In this age of terrorist attacks and threats and so much unthinking violence in the world, it is easy to imagine Herod’s otherwise appalling pogrom against the children in Bethlehem and surroundings. He was simply trying to destroy the Christ child.
But it was hard to find the right infant. So Herod thought he might as well slay all the newborn babies just to make sure, and apparently this included the girl babies as well. Mary and Joseph were under obligation to run from this destructive campaign, and run they did, to Egypt, until the danger was past.
Immense danger.
If you are part of a family, you too must take great care today. The family unit is in peril, chased down and slain by the Herods of modern culture.
Television has almost no shows that depict successful families. Advertising pushes us to fill our own personal needs, to load up on pleasure, to buy products that make life easier, to eliminate being bothered. Many or most movies show uncommitted sex in detail and with approval. Of course everyone knows that more than 50% of marriages today end in divorce. Latchkey children, two-job families, a commercially created teenage world which stands in direct opposition to values and family. Watch MTV sometime.
Since the objective of advertisers has long been to “define us as consumers,” is it any wonder that Americans are the most overweight population in the world with other countries eating their way to second place?
Maybe you grew up ok. Psychologists tell us all we need is a “good-enough” family, as opposed to a perfect one. You are blessed if you did have one. But many people were raised in what is called a “dysfunctional family,” where values are grossly but subliminally skewed, to the extreme detriment of all involved. Portions of the coming generations will be twisted, whether they know it or not, because all families in the United States are in trouble, big trouble. Maybe you are not one of them, but then again maybe you are.
Jesus was born into a good family, though poverty-stricken, but nevertheless a human microcosm of God’s life. Love bestowed and love received, as within the Trinity. Care for a new and helpless infant. A fond gaze into its eyes, the kind that bestows a first fragile identity. People “putting themselves out” for each other. The feast of the Holy Family is placed so close to Christmas in order to show how crucial are love and care to human lives in their beginnings, and their continuings as well.
Being in a family is no easy job. All parents are amateurs when they start off. What can they do about today’s great assault on family and Christian/human values? For one thing, be willing to spend time even when it is scarce. Be willing to give up some of their own fascinations for the sake of others. Commit and do not relent. Defer to sensitivities.
In other words, imitate the Holy Family.
Get to know and to love the others in your family, whether they have grown up and left home or not. Every value-rooted family builds another entrenchment against the ghastly degradation of this most important foundation-stone of human life.
We all want to be part of the great web of love that is God’s presence on earth. It is played out in the foibles and fun of ordinary family life. God is there.
