Feast of the Holy Family

On the Traditional Calendar we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Family today.   This is such a beautiful feast day and one we, families, should really cling to in this age of our anti-family society.  We all know the typical general, big attacks-at-large on the family in our society today: abortion, contraception, impurity in the grossest ways, divorce, sinful (non)marriage.  But there are so many other attacks, particularly on the large family:  the ridicule, the demeaning comments, oh... there are many things.  However, these are actually blessings from God.  Since our goal as families is to imitate the Holy Family, we need to imitate the actual life of the Holy Family.  That means we need to live out the constant daily sacrifices necessary to  live a life of holiness and virtue and to pass that on to our children.

There are days, like today, that I wonder what I've been doing for the last 16-1/2 years since the children starting coming along.  I thought I was trying to raise good, upstanding Catholic children, capable of thinking, of living a life of virtue and holiness and just being plain ol' nice kids (who wear socks to Mass and don't have green marker on their face)!  I thought I was actually working at all this.  Today I wondered if that adage about sitting around doing nothing be eating bonbons was what I was doing all these years....   But alas, these types of days are just another way for God to teach us that we need humility, that we need the perfect and infinite humility of Jesus Christ in order to become holy.

We must accept all the humiliations, sacrifices, set-backs, irritations, hurtfulness, sorrows, as blessings from God, for they are merely His way of preparing us, of purifying us so that we can see Him one day in Heaven.  The family is the perfect place to learn humility because we can fool those out there but rarely can we fool our family.

Today we heard the Gospel about Christ being taken to Jerusalem, doing his duty in the Eyes of God by teaching in the Temple, how Our Blessed Mother and Joseph did not have perfect understanding of this and then how He (GOD!) went home and was subject to Mary and Joseph... for 30 years.  God, subject to mere human beings, His own creatures... for 30 years. So that is what we, too, must do, be willing, as parents, to live a life of self-sacrifice and die to ourselves to raise our children as best we can by the Grace of God.  The Grace will be there but we need to ask for it, we need to accept it.  God will provide the graces necessary but it will also mean, as it did to Our Lady, that our hearts will be pierced, that we will have much to ponder in our hearts, that we will need to be willing to make all the sacrifices necessary to bring all our children to Heaven.  That's an overwhelming thought when you are going to have your 12th child.   And these sacrifices will come daily. Not just when they take off for their future vocation or crisis comes up, but daily.  Every day.  Multiple times a day.  Multitudinous times a day.  No matter what they do in life, we, as parents, will always be responsible for them.  Thank our Good God Above for priests who are there to provide the Graces through the Sacraments so that we can raise our children.

And what a way to celebrate! Don't laugh but these are our first Christmas cookies but we will call them Holy Family Cookies since we were blessed with this gigantic basket and pail full of cookies just in time to celebrate today. Aragorn's sister has always made the most amazing plethora of cookies, candies and goodies every Christmas.  We are finally well enough to enjoy some treats.

Happy Feast Day to all those beautiful families I'm so blessed to know, who are so diligent in raising their families. Of course you probably don't know who you are because you feel as unholy as I do! haha  May God bless our families as we so need it in this world today.