This week’s focus is on the family. The importance of the family cannot be overstated or over emphasized. The family is where we discover what it means to be human, what are our strengths and weaknesses, where we experience love and forgiveness, where we learn about relationships, unity, sacrifice, loving others, accepting others, where we learn values and attitudes and trust and how to handle stress and how to be responsible. Family is where we learn to get along with one another. All these important learning tasks are hopefully learned in a family that is healthy. The success of society depends on the health of the family.
Today we celebrate the importance of another family, our parish family. Here too we discover who we are as God’s children, how to trust God and to love God and one another. We learn values here too, values that are intended to lead us to eternal life. Hopefully we learn how to give as well as take, how to forgive as well as be forgiven. Here we gather around a family table to be fed, not with perishable food but with food that will nourish us eternally. Our faith community is just as important in its own way as our family of origin. And the Lords’ supper that we share just as important to our spiritual well being as being together and eating together as a family is to our emotional well being.
Families are strengthened by their meals together. The Eucharist is our family’s weekly meal. St Paul gives a wonderful list of virtues that enhance and enrich our relationships within our families: compassion, kindness, gentleness, humility, patience, forgiveness, etc. He tells us to be grateful. He used the word ”Eucharisteo.” He tells us we are to become “Eucharisteo.” The Holy Eucharist allows us to perfectly fulfill His mandate. It is a perfect act of thanksgiving because as God’s children, we give thanks to God in union with His Son, Jesus Christ. May we be strong and healthy families, full of thankfulness, and may we rejoice one day in the home of our Father in Heaven.
God Bless
Msgr. Powell