After our celebration of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, our Christmas season continues for three consecutive Sundays with the feast of the Holy Family, the celebration of the Three Wise Men, and the Baptism of the Lord. Today, on the Feast of the Holy Family, there are different reading that are options. One of the options comes from the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, showing Mary and Joseph dutifully and humbly presenting Jesus in the Temple, along with the sacrifice prescribed by Jewish law. Several years ago, Pope Francis called a Synod on the family, as the Church recognizes the great pressures, stresses, and attacks that have confronted the family in the modern world. During the pandemic, one of the themes we have tried to promote is the family as the domestic church. With very few activities being offered in-person in our parishes right now, we are relying on the families to take a more active role in forming themselves and their children in the faith, still under the guidance and the umbrella of the parish family.
As we celebrate the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus today as an integral part of the Christmas season, I want to share a prayer for the family written by St John Paul II while he was pope:
Lord God, from you every family in Heaven and on earth takes its name. Father, you are love and life.
Through Your Son, Jesus Christ, born of woman, and through the Holy Spirit, the fountain of divine charity, grant that every family on earth may become for each successive generation a true shrine of life and love.
Grant that your grace may guide the thoughts and actions of husbands and wives for the good of their families and of all the families in the world.
Grant that the young may find in the family solid support for their human dignity and for their growth in truth and love.
Grant that love, strengthened by the grace of the sacrament of marriage, may prove mightier than all the weaknesses and trials through which our families sometimes pass.
Through the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that the Church may fruitfully carry out her worldwide mission in the family and through the family.
We ask this of You, God the Father, who is life, truth and love with the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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