Feast of the Holy Family, Year B
Theme: The Holy Family May Not Be Happy 聖家不一定快樂
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, opens Anna Karenina a novel written by Leo Tolstoy. The statement speaks volume because by whatever standard, few families on earth can be happy. A Chinese aphorism says, “Be Contented, Be Happy”. To be candid, who on earth enjoys poverty, exploitation, sickness and betrayal etc.? Sometime, somewhere and somehow, bad things always happen to good people and few families are able to stand firm. From the news, we heard of the gradual heart failure of a 3-year old girl who fell into comatose as a result of medical blunders some 18 months ago. One of my ex-students, a successful businessman, has been struggling with his final stage of cancer for a number of years. All medical and para-medical procedures have been exhausted. He is expected to pass away soon, survived by his wife and 2 children in their teens! Again from the news, a few days ago a debt-ridden gambler attacked and attempted to murder his wife and two daughters before setting himself on fire! Some debtors end up imprisoned overseas when they try to repay debts as drug-mules. A post-graduate’s corpse was dumped after being found to show no vital signs because of ketamine overdose, smashing the hopes of his parents and perhaps dreams of his girlfriend. There are many divorce cases due to extra-marital affairs, leaving the children to pay the price … The cruelty lies in the fact that when one family member suffers, all other family members will suffer as well (1 Corinthians 12:26a). All of them become collateral damages! On one hand, we should be grateful for those bad things have not fallen upon us. However, my heart cannot ache more because I am no faith healer to save my ex-student or the 3-year old comatose girl. I am not able to raise the post-graduate from the dead and give him back to his parents like Christ did and I don’t have billions of dollars to pay off the debts of the inmates I visited etc. I have to accept the fact that I am in no position to play God but regrettably, close to my heart, Catholic families are not exempted!
Families have evolved from extended to nuclear, the former being appropriate for agricultural societies and the latter industrial. Now, humanity is moving away from industrial to informational in which we rely more and more on social media, virtual reality and artificial intelligence for communications and connections. If family and marriage have failed to be functional and successful social institutions in modern era, should they be modified or even better, be abolished? On the other hand, people still insist on the superiority of personal touches in communications and connections. They continue to defend the goods of familial and marital life against the onslaught and corrosion of all these new media! Which direction should we proceed?
As Catholics, we believe in the Father, the Creator of the known universe. He is not a remote and aloft deity but a Being actively getting Himself involved in our lives. He even sent His only begotten Son to die for us to redeem us! Archangel Gabriel says, “For nothing will be impossible for God” (Luke 1:37). Therefore, with a caring and omnipotent Father, Catholics should have no worries at all when they are following God’s way and doing God’s will in any adverse situation. Alas! Life on earth is anything but simple at all!
Firstly, few people know for sure the details of God’s will. Many biblical characters like Abraham the Patriarch, the Blessed Virgin Mary, her spouse St. Joseph and John the Baptist etc. did not show any understanding of God’s will. John the Baptist did not acknowledge his role as Elijah to appear before the coming of the Messiah (Malachi 3:23; John 1:21) though Jesus affirms that he is (Matthew 11:14). St. Joseph thought that divorcing the Blessed Virgin Mary quietly would do her good (1:19). An angel appeared to him in a dream to advise him otherwise (1:20). Mary intended to serve the Lord in the capacity of a virgin (Luke 1:34) and Abraham accepted Sarah’s proposal to father his descendants through Hagar (Genesis 16:2). Simply put, we don’t have the intelligence to fathom God’s plan. How right Isaiah is when he says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways --- oracle of the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9)! We are back to square one, to the very first question at the beginning of this meditation. “Who on earth enjoys poverty, exploitation, sickness and betrayal etc.?” When God wants to bless us and sanctify us with poverty, exploitation, sickness and betrayals, the more we insist on our opinions, comfort and convenience, the stronger we are fighting against God’s will! The Blessed Virgin Mary has shown us how to deal with ignorance of God’s will. She “kept all these things … in her heart” (Luke 2:19, 51b). Instead of allowing ignorance to breed resistance, she keeps reflecting in her heart with humility on what she has seen.
The Holy Family was not living in a bed of roses. Mary and Joseph might have quarrelled a bit about the unexpected pregnancy before the angelic intervention. The census brought about the labour of the BVM to give birth to the Holy Infant in a manger in Bethlehem. The Magi brought precious gifts as well as murderous assault of Herod the Great, leading to the massacre of the Holy Innocents as collateral damages! The Holy Family needed to flee to a foreign land which previously enslaved them! St. Joseph probably died when Jesus was still a teenager. Today, we hear of Simeon’s prophecy about the future sufferings of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Luke 2:35a) who followed the Son of God up to the foot of the cross on Mount Calvary (John 19:26) … etc. Could the Holy Family be a happy one? Most likely not. But I am sure the Holy Infant would grant the Holy Family heavenly peace not as the world gives (14:27).
Year 2023 is ending in a few minutes. It has not been a pleasant year but it will definitely come to pass. May the Holy Infant bless us to stick together to weather through the turmoil ahead. Amen.
God bless!
2020 Reflection
Picture Credit: twitter.com/nour_odeh/
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