From Safari….
Due to early publication dates, it is mid-December as I write. A white Christmas is only a dream, as temps hover around freezing and a light mist is in the air. I am still working on the Christmas décor.
Hopefully as the bulletin is being handed out, the ground has a blanket of snow and you had grand Christmas celebrations. A new year is in our sight. Wednesday, we welcome 2025. As you prepare to enter 2025, reflect on this past year and remember all the ways God has been present in our life. From the wonders of creation to the gentle love received from a loved one, God has been at your side. May these memories reassure you that God will again be at your side in 2025.
Before we come to the New Year, we celebrate today the feast of the Holy Family. On writing on this feast, one spiritual writer comments, “It is so easy to domesticate the feast. See how wonderful the Holy Family is, how perfectly they live together. Don’t we wish all our families were like theirs? But this feast does not occur within Christmas because we love perfect families. It is a reminder that Christ came to experience our human life in its fullness, not springing fully formed into the world, but needing to grow and learn and develop, just as we all do.
If we recognize that Christ was born in human flesh in order to draw all people into unity with God and with one another, then this feast takes on a much broader scope. It celebrates the whole human family, not just the “nuclear family” we love to idealize. If celebrating the Holy Family merely reinforces our natural instinct to love those closest to us, then it hardly deserves to be a major feast.”
Today’s Gospel about Jesus being found in the temple, reminds us that family life for Joseph, Mary and Jesus wasn’t always peaceful and wonderful. It can also remind us that Jesus came to create a much larger family than the holy trio. He was about his Father’s business; he was sent to reconcile all people to God and to one another. Any healthy family finds its love spilling beyond the household to many others, and the more a family grows in love, the wider that circle of love becomes. How does the love of your family reach out beyond your home?
May God flood your life with countless blessings throughout 2025! Happy New Year!
Fr. Ron
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