family
for a marriage union and a family unit,
many of us have experienced our families as
wonderful family units and have been loved
and grown to love others in that family unit.
We also know that there are many families that are broken,
divorced and then remarried and blended families;
and there are often single families.
These readings can be almost like salt on the wound
because it is so hard for them to hear.
It is bad enough to be in this difficult situation oft times
and sometimes very painful.
But the combination of these readings remind us of the value,
of the center of all of this, which is love in whatever family situation.
Maybe we had a bad family situation ourselves
and we did not have a model family.
Somehow, somebody has loved us and
we have found a way to bind our own family with love;
and that we have managed a way to be people of love.
In the end, we all need to both be loved and to love.
In life it is love that fundamentally motivates us;
it is love that sustains us and in the end,
it will be love that completes us.
I have a great love of St. John of the Cross.
He has this beautiful phrase when in situations we do not feel love
and that can happen in a special way over Christmas
when we do not feel the love that we are expecting it.
St. John of the Cross says:
“Where you do not see love,
put love and you will draw out love.”
The challenge for all of us,
to put love where we do not see it.
Pope Francis reminds us that as we celebrate today the Holy Family,
we are not just celebrating the nuclear family
in our immediate brothers, sisters, parents and so on,
but we also celebrate that we are all one family, the family of God.
And that in recognizing that then the bond of perfection;
that heartfelt compassion, that kindness, that gentleness,
that forgiveness and that love,
we are called to extend it to all people.
That is a real challenge because there are people
who rub us the wrong way.
And again that comes back to me
is what St. John of the Cross says
“Where you do not find love, put love and you will draw out love.”
As we celebrate the Most Holy Family,
we celebrate the bond of perfection of love in our own family units
and maybe the shortcomings.
We also recognize the bond of the whole human family
and how we are called to put love everywhere
so that we can draw out love.
