Family Holiness

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 88 (87):3 Let my prayer come into your presence. Incline your ear to my cry for help, O Lord.

Collect Almighty and merciful God, graciously keep from us all adversity, so that, unhindered in mind and body alike, we may pursue in freedom of heart the things that are yours. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; Psalm 17:1, 5-6, 8, 15; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone's brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her." Jesus said to them, "The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called the Lord, ' the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’; but he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive." (Luke 20:27-38)

Family Holiness The question the Sadducees put to our Lord represented their objection to the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. In his answer (which demolished their riddle on their own ground of the Pentateuch), Our Lord refers to “those judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection of the dead.” Such a remark reminds us that heaven is our goal. In the Old Testament book of Maccabees (2 Maccabees 7:1-14), a whole family — a mother and her seven sons — suffered martyrdom rather than violate God’s commandments. This was an outstanding family of martyrs, saints of the Old Testament who put God and his will absolutely before all else. There are saints who were married, and whose spouses were far from being saints. There have been individual parents who are saints and who have had among their children a saint. Bridget of Sweden is a canonized saint, as is one of her daughters, St Catherine of Sweden. There have been child saints. St Maria Gorretti was not yet a teenager when she died. Nor were Francisco and Jacinta Marto, both now beatified. There have been teenage saints, such as St Stanislaus Kostka, so admired by St Mary MacKillop. Dominic Savio died just short of fifteen years of age, and is canonized. There are some married couples who have been beatified and canonized. The parents of St Therese of Lisieux, Louis Martin and Marie Zelie Guerin, have been beatified, and Popes have said they would love to canonize more married couples. Pope Benedict XVI has said he would love to canonize a child. But what of the ideal of, not only both parents being saints, but all the children too? The martyred family of the Book of Maccabees provides us with an example. The Christian ideal is that the whole family, parents and children, seek and attain high and heroic sanctity. This is clearly the ideal of God’s plan and the Church’s teaching, because the Church teaches that every baptised person is called to holiness of life, and that the family is a domestic church. All members of a Christian family are called to a common holiness.

Whether or not a whole family is ever canonized, in fact it is the will of God that all members of every family seek canonizable sanctity, even if in the providence of God formal canonization is never contemplated. The Christian family ought be the training ground for great holiness in its members. But of course, this has to be desired. That is to say, essential to the acquisition of sanctity is a powerful desire for it, and that desire is itself the gift of grace. Now, a signal help to gain and then maintain the desire for union with God and personal holiness here on earth is the very thought of heaven. Our Lord refers to heaven in our Gospel today (Luke 20:27-38) when he speaks of those judged worthy of a place in the other world. It ought be the principal and common objective of the Christian family to attain a high place in heaven, and heaven is attained precisely by seeking to love and serve our Lord in everything. Companies and various corporations have commonly agreed goals. The attainment of heaven should be the goal of every married Christian couple, and it should be the goal that they have for all their children. But it seems that few families have this as the stated, commonly understood goal of the family, spoken of and agreed to. The prize is heaven with God. Every family has a model of family holiness, holiness lived by all in the family, and that model is the Holy Family of Nazareth, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Let every family put real thought into how it could make holiness and the generous love of God their commonly understood goal, governing the life of the family. Let them start with the thought of heaven as the goal for all, and make the Holy Family their daily inspiration. Let them resolve together as a family to do God’s will every day, at home, at school, at work, in the parish, wherever. It ought not be simply the private hope and ambition of one or two in the family, such as the mother and a particular son or daughter. Let them all seek to please God as a family, whatever the cost. How different the Church and the world would be were this ambition to be common to Christian families!

The Christian family is a domestic Church. It should therefore be the home of Christian holiness, where all learn to know, love and serve God here on earth with their whole mind, heart, soul and strength. Let us resolve to make that the family’s goal, with heaven the common prize, and the Holy Family the constant inspiration and model. The whole family, and not just one or two in it, is called to holiness.

(E.J.Tyler)

Further Reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.1621-1654 (The Celebration of Marriage)

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A Second Reflection on the Gospel:

Heaven In our Gospel scene today (Luke 20:27-38) the Sadducees put to our Lord their puzzle, objecting to the doctrine of the resurrection. There was no resurrection, they thought. Our Lord quashed their sophistry, and proceeded to teach that there is in fact a wonderful resurrection. What a difference this doctrine of the resurrection should make! We could say that most religions have held that there is some kind of Afterlife — shown, for instance, in prayer to and worship of ancestors. But in very many religions the Afterlife had little significance, and certainly few have envisaged the extraordinary and complete happiness which God has planned for us after we die, provided we obey him and are reconciled to him at death. Man had no idea of how much God loves him and, because of this, how important it is that he love God in return. As St Paul says, eye has not seen nor ear heard all that God has in mind for those who love him. Heaven will consist of knowing at first hand and seeing and experiencing directly, the boundless love of God for us. In heaven we shall see God face to face, the great, infinite God who is boundless power, kindness, tenderness, and mercy. He is almighty, and as St Thomas Aquinas taught, his might and his power are shown in his mercy. His beauty is unlimited, as is his wisdom and goodness. Everything in God is boundless, for everything in God is God. When we think of what God has revealed of himself and of what he is like, it is not hard to understand why for all eternity we shall be utterly happy in his presence, without a trace of unhappiness or dissatisfaction. We have no experience of the degree of happiness which will be the eternal lot of those who are saved. What a loss it will be, then, to lose one’s soul! Eventually all of this happiness will be experienced in our bodies too, for as the Church teaches, we are reunited with our bodies at the last day, on the day of the General Judgment when this world as we know it comes to an end and is renewed in glory together with us. All will then be caught up in the glory that is of God.

The point is that we should live in the light of this great fact of our true future. Many think and act as if this world is all that there is. We should indeed live for this world, but in the sense that the duties that spring from our life in this world should be fulfilled extremely well. But our motive for dedicating ourselves to the building up of this world should be the thought of God and the world to come. The fact is that every bit of good we do here on earth will receive its reward in the world to come. How terrible it is to poison our efforts by choosing to do evil instead. A mother and father raises a large family for love of Jesus, at great cost and suffering, and depriving themselves of many things they could have had otherwise. They will have their reward in the Afterlife, and, indeed, our Lord says that they will have it in happiness even here too. But it is this Afterlife, our life in heaven with God which the Gospel invites us to think of today. The person who in his daily work in the office, at his trade, at his studies, at home, or if he is out of work, serves God in some other way such as in his parish and for the Church, in order that God will be glorified and honoured — that person will have his reward. So let us think of heaven often and with great expectation. We were made by God to serve and love him here on earth so as to see and enjoy him for ever in heaven. Heaven is our true goal, our true homeland. God has given us a longing to be with him in heaven where every tear will be wiped away, where we shall be with all those who are saved for ever and ever. We all have something wonderful to live for: it is heaven. This should also be a reason to engage in the apostolate of bringing the faith and the knowledge of these things to those who do not know them. There are many in the life of the Church and in different movements and organisations who are endeavouring to do this. What a tragedy, a catastrophe, for someone to lose his soul, and what a tragedy if through indolence and inactivity, we ourselves have some responsibility for this loss!

So then, Heaven! Heaven! Life is short, and eternity is long. Bright indeed are our prospects. Let us not squander such boundless riches by taking the foolish course of sin. As God says in one of Christ’s parables, Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul. This hoard of yours, whose will it be then? Let us make ourselves truly rich, rich in the sight of God, rich for Heaven.

(E.J.Tyler)

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