Daily Reflections - December 30, 2011

The Family of God

The following are stuff for Believe It or Not.
In the year 2007, I read of a woman in England named Sharon who married a dolphin named Cindy. They applied for a marriage license and were given one. In 2009, a man in Japan married the lady character of his favorite computer game. The same year, a couple in Japan was married by a robot minister. In 2010, in the US, I read the story of two dogs married in civil rites.
To say that the character of marriage and the family nowadays is undergoing radical attack is an understatement.
Today’s feast is the Feast of the Holy Family. The liturgy continues to invite us to savor the mystery of the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh. But more than that, our feast invites us to a reverential awe over the fact that in becoming flesh, Jesus deigned to be born within a family. Let not this fact skip our attention.
Without intending to be disrespectful, Jesus actually had no need of Mary, or of Joseph, or of being in a family. He could have just appeared without being born into a family. And yet, this is precisely one of the richness of the mystery of the Incarnation — Jesus chose to be born and to grow up in a family. Jesus is telling us something here. He became like us so that He may teach us how to live out our humanity. God Himself respects the structure of the family because He Himself created the notion of it.
The family is not just any group or mixture of people. It is a communion of life and love between man and woman, committed to each other for life, for their and their offsprings’ well-being. Society has no right to change the meaning of the family because the family is over and above society. It is not without reason that we call the family the basic unit of society. It is the family that creates society, not the other way around. Fr. Joel O. Jason

Reflection Question:
If God Himself “respected” the reality of the family by being born into one, who gives us the right to disrespect it?

Lord Jesus, take away the “hardness of our hearts.” The wounds of our disrespect for the family have gone deep and stare us in the face. Grant us the healing that can only come from acceptance of Your will. Mary, our mother and Joseph, guardian of the family, pray for us! Amen.

St. Sabinus, pray for us.