Today, in the Octave of Christmas, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. This a good thing to do, because it emphasizes Our Lord’s humanity and therefore his real presence in human history. We honor Joseph and Mary as worthy models of fatherhood and motherhood. Any celebration of the Holy Family also recognizes what Christians know to be true: The human family is the original and prototypical “society”.
The human family of father, mother and children forms society’s fundamental building block. Whether one understands or not the importance of the family as holy, humane persons everywhere may agree, at least from a natural perspective, that the family is unique and irreplaceable. Therefore pro-active support and protection of the family is good for society and the human thing to do.
Support and protection however must exclude the presumption that government is free to interfere, experiment and legally mandate deviations to the natural order of “family”, a concrete reality shared globally and universally in history. Legislative or case law that imposes a biological or functional definition of the human family is not a kindness but actually an attack on the family and its traditional sacredness in the living religious and secular history of western societies.
Overturning the natural law is not an act of justice. To grant so-called alternative family arrangements the status of functional equivalence with the traditional family is an aggressive act of social deconstruction that effectively suppresses the traditional family, the good of children, the Christian religion and the Sacrament of Matrimony—all of which have been considered of supreme importance to western civilization until the last 25 years.
No one may know fully the consequences of such radical suppression, but one may be reasonably and highly skeptical of extravagant claims of liberal utopianism, most especially in a post-modern generation that prizes deconstruction as it s operative and pessimistic social theory. Ironically this disbelieving generation does not seek the sign that it desperately needs: The Holy Family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus reminds all men and women of good will that the human family is an archetype of God who, in the most blessed Trinity of persons, is the Divine Family.
The Roman Catholic Church is blessed by God for its respect and defense of the traditional family, not merely Christianized families but all human families. Nobody guaranteed that the defense of the family, children, religion and matrimony would be easy. We probably have not seen the worst. With these solemn thoughts in mind, we do well to express our gratitude to God for the human family and most especially the Holy Family in whom all families enjoy a spiritual solidarity.
It is vital that Christian belief be strengthened. The children’s fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes” offers us a perennial lesson—mere speech does not make reality. Legislators and judges are themselves functional. They possess no power to change the nature and essence of God, his creation or his truth.
To be legitimate, political power must acknowledge things as they are in their essence, as they exist in nature and are ratified by the universal norms and experience of humankind. Human social experimentation and deviations are nothing new under the sun. Enshrining these in law, however, is an appeal to a false anthropology (also not new in human history) stating that anything that can be done should be done and the exception makes the norm.
As a body, lawmakers have no authority whatsoever to deny either God’s existence or his relevance, yet this is the premise behind their agenda of social experimentation. Individual lawmakers do have the power to deny reality within the scope of their own minds and more or less when living out their lives but not even this power is absolute. As well, they may enjoy the power to force the population at large to contemplate, not its relationship to God or the meaning of goodness, but rather the obsessive homosexual phenomenon. They may have power, but they have no authority whatsoever to do this.
Neither they nor anyone may grasp the tree to rename that which God has named to be good and true. Woman alone may be wife and mother. Man alone may be husband and father. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." [Eph 5:31] The essential goods of marriage are: 1.) an exclusive fidelity of the marriage relationship of husband and wife, 2.) the permanence (indissolubility) of the marriage bond, and 3.) the procreative (fruitful and joyful) union of husband and wife who are open to having children. Anything else is dysfunction and disorder.
To speak about the Holy Family presumes certain truths. We would do well to keep them in mind. First, God’s love is unconditional. This maternal or motherly aspect of God’s love endures irrespective of man’s sin or indifference to God: “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” [Mt 23:37]
Nevertheless God’s covenant relationship with his Church is conditional, revealing a paternal or fatherly expression of God’s love. To enjoy a meaningful relationship with God, a faithful follower must accept, for example, baptism, reconciliation and his divinely revealed truth.
The person who follows Jesus must live a holy way of life, witnessing fidelity to his Church and her doctrinal and moral teachings, helping to spread of gospel and assisting one’s neighbor charitably. This is hard work to say the least and often entails a difficult struggle:
LET US hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
FOR IF we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries. [Heb 10:23-27]
Second, a celibate Catholic pastor has genuine need for appropriate relationships with women without which he cannot mature or attain fulfillment in his own personhood. Most especially, he may learn much regarding the spiritual life and personal sainthood. Christian women offer encouragement, support, patience, depth, collaboration, and occasionally correction.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, provides a sublime example at a wedding in Cana of Galilee where the supply of wine has failed. She influences Jesus to begin his mission to the people of Israel, saying, “They have no wine”. Jesus replies, "O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come." Turning to the servants, his mother says, "Do whatever he tells you." [Jn 2: 3-5]
Third, a Catholic pastor must evidence an integration of the paternal and maternal, conditional and unconditional which, in practice, can be very difficult. Not a mix or blend, however, but a harmony or synthesis of apparent opposites. God who is love commands, “Be holy, for I am holy” [Lev 11:44], and “He who says ‘I know him’ but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him” [1Jn 2:4], and again “above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” [Col 3:14] In truth, this is the great task of all Christians, indeed, of all men and women of good will irrespective of whether they have, as yet, heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Fourth, it is gross and dangerous ignorance to claim that “male” and “female” is a distinction without a difference or to assert the same about same-sex marriages. Such claims represent a stiff-necked denial of things as they really are. Acting as though what is real is entirely dependent on one’s own perceptions, far from being a sign of health much less mastery, is a descent into complete subjectivity and irrational skepticism. If ensnaring another person into one’s own fantasies is fraudulent, is it less so because ten or fifty or more judges and legislators embrace the deception?
Therefore the critical word at issue here is not importance but rather reality. That which is important to a person may not correspond at all with things as they really are. Understandably, homosexuals view their same-sex relationships as important, but it is a non-sequitur to name a homosexual union matrimony and sacramental and its household a familyon the basis of perceived importance when such a construct has no reality in nature or in the history of human civilization. Homosexual agitprop notwithstanding, the father of all sin is pride, the inordinate desire for one’s own excellence (St. Thomas Aquinas) and its devastating mantra I want, therefore I get.
Fifth, words like “submissive” and “subordinate” found in Sacred Scripture with reference to husbands and wives are lesser words which point to something greater, and that is the moral and habitual excellence known as virtue—that which confers goodness on the one who “owns” it and makes his acts good. (Aristotle) Undoubtedly and repeatedly, it should be said, such words have been employed for suspicious reasons to the detriment of spouses and particularly wives.
To the degree that Christians are able to move beyond selfish connotations while yet comprehending the spiritual lessons of the apostle Paul and others, marriages will be strengthened by affirming and less rigidly hierarchical ways of understanding the family. Foremost in the minds of spouses and preachers should be virtue. The virtue of humility is the antidote to human pride, the grace which enables one to turn away from all forms of excessive self-love and to show gratitude for that which is truly good in himself and his or her spouse.
St. Augustine would add that gratitude becomes possible when a person realizes the extent of all spiritual and corporeal goods which neither he nor anyone else has accomplished by one’s mortal human powers. Hence, the first spiritual duty of a husband and wife is to be sacramentally married in the Church, consecrating themselves to God, commending themselves to his protection, and committing themselves, and their future children, to be holy as God is holy. A husband’s second duty is to get down on his knees to thank God for the gift of his bride and to pray in eager thanksgiving for the graces and blessings which God has reserved for his family’s future—most especially the children God grants as the fruit of their intimate union.
Therefore, to be more than a follower by name only, to open one’s heart to the possibilities of loving love for its own sake, the devout Christian offers his own life in humble submission to God. He subordinates his human desires and appetites to God’s revealed will in the certainty that in Jesus Christ, he has found the one to whom he may entrust his very life and immortal destiny.
In conclusion, a family is brought into being and consecrated by the Sacrament of Matrimony when a man and woman pledge exclusive fidelity to one another, vowing the permanence of their relationship and their desire to procreate children. The family, preceding as it does the genesis of all other human institutions, is deserving of honor and to be defended without equivocation or embarrassment.
The traditional family is an incomparable good in its own right, worthy of respect in society and to be encouraged and protected by all political parties and un-elected government officials. By definition, no transmogrification of the traditional family can be its equivalent. Nor can same-sex partners, having usurped marital rights and privileges by the consent of judges and legislators, share the same spiritual reality and goods as would a man and woman married to one another.
The pseudo-optimism of deconstructionists will pass away, but the Sacrament of Matrimony will endure and prosper until Jesus Christ returns again in glory. As a sign of truth in a profoundly skeptical generation, the fathers of traditional families witness that respect within a family (and that which is accorded to it from outside itself) is of paramount importance and absolutely vital for authentic relationships to preserve their meaning. Equal in importance and reality is the sign offered by women who are mothers, that trust must be preeminent if the family and its members’ relationships are to flourish free from abuse by anyone on any level. Respect and trust are the guarantors of self-less love.
The Feast of the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus stands as a powerful sign in affirmation of the goodness of God’s human creation. As well, the Holy Family is itself expressive of the sublime and mysterious truth that the foundational social structure of human beings—the family—is modeled precisely on the divine society of the most blessed Trinity.
As regards the person who does not believe in God, do not disdain the intelligent creation. Rather, look to nature and trust nature’s laws to guide you to the same incontrovertible truth. Whether one has faith in God or looks to the natural order, he or she is called to see the reality of the human family as it really is, to recognize and affirm its intrinsic conditions and to defend it unconditionally.
