Holy Family Sunday, Year B
First Reading: Gn 15:1-6; 17:3b-5, 15-16; 21:1-7
Second Reading: Heb 11:8, 11-12, 17-19
Gospel Reading: Lk 2:22-40
This Sunday, the Feast of the Holy Family, let us recall some of the Church’s teaching on the family.
The task of marriage and family is “to be at the service of life,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is how God “increases” and “enriches” his family.
We belong to a fallen race. Children are born subject to the effects of the original sin. From the beginning, they must learn that their wants and needs do not come before everything else. Parents have “the first responsibility” for training them “in the right use of their reason and freedom.”
All good parents take responsibility for their children’s physical needs: food, shelter, clothing. Early on, they teach them to brush their teeth, wash their hands, comb their hair, eat wholesome foods, etc. Many good parents also give them “an education in the virtues,” which “requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgement, and self-mastery -- the preconditions of all true freedom.”
However, many good Catholic parents do not teach them the faith, but leave them to find it and accept or reject it on their own. Actually, they should begin their “education in the faith” in their “earliest years.” For example, parents should teach them to pray; “initiate” them “at an early age into the mysteries of the faith”; and “associate them from their tenderest years with the life of the Church,” especially the Mass.
Children have the right to know and love God from their conception. Parents can teach them prenatally: by saying prayers out loud with them, tracing the sign of the cross over them, talking to them about God with love, and teaching them to recognize the name “Jesus.”
Parents cannot wait for children to reach the age of reason. As Aristotle said, they must be educated from the beginning to like and dislike what they ought to like and dislike. Then, when they are old enough, they will easily assimilate the reasons; otherwise they will not even perceive them.
As children grow, parents should choose schools that will “help them in their task as Christian educators,” but remember that “family catechesis precedes, accompanies, and enriches” all other catechesis.
In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics ruled “no screens before age two.” In 2016, that changed to “no screens under 18 months except live video chat.” For older children, it is claimed, screens are not harmful if a caregiver is actively involved.
Of course, the AAP is concerned with children’s social development. But what about their spiritual development? Do screens permit the silence necessary for prayer? Do screens offer entertainment that does not contradict or ignore the faith?
When children leave the Church, and parents ask me where they went wrong, I reassure them by saying that everyone has free will. However, I often wonder whether the parents made the mistake of accepting today’s entertainment. Children are difficult to hoodwink. If their parents’ entertainment conflicts with the Catholic faith, they will soon realize which master their parents serve, and that will be the one whose message they absorb.
Children’s upbringing is a full-time job. With the feminist revolution, it was tacitly assumed that “men’s work” was more important than “women’s work,” and women set out to prove that they could do it. Well, they have proved it! Now we need a new revolution, to prove that “women’s work” is valuable, perhaps even more important than men’s.
“The equal dignity and responsibility of men and women fully justify women’s access to public functions,” said Pope St. John Paul II. “On the other hand, the true advancement of women requires that clear recognition be given to the value of their maternal and family role in comparison with all other public roles and all other professions.”
The mentality that “honours women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome.”
Father Hawkswell is again teaching “The Catholic Faith in Plain English” free of charge. All the materials (video and print) are available online at www.beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 16, “Mary and Joseph,” will be available January 3.