HOLY  FAMILY  SUNDAY 

 [This Sunday  the  Church  celebrates  the Family - calling each family to be a Holy Family. Here is a list of 10 blessings - amongst others - that a family ought be giving to each other. If I see at least one of you reaching [GESTURE] for a ballpoint pen to jot one of these down, that would make my day. I’ll  put this on my blog - which you can access from the parish web site. If you check out and reflect upon all 10, that too would make my day, but only if you  would take and make at least one of these 10 blessings a challenge and a call for you to put it into practice in the New Year - because you want to make your family even better - holier. Amen.]

Number One:  A family is a place where one learns one’s first words, first language. “Ma Ma” - “Da Da” - “Look!” -  “Want” -  “Need” - “Help” - “No” - “Yes” - "More" - “Love” - "Please! Please!" and “I’m sorry.”  May the words and language spoken here in our home - be words of love and kindness, gentleness and joy, giving and forgiving.  

Number One: The words we learned and the words we use.

Number Two: A family is a place of memories and stories - history, herstory, moments, incidents, time together, experiencing the twists and turns of life - where one is creating one’s unwritten autobiography - and reading the unwritten biography of those with us on the same shelf - the same house - that we are together in.  As someone once said, “When an old person dies, it’s as if a library burnt down.” 

Number Two: We are history books - in process - becoming who we are page by page. We are talking books - hopefully taking the time to read - to listen to - to talk to each other.

Number Three: A family is a place where not only mom and dad are honored, so too grandparents, visitors, the little ones - teenagers -  and ourselves as well.  

Number Three: A place of honor.

Number Four: A family is a place where people know the difference  between an argument, a disagreement, a spat - compared to an angry tirade that can leave acid spill at the table, the bedroom, the heart - where kids know the difference between a pillow fight and a real fight. 

Number Four: There are fights and there are fights.

Number Five: A family is the starting place where one learns the ability to compromise, readjust, reconsider,  renegotiate, recalculate - because one has seen these attitudes and qualities in the ones above us - instead of experiencing others who are unwilling to adjust or change or recalculate. 

Number Five: Learning to compromise.

Number Six: A family is a place where members learn to laugh and love - love being with one another -  wanting to be with each other - not just on Thanksgiving and Christmas - but 365 days a year for those in the same house - 52 times a year - for those who have moved into new families - new homes - using “techie” stuff well - for communication at a distance - and turned off when up close - like at the dinner table. It’s a place where people eat with other - and eat up each other - seeing the sacredness of the family table - receiving in communion the other - if Christian, seeing each other as the Body of Christ and saying "Amen" to Christ within the other.  

Number Six: Experiencing the Real Presence of each other.

Number Seven: A family is a place where one learns about faith and hope - in God and in one another - knowing the primary church is the home - where mom and dad are priests - and kids are parishioners - and members worship, pray, play with each other - and the classrooms and playgrounds in our homes are always open. 

Number Seven: A home is a church and a school.

Number Eight: A family is a place where the truth will set us free. It’s a place where we can be the real me - the real we.  It’s a place where we can be at home to each other - without masks or titles - walk around in t-shirt and sweat pants - but that doesn’t mean we can be PITA’s to each other. To make a family work, takes work. Go back and check  Number Six.  

Number Eight: A home is a place where we can become truly free - but that takes work.

Number Nine: A family is a place with a door - where people make significant - key - wonderful comments to each other - when another is leaving and when another is coming back home through that door - and those comments sculpt us into better and better persons. 

Number Nine: We’re aware of what is said coming and going in and out the door of our home.

  

Number Ten and Last: A family is a place where people learn to overlook, forgive, understand, accept differences and peculiarities, as well as sin - but the messy gets cleaned up, people try to speak better, be better, and learn to understand each other. A “Holy Family” does not mean a sculpture or statues of people with hands folded [GESTURE] as in prayer - but hands that clap for each other, hands with a deck of playing cards in hand, forks in hand, hand in hand, hands on shoulders, hands in prayer and support of each other. Amen. 

Number Ten: A family is a place where we are joined by hand and have to hand it to each other - generation after generation after generation.