Last week I attended a conference on Marriage and Family. This conference gave me hope because those attending were proclaiming the truth about God’s plan for marriage and family. One of the speakers talked about the Holy Family. He commented that the story of the Holy Family is our story. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph would be considered a dysfunctional family today. Mary was fourteen or fifteen when she married Joseph who was a much older man. Then, she got pregnant, even before they started living together. It was common in those times for a couple to get married and then to return to the homes of their parents so that the man could prepare a place where he could live with his bride. That’s why Mary and Joseph were married but not yet living together. Imagine Joseph’s surprise when he realized that Mary was pregnant. But he didn’t rant about it but planned, as was the custom at the time, to divorce her quietly. Then an angel came to Joseph to tell him that Mary was to give birth to the Messiah. Joseph accepted this shocking news and lived a chaste life with Mary.
Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem for a census and gave birth to Jesus in a cave. In today’s terms, they were homeless. After Jesus’ birth, an angel came to Joseph in a dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod who was killing the young boys. So, they were forced to go to a foreign land as immigrants until Herod died and this threat passed.
When Jesus was twelve, they took him to the temple as was the custom at the time. But, Mary and Joseph both left without Jesus. Jesus was lost for three days in the temple of the big city of Jerusalem. Imagine how Mary and Joseph felt in losing not only their son, but the Son of God.
Joseph died sometime after this before Jesus began his public ministry. So, Mary was a single mother. She watched as Jesus was tortured and died a brutal death on the cross. As a mother, she kept all these things in her heart.
August 15th is the feast of the Assumption, when Mary is raised body and soul into heaven. She is now in heaven as our model, our mother, our inspiration, and our hope. All of us hope to be in heaven one day with God the Father, as she is. All of us have experienced some difficulties in our life, especially in our marriages and our families. But, I’m sure none of us have experienced the same level of difficulties that Mary experienced. She carried her cross every day as she kept all these things in her heart. She was obedient and constantly followed God’s will, even when it brought her times of suffering.
So, today, as we celebrate the feast of the Assumption, let us give thanks for the trials in our lives. Let us take up the cross that God has given us and follow Him as Mary did along the road of Golgotha. Let us not measure our success based upon dollars, or upon power, or recognition. Instead, let us measure our successes based upon our willingness to follow God’s plan for our lives. Let us celebrate our gifts of marriage and family, even the gifts which bring us pain and suffering. And let us carry and even rejoice in our cross knowing that each step along the path of life with our cross brings us closer to our heavenly destiny when we will be in heaven, body and soul with Mary and our heavenly Father.
It seems to me that all family's today (and probably in times past)have some form of dysfunction or another. I have been known to console others, going through some form of family turmoil or another, "try and be like us Nottingham's we put the FUN in dysfunctional".
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