Notes From This Episode:

The importance of a strong family life.

When you hear this, there will be two days until we’ll be celebrating Christmas.

And then in the Catholic Church, the Sunday after Christmas, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, where we really recognize Jesus, Mary and Joseph as a family unit.

And we consider what we can learn from each of them within that family unit, and why it was so important that God would send his only son into a family.

You know, he could have sent the Savior of the world any way he wanted. But it was important for him to send Jesus into a family, and we have to find out why. Why was it so important?

Well, first, when we look at Mary, Mother of Jesus, we see two really strong virtues. Actually, we see these virtues in both Mary and Joseph.

Docility in Accepting God’s Will

So, docility in accepting God’s will, being open to it, and accepting without question. When the angel came to Mary, he asked her, and she said, “Yes”.  She had the freedom to say no. But she wanted to do God’s will. And she knew that this was God’s will. She may not have understood it, she may not have been able to really figure out the how’s and the why’s and the what’s going to happen. But she trusted God. And she was docile to His will.

St. Joseph, also docile and accepting the circumstances that he now found himself in. And then after Jesus is born, he’s docile, in doing whatever the angels tell him to do. After Jesus is born, they say you need to pick up and go to Egypt, because it’s not safe for you here. We have no mention in the Gospels of Joseph arguing or questioning or complaining, nothing.

He’s docile, he picks up and he goes, because he embraces God’s will. And not only does he pick up and go, he doesn’t even know how long he’s going to be there. He trusts God.

We want to imitate St. Joseph in trusting God and His will, and being docile to it.

Growing in Humility

The second virtue is humility. Both Mary and Joseph show humility in accepting their mission in life. Again, they don’t complain. They don’t argue. And they also don’t walk around and say, Hey, look who I am. No, it’s so interesting, though, isn’t it that we don’t hear much about those hidden years. And yet they were so important because Jesus learned to be a man, for Mary and Joseph.

And when we see Jesus interacting with other people, we can see who he is as a man. He is the way his parents were. He’s kind. He’s thoughtful. He wants to help people is compassionate, and he’s humble. And certainly he would have gotten those from his parents of Mary and Joseph.

We want to learn to imitate Mary and Joseph in those two virtues. I’m sure there’s a lot of other virtues that you may see that you could think of but docility and humility in God’s will, and entrusting him. It’s so interesting, too, that we spend a lot of time and a lot of hoopla celebrating Christmas, we got all the presents and all the meals and all the All right. And we do that because we have faith we have faith that Here is God incarnate in Jesus. And we have faith in that big idea that this is the Son of God. Here He is. He is the Savior of the world. He opens the gates of heaven for us. He suffered and died for us. But I also think that we can imitate Mary.

Faithful in the Little Things

Joseph, is faithful in the little things, the things that we don’t understand that happen to us. Something may happen, we don’t understand, but He wants us to grow in some other virtue. However, we wouldn’t have grown in that virtue, if a particular contradiction didn’t come our way. So faith, yes, in the big things, but also in the little things of the day, when we’re trying to create a home that imitates the home of the Holy Family.

Faith

We want to look at three things: faith, friendship, and foundation. The way we teach our children to grow in faith is by living it. We talk about our home being the domestic church. Domestic means of or related to the home and church is the whole body of Christians. So in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it tells us that the Christian home is the place where children receive the first proclamation of the faith. For this reason, the family home is rightly called the domestic church, a community of grace and prayer, a school of human virtues and of Christian charity, we build faith by living it.

It is an interior thing. We also of course, catechize our children and help them understand the truths of our religion. But faith building is when we are the first and constant teachers of the faith to our children. We don’t delegate it to a school. No school will teach it. We have to be the ones to teach it.

Living and Loving Jesus Christ

Now, we don’t do that by sitting them down and banging in the rules of the Catechism. In fact, faith is not about rules, but more about love. We teach the faith by loving God, loving the sacraments, loving Jesus, learning about all the saints that have gone before us, and all the many ways the Catholic Church has given us to love. Then we teach our children by making the faith a part of our family’s daily life. It isn’t about rules. It’s about love.

So if you’re someone who has a family, that living the faith means just getting up and going to Sunday church, there’s more to it. You have to love God, as if Jesus is a part of your family. He is there. We pray together with our family. We celebrate the liturgical year together in our home, just as we’re doing with Christmas. We’ll live Lent and we will sacrifice together for Lent. As we remember Jesus’ journey to the cross.

Then, of course, we’ll celebrate Easter and His rising from the dead. And then we have always that time of ordinary time where we really learn about the the teachings of Jesus Christ, and how to apply them to our own lives. St. Josemaria Escriva explained it this way, “to ensure that God is not regarded as a stranger whom we go to see in the church once a week on Sunday, He will be seen and treated as He really is not only in church, but also at our home.”

So when we try to imitate the Holy Family, the first thing is to grow in faith, to create a home of faith, where our children learn to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Family as a Firm Foundation

The second pillar, I think of a strong family life, is to have a firm foundation, where the home is the place that everyone in our family can go, to be free of the pressure of the stresses of life – where being different is not different. Because in our society, if you’re living a good moral, faith filled life, you’re considered different. We want to provide in our own homes, a place where are children are not different, where they’re supported and nurtured, where family is the support structure for your values, your morals and your faith.

Family keeps the guardrails. It helps all of us whether you’re two and you need really tight guardrails or you’re 22 and you still need some guardrails so that you don’t fall off into what every other 22 year old is falling off into. Family as the foundation challenges us to be better. It’s where we say to our children again, whether they’re to 22 or 32. “Hey, you’re not being kind” or “You need to forgive and have empathy with your brother or your sister”. That’s what good families do.

Because we love each other, we want the best for each other. And so often the best comes through challenges. And to be honest, as an older parent, now I’ve had adult children challenge me about the way I have behaved. They challenged me in a respectful way. But they still challenged me to question whether or not what I said, or what I did, was really the best way to approach an issue. And they were right, it wasn’t the best way to approach the issue. They did it respectfully, but they challenged me to be better. And family nourishes us and nurtures the values and morals that we teach our children.

Family is the “School of Virtues”

I have a son who moved back to St. Louis because he felt like he needed to have that home base that supported him. In a world where no one else was supporting him. No other friends were living the kind of life that he had grown up to live. So he touches base with us just so he’s feels like he’s got that connection of proper values and morals.

St. Thomas Moore said, “The family is the School of virtues”. Now there are different kinds of virtues. We have the supernatural virtues like faith, hope and love. And then we have the human virtues like patience, kindness, orderliness, respect, and fortitude. It’s important that we teach our children and we model for our children, supernatural and human virtues. And if you’re a grandparent, you are really in the prime place to teach and model virtues to your grandchildren. Because there isn’t that familiarity that your grandchildren have with their parents. They come to your house. It’s usually like a big deal to be able to come to your house. And so it’s at that time where you can really have a lot of influence. And that’s what we need to do. We don’t undercut their parents. When the grandchildren come to our home, we follow the rules of the parents. But then we hold out some elevated virtues. So if the children speak mean to each other, we can say whoa, in our home, we don’t speak that way.

Grandparents’ Role

So grandparents, you’re not off the hook once your children are grown and gone. And you’re not there just to spoil the grandchildren. In fact, you’re there to teach them virtue, and to be friends with them. We’ll talk about that in a second. When my kids were younger, they would go to my parents house a couple of days a week. And they would go to the garden, which was all along the back of my parents yard. And my dad would ask the kids to do something around the garden to help him pick it up.

And one of the things that he always did was have them pick up the sticks that fell from the trees. And he would pay them a little and then usually take them to Taco Bell. But he was very good about encouraging hard work and industriousness and not giving up when they felt like they wanted to give up or not complain. He was very good at saying, “No complaining, just do it”. And they would listen to that. And my kids even now as adults, they remember that lesson from my dad of hard work, it’s important to do your work well. And to do it completely.

So grandparents support with words of encouragement and praise, but also keep that bar high on human virtues. Family is the foundation of a person’s life naturally challenges our selfishness self centered ways. When we’re in a family, we’re called to be a part of something. And that means that sometimes we’re going to have to sacrifice for each other, and probably more often than we would want to. But that’s what we do in family, we sacrifice for each other. And we also experienced great joy together and it’s important to celebrate the joy.

Friendship not Peers

The third pillar of a strong family life is friendship. Now, it’s really important to understand that when your children are small, you are not their peer, well, actually, you’re never their peer, but in particular, you’re not their peer when they’re small and you’re not their peer when they’re an adolescent, but you can be their friend. And as a friend, we connect and we communicate. And we really listen to them. We make sure that we’re taking the time to listen whether they’re two or 12 or 22. I think one of the biggest issues parents deal with is screen time. Everything that goes with technology is that it has become such a distraction in our relationships. We are no longer friends with people, we just text we get on social media, we see what’s going on with their life, but there’s not a connection. And in particular, that parent child connection has really been lost.

Connect with Your Children

So in your home, create that friendship connection with your child. Listen, ask, communicate with love, and respect. And it is important that your children respect you. But it’s also important that you respect your children. Parents as mentors, it’s our job to teach our children how to be adults in the world, and how to be independent. It is not our job to make life smooth. I mean, I imagine that Mary Joseph would want to have made that life smooth for Jesus. In fact, when you think about the presentation, with Mary in the temple and Simeon, telling her that a sword will pierce her heart, that’s probably the last thing she wanted to hear then. And maybe there was some part of her that really didn’t want to go there. But she knew she needed to go there. So it’s not our job to make it smooth. It’s our job to be there for our children, as mentors as support.

And grandparents. Same for you. My grandfather, on my mom’s side died when I was in fifth grade. And so my grandmother was alone. She lived in Chicago, and would come down for a month at a time and visit with us. And when I was in junior high, she was my best friend. The girls were mean and nasty at school, and I could never quite figure out who was liking me today or whatever. And so I would come home from school, and she would be there and we would play cards. We played rummy 500 or gin. And I just remember the kind eyes that she had. I remember how much she listened. I remember her making me laugh. We never talked about God. But I knew she was a woman of deep faith.

Time Together not Expensive Gifts

And one thing I want to tell you grandparents, the bigger the gift, did not feel like the more love you get. I can’t remember a gift my grandmother gave me. Except I remember that every time we went to Chicago to visit my grandparents, she would always walk me into the kitchen and let me reach into the pretzel box and pick out a handful of stick pretzels. I remember that. Isn’t it funny? The small things the things that seem so insignificant are the things that we remember most. So grandparents, be good friends with your grandchildren, honor their parents, and help those children grow with virtue.

So we often want to look outside into the world to figure out how we can change the world. How can I make it better? Look at all the conflict and all the consternation that people have. Go back look inside your family. This is where you change the world. I love this quote from Mother Teresa,

“If you want to change the world, go home and love your family”.

Mother Teresa

So rather than spending so much time trying to fix the things outside of the family, look inside your family. Do your best to model virtue and nurture love. Have a beautiful Christmas.

P.S. Do you have a life coach who helps you be the woman you want to be? The woman God has called you to be? Who helps you sort through your marriage or parenting difficulties and helps you create the mindset you need to embrace your vocation with joy and gratitude. If you’re looking for a coach, I would be so honored to help you. Email me at janet@janetquinlan.com