Welcome God’s love into your home!
I think that’s a pretty simple summary of today’s feast of the Holy Family.
God the Son really entered our human family. In Nazareth, he learned to walk and speak, to labor and to rest. He learned to get along with people who were kind to him, and with those who were not kind. He learned to pray. He grew in human virtues of patience, fortitude, gentleness, prudence (Luke 2:40)…he became like us in all things except sin (Hebrews 2:17).
Perhaps we think that brokenness is what defines our human families and relationships – that our sin is the first and last word. But the feast of the Holy Family reminds us that our homes and families and friendships are first of all places where God wants to abide and make his presence known.
Jesus came to save us from our sin and brokenness, and he did that by entering our human family as it is. And he comes to us as he is, “full of grace and truth,” (John 1:14) that we might “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19).
On page 8, you will find a little prayer of blessing to welcome God into your home at the start of this New Year. You might think that it is beyond God’s power to bless and sanctify your home, your family, your heart. But God seems to think otherwise. He wants to pour out his blessing, to heal us, lift us up, and give us hope.
-Fr. Tom
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine, by the power at work within us,to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
-Ephesians 3:14-21
