In this still very young season of Christmas—it was begun but yesterday—when the house is still a mess with half-opened toys, the fridge full of leftovers, and guest rooms (some of them) still occupied by in-laws of varied affection, I recall the wise words of Benjamin Franklin. He too may have been thinking about such things. “Fish and visitors,” he said, “stink after three days.”^[1] Now this little maxim may not apply to you; you may get along fine with your relatives. But some of you will appreciate it. Some of you might even be the visiting in-laws yourselves and still appreciate it, looking at your watch with another eye on the door. This is a beautiful time of year, a time of family and friends—a time you appreciate the visit and also at the same time appreciate that it’s just a visit.

Now I have no wisdom from the Lord here. I just wanted to point out a plain human truth—that is, the reality of love as well as tension is woven in equal measure into the fabric of family life. I take a sort of strange comfort in the fact that God had to write “Honor thy father and mother” in stone; he had to make it a command because he knew that sometimes it wouldn’t be easy.[2] It’s part of the human condition—“I love you, but you stress me out!” It’s just the way it is. Even after the birth of a child, even after Christmas, parents and grandparents and siblings and whoever else wants to join in the fun get in each other’s business and tempers flare up. It’s human; its normal. ‘Tis the season. “Fish and visitors stink after three days.” You know what I mean. So, don’t worry about it. We have confessions here twice a week.

I bring this up, of course, because today is the Feast of the Holy Family. A relatively new feast, it has only been celebrated universally since the 1920s. The Church elevated this feast so prominently after World War I, and really after the momentous changes of the 19th century as whole, in order to combat the breakdown of the family in Western society. Leo XIII, for example, in his landmark encyclical, Rerum Novarum, pointed to the Holy Family and to the fact that Joseph worked to support his family—a family in which Jesus was raised for the sake of his divine redeeming work—in order to make the argument that the economy and work should support the family and not the other way around.^[3] The economy, your job, should serve and support the good of your family, not the reverse. Your family doesn’t exist simply for the sake of the economy; rather, the economy exists for the sake of your family. This is still an important point, and the Church since Leo XIII, has always pointed to the Holy Family to make that basic argument of justice.

But, of course, the family is not an end in itself; the family is not an ultimate good. Rather, the family exists for the sake of the kingdom, for the sake of the Church. There is, we should remember, a strong anti-family tradition within Christianity that goes all the way back to Jesus. He himself wasn’t on the best of terms with some of his family, the gospels suggest; and, he even told his followers that they should leave brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and even children behind, “for my sake and for the sake of the gospel.”^[4] He said there would come a time when brothers would turn on each other, children on parents.^[5] His teaching, if you think about it, was not altogether family-friendly.

Now Jesus didn’t abolish the family. Only Plato and a few foolish fascists ever seriously entertained that idea. Rather, what Jesus was saying was that every human institution—marriage and family, sex and money, everything—now was to be subordinated to the good of the kingdom; these things now had to become instruments of the kingdom. Otherwise they were worthless and should be scrapped. After Jesus the family becomes an instrument of God, a sort of seminary. The family becomes a place wherein parents and children learn what it means to love God and neighbor, learning what it means to belong to the Church and the kingdom; otherwise the family becomes something of a little living hell. That’s the teaching of Jesus—the family is not a good in itself; it’s part of the kingdom; it’s the place saints are made.

John Donne, the great poet—he was a clergyman too—described this beautifully in a really long wedding sermon he delivered once to some poor couple. He said, “To thy glory, let the parents express the love of parents, and the children, to thy glory, the obedience of children, till they both lose that secular name of parents and children and meet all alike in one new name, all saints in thy Kingdom, and fellow servants there.”^[6] That’s it. That’s the teaching of Jesus. The family is good because and when the family works to make everyone in the family saints and servants of the kingdom. We were children and then we were parents; ultimately, however, we’re all to be saints. And so we should be children and parents and families for that end—families working on the holiness of heaven.

Of course this is a hard message to hear, or at least to make real. There was a great book that came out some years ago called Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein. It’s a book about a mom just trying to guide and protect her daughter in a culture of sexualized media and materialism. Her detailing of billion-dollar industries aimed at our children is quite simply frightening—as a father of four daughters, the book scared me to death. Now, short of joining the Amish or, on the other side, giving in to every glittery fad just so her daughter could stay competitive in adolescent high society, Orenstein counsels a sort of forward-thinking moral vigilance. “I never expected,” she said, “when I had a daughter, that one of my most important jobs would be to protect her childhood from becoming a marketers’ land grab.” In the face of what she called the “round-the-clock, all-pervasive media machine aimed at our daughters—and at us—from womb to tomb; one that, again and again, presents femininity as performance, sexuality as performance, identity as performance…that how you look is more important than how you feel…that how you look is how you feel as well as who you are;” in the face of all that, it is “absolutely vital,” she said, “to think through our own values and limits early, to consider what we approve or disapprove of and why.”^[7]

Now, as Christians, we know that our job is to make our kids lovers of God and of neighbor, but sometimes we’re a bit too carefree when it comes to the culture we’re in, a bit too uncritical. The old tradition warned of the “glamour” of evil. That old tradition always understood that there is something superficially very attractive about evil and that it hooks us like a fish sometimes. It’s like tapping our toes and humming along to a catchy song with horrible lyrics—good tune, but you wouldn’t say those things to your mother, would you? We can get swept up in the glamour of a culture that is ultimately the enemy of goodness, the enemy of life, the enemy of you. I know that may sound puritanical and drastic—but maybe it’s not. Maybe we should be a little more thoughtful, a little more vigilant about how we care for and protect our families in the ways of the virtues and of the love and truth of the Kingdom of God, the way of Jesus. We can’t take it for granted. That’s the quickest way to lose our souls. As that old poet-priest, John Donne, said in that long sermon: we’re all afraid if we see our children get near a snake; why then aren’t we afraid when we see them play with that ancient “Serpent,” that snake which is eternally deadly?

So, the lesson for us should be clear. Here in North Dallas we are very blessed. I am a fool if I’m not grateful every day to be able to raise my children in this great community—a community of great families, great volunteers, great schools. I’ve never been around people more dedicated to the good of children and society. However—and you may agree with me—from where I sit, I see generally two types of parents: those who get it and those who don’t. Those who get it realize, gratefully, that they are in an environment particularly blessed, not just so that they can receive blessings, but so that they can become the sort of people who bless others. These are the parents that realize that their job is to raise kids who love God and neighbor and who live to serve others. These are the parents who get it. Those who don’t, don’t do this. I come across from time to time parents who idolize this place—this North Dallas thing. They idolize the St. Rita-St. Monica-Jesuit-Ursuline micro-culture. They don’t see the deeper spiritual genius of this place. They’re just sure “all that glitters is gold,” to quote Led Zeppelin. And the tragedy is they don’t take the time to own the true spiritual power of the place, the true meaning of this community, a deeper meaning which is not just some accident of economics but rather the fruit of the providence of God; it’s the tragedy of spending years in the heart of a vibrant Catholic community only for the sports we offer. It’s the spiritual equivalent to what economists call the “free rider problem.” For these folks its just about what they can get out of it, not what they give back.

Now, the point I’m making is this: the family is valuable because the family is where we’re formed as members of the Church and members of the kingdom. The family is where we’re formed in the virtues of Jesus. But we can’t take it for granted that either we or our children will just imbibe these virtues without any effort. We live in a culture utterly hostile to these virtues, and so we must—as families and as the Church as a whole—think about how we can keep hold of and even live out these virtues in the world today. That’s what Peggy Orenstein figured out trying to raise her daughter. That’s what I try to remember as a parent in this wonderful but still sometimes intimidating community of ours.

We need to remember the reason for all of this. Sometimes we forget. Sometimes I forget. We need to remember. I take comfort in the gospel today where it says Joseph and Mary went a whole day without knowing where Jesus was. They had lost him in the crowd; it took them an entire day before they even realized they had lost Jesus. And so, they frantically went back, eventually finding Jesus in the Temple. I love that detail. It’s the perfect story for the Feast of the Holy Family. Sometimes as families we can get going so fast and furious, we forget that we’ve left Jesus behind. Dr. King said once that our problem is that we have “unconsciously ushered God out of the universe.” “We just became so involved in things,” he said, “that we forgot about God.”[8]

But we can turn around. We can find him again. That’s the point of the story, and that’s what each family must do—if you lost Jesus, go find him. If you’re one of those parents that doesn’t get it, don’t get upset. Just go find Jesus. Sometimes we lose him, but we can always find him. Find the Lord. Look for him. I’ll even tell you where you can find him. He’s in the Temple doing his Father’s work. He’s not lost, you are. But he’s closer than you think. Amen.

^[1] Benjamin Franklin, Wit and Wisdom of Poor Richard’s Almanack, 41

[2] Exodus20:12

^[3] Cf. D. Stephen Long, Divine Economy, 186

^[4] John 7:1-3; Mark 10:29

^[5] Matthew 10:21

^[6] John Donne, The Showing Forth of Christ, 92

^[7] Peggy Orenstein, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, 182-183

[8] Martin Luther King, Jr., A Knock at Midnight, 45

© 2021 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield