The family is the building block of society.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes a plug for the family. He enters the city of Nain and encounters a mother carrying out her son’s burial. The scene also chooses to give the reader another detail: the mother is a widow. But why?
In these three details, we have a family: a mother, a deceased son, and a deceased husband and father. It’s the Gospel’s invitation to call us back to the fundamental ingredient for fulfillment: the family.
The Family
Throughout His ministry, Jesus performs many, many miracles. But he never performs a resurrection miracle unless it involves the family: Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law; Jesus heals Jairus’ daughter; and Jesus heals Lazarus. It’s Christ’s subtle way of reminding us that family must remain the center. Otherwise, we fall apart.
St. John XXIII wrote, “The family, founded upon marriage freely contracted, one and indissoluble, must be regarded as the natural, primary cell of human society” (John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, 16). He goes on to say, “The interests of the family, therefore, must be taken very specially into consideration in social and economic affairs, as well as in the spheres of faith and morals. For all of these have to do with strengthening the family and assisting in the fulfillment of its mission (Ibid).
But how seriously do we invest in our family? Fr. Patrick Peyton would often say that the family who prays together stays together. Do we pray as a family often? How do we seek that unity reflected first and foremost in the Trinity? “So that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (Jn17:21-22).
Jesus saved His greatest miracles for the greatest of gifts. What price are we willing to make for our family, today?
O Holy Family of Nazareth, pray for us.
