All Parents Love Their Children

For the last Sunday of the year, 2010, we are celebrating the Feast of the Holy Family. Right after the celebration of Christmas day. Mary and Joseph are no longer couples, with Jesus, they are now a family.

A family, according to our study of sociology is the nucleus of every civil community. It is the immediate institution a person has to belong because of blood connection. A family which is composed of parents and children is the most common to all cultures although we can find tribes that are living with extended families. In some parts of Papua New Guinea, there are tribe where children does not recognize who their fathers are from their uncles and grandfathers, nor their mothers from aunts and older cousins.

Even in the most normal cases, we can find that family remains a mystery. The bond that is so universal urges me to think that there is someone Great enough to infuse the kind of filial relationship to each human beings. I love to think, from the vantage point of Christianity, that it is God. God from the beginning is in a family. The Trinity. He [God the Father] has a Son. That Son He gave away so we might be saved. The day, the world celebrates the coming of a new family member is the same day God mourned for letting His Son be in the care of another persons.

The family is always and forever a reflection of the Trinity. In our bird's eye view, the Trinity is an epitome of an eternal august family. The Holy Mother Church, being the index of God's operation and the mirror of the Trinity must always and forever likewise be a family.

What can we learn? From the first reading we read about the relationship of the Trinity being transported to the human families. Sons should respect their fathers and mothers just as Jesus always respects the decisions of the Father. Saint Joseph being an obedient son to God followed what the angel said to him in a dream.

Now we face a much larger family. The Church. Not only will we think of our immediate family but also of others. We are called to share our family to everybody and called also to join the family which resides in heaven.