Tips for Becoming Holy Families

Fr. Victor C. De Jesus, SJ
Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary
December 27, 2015

Of course the Holy Family is holy!  Jesus is God.  He preserved his Mom from all sin because of her special role.  So, only the foster father Joseph was ever touched by sin.  Still, by the grace of God, his holiness is such Scripture praises him as the just man.

Does the Holy Family then have an unfair advantage over us Catholic Christian families in our struggle to be holy?  No.

After all, each of us has the Holy Spirit of the Son of the Father residing in us, by virtue of our Baptism!  And Jesus gave each of us the Blessed Mary, Ever-Virgin as our Mother too.  And we have St. Joseph who prays with and for us. Besides, we have the Word of God to show us the way to wholeness and holiness as Catholic Christian families.

Hannah in 1Samuel 1 shows us how helpful it is to:  a) pray for our children, show our gratitude to God for our children, b) take the trouble early on, to bring our children to “Temple”,  c) have in mind and heart that they are the Lord’s children,  d) dedicate our children to the Lord.

All right, we don’t need to literally leave our children to live in the Temple like Hannah did.  But, we can make our home truly, an ecclesia domestica, the Church in the home, exercising the holiness spoken of in Colossians 3: “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another”, the respect for parents and kindness to the elderly spoken of in Sirach 3, the reverent and loving “fear of the Lord” in Psalm 128 or fostering the yearning for God and continual praise of the Lord in Psalm 84.

The Gospel reminds parents to bring children to Church and, if affordable, on pilgrimage! And it should comfort parents who have trouble understanding children and where they’re coming from.  (News flash:  Children today come from a different planet, literally!)  Prepare to forgive in advance because a lot is lost in translation.  Like Mary, parents need holy patience and quiet time to ponder the mystery of their children and how God may be inviting the parent to relate to their children as they grow in “age and wisdom and grace” with the occasional lapses in wisdom.

7 Practical tips inspired by the readings, esp. Colossians 3:

1. Photocopy Colossians 3:12-21, laminate it, and hang somewhere in the family home (or in every room!) and have it read aloud every so often during family time.
2. Google the phrase “fostering family spirituality” and start with one of the more than 540,000 suggestions.
3. Join the Family Encounter Weekend after you have done the Marriage Encounter Weekend. Go to parenting workshops. For example, contact the RMT Center for Family Ministries on the Ateneo de Manila University campus. 426-4289 or visit their website, www.cefam.ph.
4. Buy/order online the book by A. Faber and E. Mazlish,  “How to Be the Parent You Always Wanted to Be.” Children, read this also because, let’s face it, our parents behave like children too! Am I right, kids? (It comes with an audio cd too, for those too lazy or busy to read).  I got a hard copy from a bookstore in Quezon City.  You can also try “How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids will Talk.“  And just as good, “How to Talk so TEENS will Listen and Listen so TEENS will Talk.” They’re all very readable and have lots of cartoons.  But if you can get only one, the first I mentioned is the best – it’s a workshop with exercises; since parenting is a skill, you have to do exercises.  Don’t be afraid. There’s a “possible answer” key, if you are stumped. This will teach you how to deal with your anger, how to engage cooperation, how to work out alternatives to punishment.
5. Have family rituals, besides prayer services.

• Return to family prayer before meals, if you no longer do it. It’s harder for a child playing video games to delay coming to table if you say, “Come, we have to pray grace together to thank God for our food, etc,” rather than just “Come,  kailangang sabay-sabay tayong kumain.”  Pope Francis says it will also help to foster appreciation of the ecosystems that provide our food.  Buy prayer books and prayer cards to vary the grace before meals.  (Also a tradition of grace after meals can keep people from bolting from the family table.)
• Even now, learn to preside over family business meetings. Plan and schedule together way in advance family-strengthening celebrations, respecting the fact that especially grown children have other people. Don’t force children to come to Daddy’s birthday if you did not consult about when to have it.
• Adapt the Daily Family Rosary to the attention spans of the family members (there are downloadable Scriptural Rosary audio recordings.) You can do just two or three selected mysteries at first. Once in a while, you can also replace the Hail Mary’s with “O Mary Conceived without sin,” and the response, “Pray for us who have recourse to Thee.” Yes, you may use rosary beads in many, many different ways. For example, the Divine Mercy Chaplet uses the beads not for Hail Mary’s but for its specific prayer.
• Rediscover the use of the Psalms (there are one hundred fifty, of various lengths). See www.divineoffice.org.

6. Invest in buying a copy of the Bible for every member of the family (this may involve special kids’ picture bibles), not just the so-called big “family bible” which gathers dust on some altar. There are “cool” youth bibles too.  There are of course smartphone bibles too.

7. You need a catechism different from the one you learned as kids. Buy and/or download a copy of The Catechism for Filipino Catholics (English and Filipino versions available.) And read a section a day.

So you don’t lose it completely, when you’re at your wits’ end dealing with your children, take a break, and you may say to the Lord, “Anak niyo po ‘yan. Kayo na muna ang bahala” and go ahead and watch a few Youtube comedy videos for a while.