Weekly HOMILY for December 29, 2013: Feast of the Holy Family, Cycle A -- Relieving Family Pressures Today

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Feast of the Holy Family

St. Mark’s Church, Fallston

December 29, 2013

Relieving Family Pressures Today

By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato

Young Families Today

A recent incident made me realize that I was out of touch with some of the pressures a young family could be having today.

David and I have been working together on a ministry program. He and his wife Wendy are the parents of two small boys.

Wendy, chief breadwinner of the family, has been laid off for some time and was away on job interviews.

Matthew their youngest had developed unexplained blotches all over his body and doctors couldn’t explain what was going on. Add to this was the concern that they would soon be losing their family health coverage.

David and I were scheduled for an all-day business meeting when his car broke down on his way to pick up his younger son at Pre-School because he was sick.

All that and it was just Monday morning!

So it is that many families today feel the mounting pressures of raising children, career, safety, education, sickness, finances, and the list goes on.

Behold the Pressure Cooker

Life for lots of families can be like this pressure cooker (show pressure cooker), on high heat, with the pressures of each day building and the family ready to blow.

It’s at such times that families desperately need a way of dealing with the inevitable pressure buildup.

To apply the analogy, it seems there are three ways to relieve the pressure.

The first is to flip open the pressure gage, the second, to remove the pot from the heat, or third, in some way bring down the internal temperature.

But let’s say you couldn’t remove the heat, that the lack of job and health insurance, the broken down car, the boys’ illnesses are all realities that “keep the heat on” so to speak.

Let’s also say your family doesn’t have a safety value, there’s no magic outlet to be opened to release the buildup of steam.

So the answer regarding relief must come from within the pot, within the very members of the family.

Reading from Colossians

In the second reading, in which St. Paul is encouraging the Colossians, may hold the answer.

He tells them, “Put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another

“If one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection.

“And let the peace of Christ control your hearts … and be thankful.”

St. Paul is saying that it is love, which flows from an encounter with Christ Jesus and God’s indwelling Spirit of peace that makes the difference in the quality of our life.

So within the pressure cooker we call our family, we can draw from the wellspring within us a cooling inner spring that is “kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with and forgiving one another.”

Encounter and Indwelling

That Monday morning when I finally saw David, he filled with tears; he was clearly at his limits.

We greeted each other and sat silently in prayer together tapping the wellspring of faith within us both.

It was in those 15 minutes of silence that he realized his powerlessness, began to trust in God who always brought him through pressured times, and most importantly he was able simply to surrender, surrender his boys, his wife and himself to God.

Conclusion

Coming out of the encounter with silence, the glow of his face was enough to know that nothing outside him had changed, but the heat and pressure with had diminished.

We quickly rescheduled our all-day meeting; he borrowed a car to pick up Nathanial from school, and all seemed back to normal as we parted.