Despite the Challenges, the Family will outlive the Principalities and All Powers
The present Marxist cultural revolution spreading throughout the world has its sights on destroying the family because it represents the last hope where individuals, through the institution, can become holy people. Their campaign is encouraged by Satan and is shrewd enough to know they haven’t the power to eliminate God, so they choose to do battle with what they see as the weakest link, the family. By decimating the institution ordained by God, they think they can have a world devoid of him.
The idea that there is A Holy Family and all families are to emulate it is equally scoffed at. Those atheists will draw your attention to the plethora of dysfunctional families now and extrapolate from their experience a conclusion of how absurd it is to consider a family which is holy. Indeed, there are far too many families in turmoil. But that is not the point because the instances of sin do not disprove there is a God or the preeminence of the family. On the contrary, they strengthen the belief. If anything, the problem facing the family outside of the revolutionist’s involvement is that the institution itself is holy, albeit its members may not be.
It begs the question. How can there be any semblance between a sinless Mother and righteous husband and God himself with our family? The point is not one of comparison but of uniformity and obedience to God’s will. From the beginning of time when our first parents were told to be fruitful and multiply, God’s will for humanity was made known for all generations until the end of time. Even when some women were barren, divine intervention assisted them in becoming mothers to show the importance of God’s plan of creation within a family.
The Old Testament is resplendent with such stories. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, although past her years of reproduction, bore Issac. Isaac married Rebekah, who was also barren for many years and prayed to God, and his prayer was answered. Rachel, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, who became two of the twelve tribes of Israel, also had trouble with conception. With God’s assistance, she, too, became a mother.
Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, prayed incessantly to God, and he heard her cry after many years of infertility. The anonymous mother of Samson was visited by an angel who told her, “Though you are barren and have no children, you will conceive and bear a son.”
On the cusp of the Old and the New Covenant, Elizabeth, kinswoman to the Blessed Virgin, childless and advanced in age, gave birth to St. John the Baptist after Zechariah implored help from God. In Elizabeth’s sixth month, the Blessed Mother visited her, and she cried out in joy, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Blessed are you who believed that was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
In the fullness of time, God would reveal the pinnacle of re-creating humanity through The Holy Family. A Virgin bearing the only begotten Son of God and her husband Joseph, who protected them from Herod’s evil desire to kill the child Jesus. Even with the challenges presented to the Holy Family, the importance of the family as the vehicle of salvation will never cease. It is the instrument by which all of God’s children come to know and love him and one another.
The family so crucial at creation and re-created through the holiness of The Holy Family is forever reverenced because it is inherently holy, as with all families. The Holy Family is the archetype for which all ordinary families should strive by being open to the grace of God during trying situations or the absence of them. The family is holy because God it as the means of his glorious creation and, more glorious, his re-creation through Christ our Lord.