One Family Fits All

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Television writers and producers sought to create an image of the "ideal" family when the medium of television was in its infancy in the 1950s. Leaving aside the caricature provided by the "families" of Ricky and Lucy Ricardo and Ralph and Alice Kramden (with their respective neighbors, the Mertzes and the Nortons), television viewers were treated to the exploits of one real-life family, that of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson (The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) and several fictional families that attempted to capture the "spirit" of family life. Among the fictional families of the 1950s were those of Jim and Betty Anderson (Father Knows Best), Ward and June Cleaver (Leave It To Beaver), and Alex and Donna Stone (The Donna Reed Show). As I have noted in a few recent articles, "problems" were solved without regard to the necessity of subordinating all things in life to the model family, the Holy Family of Nazareth. True to the Masonic notion of human self-redemption and religious indifferentism, the television families of the 1950s capture the essence of the American way: that there are no problems we cannot overcome merely by the use of our own ingenuity.

The family we commemorated yesterday, the Holy Family of Nazareth, was composed of three people who wanted to do only one thing: the will of God.

Our Lady did the will of God throughout her life, having been preserved from all stain of Original and Actual sin from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception. She did the will of God when she pronounced her Fiat at the Annunciation, thereby becoming God's own Mother. She did the will of God when she visited her cousin, Saint Elizabeth, who had been chosen to be the mother of Saint John the Baptist. She did the will of God when she rode on a donkey for the trip to Bethlehem prior to giving birth to her Divine Son. She treasured the words of the aged Simeon when he prophesied that a sword of sorrow would pierce her heart, seeking only to do God' will in the midst of the sorrows that would come her way. She treasured the words spoken to her by her Divine Son when He remained behind in Jerusalem to answer the questions posed to Him by Jewish rabbis and doctors. She remained steadfast in prayer following the death of her chaste spouse, Saint Joseph, and as her Divine Son embarked on His Public Ministry, personally witnessing Him being rejected by her own townspeople in Nazareth at one point. She stood valiantly by the foot of her Divine Son's Holy Cross as she gave birth to us in great pain and lamentation as the adopted sons and daughters of the living God. Our Lady sought only to do God's Holy Will. At all times. Without hesitation.

The head of the Holy Family, the quiet and just man of the House of David, Saint Joseph, did the will of God throughout his blessed life. He obeyed Saint Gabriel's instruction to have no fear and to take Our Lady for his wife. He voluntarily renounced his biological fatherhood to become the foster-father of God Incarnate, becoming therefore the model of all fathers, both those of the flesh and those of the spirit. He worked hard in his chosen craft of carpentry, fashioning exquisite pieces made from wood, a foreshadowing of how his foster-Son would re-fashion us exquisitely on the wood of the Holy Cross. Saint Joseph took his family into exile in Egypt, having to live as a refugee in the very land from which Moses had led the Chosen People out of their 440 years of cruel bondage to the Egyptians. He returned to Nazareth to do the will of God on a daily basis by providing for the temporal sustenance of his family and by providing an example of how go about our daily duties for love of God without counting the cost.

The youngest member of the Holy Family, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, submitted Himself in humility to the authority of His Most Blessed Mother and His foster-father, Saint Joseph. The Word Who had become Flesh in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb to do the will of His co-equal Father in Heaven condescended to place Himself as the One Who had to obey His own creatures! Although all things were made through Him, He had to learn to do as a man those things He had ordained as God for men to do. He was Saint Joseph's willing pupil in the carpenter's shop. At the same time, however, He knew that He had come to earth to do His Father's Will, speaking of this when His parents found Him in the Temple, but returned with them and was obedient unto them.

And it came to pass, that, after three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his wisdom and his answers. And seeing him, they wondered. And his mother said to him: Son, why hast thou done so to us? behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.And he said to them: How is it that you sought me? did you not know, that I must be about my father's business? And they understood not the word that he spoke unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And his mother kept all these words in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men.  (Lk. 2: 46-52)

The Evangelical Counsels of Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience are exemplified by the Holy Family of Nazareth. Each member of the Holy Family was, as noted above, obedient to God's Holy Will. Each lived chastely, seeking the things of Heaven and not the things of this passing earth. Each lived voluntarily in Holy Poverty, embracing a simplicity of life that rejected luxuries and comforts in favor of having the bare necessities of life while giving constant praise to God for all that He had given them. The Holy Family exhibited the virtues listed by Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Colossians, part of which was read in Sunday's Mass:

Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy, and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience: Bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also.But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection: And let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts, wherein also you are called in one body: and be ye thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing in grace in your hearts to God. All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as it behoveth in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter towards them. Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing to the Lord.

Fathers, provoke not your children to indignation, lest they be discouraged. Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not serving to the eye, as pleasing men, but in simplicity of heart, fearing God. Whatsoever you do, do it from the heart, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that you shall receive of the Lord the reward of inheritance. Serve ye the Lord Christ. (Col. 3: 12-24)

The Holy Family of Nazareth is the model for all families at all times and in all places. As I noted three weeks ago in Keep It Traditionally Catholic All of the Time, we must foster the spirit of the Holy Family of Nazareth in every aspect of our family's lives. Every aspect means exactly that, every aspect. We must be conscious of pleasing God and of obeying Him as He has revealed Himself to us through His true Church, relying upon the intercessory power of Our Lady and her chaste-spouse, Saint Joseph, to cooperate with the graces available to us in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony to create and to sustain a home in which First and Last Things occupy the first and last places in all of our actions, words, and desires.

Father Helmuts Libietis of the Society of Saint Pius X gave a marvelous talk at the Catholic Family News conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Saturday, October 29, 2005. He stressed the importance of a family keeping a few simple devotions and of keeping them regularly. Daily Mass of the ages and the family Rosary (in addition to any offered by parishioners before or after a Mass) are the bedrock of a family's efforts to overcome the weaknesses of our fallen human nature and to start scaling the heights of sanctity with joy. There must also be the daily practice of readings from the lives of the saints done at home, especially during meal time, and the habit of morning prayers said immediately upon rising and nighttime prayers said immediately before falling asleep.

Simple things done well every day will help to establish patterns that can last a lifetime. Traditions, whether good or bad, are handed down from one generation to the next. Catholic traditions of family prayer, starting with daily Mass and the Rosary, surrounded by images of Our Crucified Lord, Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and other saints and the angels, were handed down by one family after another for centuries until the revolutionary events of the recent past. No Catholic family can aspire to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth unless these traditions are recaptured and the images of the world in which we live are shunned and condemned as being inimitable to the sanctification and salvation of our souls.

Pope Pius XI, who issued Casti Connubii on December 30, 1930, seventy-five years ago now, warned of some of the dangers facing the sanctification of the family, dangers which are even more pronounced in our own days:

For now, alas, not secretly nor under cover, but openly, with all sense of shame put aside, now by word again by writings, by theatrical productions of every kind, by romantic fiction, by amorous and frivolous novels, by cinematographs portraying in vivid scene, in addresses broadcast by radio telephony, in short by all the inventions of modern science, the sanctity of marriage is trampled upon and derided; divorce, adultery, all the basest vices either are extolled or at least are depicted in such colors as to appear to be free of all reproach and infamy. Books are not lacking which dare to pronounce themselves as scientific but which in truth are merely coated with a veneer of science in order that they may the more easily insinuate their ideas. The doctrines defended in these are offered for sale as the productions of modern genius, of that genius namely, which, anxious only for truth, is considered to have emancipated itself from all those old-fashioned and immature opinions of the ancients; and to the number of these antiquated opinions they relegate the traditional doctrine of Christian marriage.

These thoughts are instilled into men of every class, rich and poor, masters and workers, lettered and unlettered, married and single, the godly and godless, old and young, but for these last, as easiest prey, the worst snares are laid.

Not all the sponsors of these new doctrines are carried to the extremes of unbridled lust; there are those who, striving as it were to ride a middle course, believe nevertheless that something should be conceded in our times as regards certain precepts of the divine and natural law. But these likewise, more or less wittingly, are emissaries of the great enemy who is ever seeking to sow cockle among the wheat. We, therefore, whom the Father has appointed over His field, We who are bound by Our most holy office to take care lest the good seed be choked by the weeds, believe it fitting to apply to Ourselves the most grave words of the Holy Ghost with which the Apostle Paul exhorted his beloved Timothy: "Be thou vigilant . . . Fulfill thy ministry . . . Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine."

And since, in order that the deceits of the enemy may be avoided, it is necessary first of all that they be laid bare; since much is to be gained by denouncing these fallacies for the sake of the unwary, even though We prefer not to name these iniquities "as becometh saints," yet for the welfare of souls We cannot remain altogether silent.

. To begin at the very source of these evils, their basic principle lies in this, that matrimony is repeatedly declared to be not instituted by the Author of nature nor raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a true sacrament, but invented by man. Some confidently assert that they have found no evidence of the existence of matrimony in nature or in her laws, but regard it merely as the means of producing life and of gratifying in one way or another a vehement impulse; on the other hand, others recognize that certain beginnings or, as it were, seeds of true wedlock are found in the nature of man since, unless men were bound together by some form of permanent tie, the dignity of husband and wife or the natural end of propagating and rearing the offspring would not receive satisfactory provision. At the same time they maintain that in all beyond this germinal idea matrimony, through various concurrent causes, is invented solely by the mind of man, established solely by his will.

How grievously all these err and how shamelessly they leave the ways of honesty is already evident from what we have set forth here regarding the origin and nature of wedlock, its purposes and the good inherent in it. The evil of this teaching is plainly seen from the consequences which its advocates deduce from it, namely, that the laws, institutions and customs by which wedlock is governed, since they take their origin solely from the will of man, are subject entirely to him, hence can and must be founded, changed and abrogated according to human caprice and the shifting circumstances of human affairs; that the generative power which is grounded in nature itself is more sacred and has wider range than matrimony -- hence it may be exercised both outside as well as within the confines of wedlock, and though the purpose of matrimony be set aside, as though to suggest that the license of a base fornicating woman should enjoy the same rights as the chaste motherhood of a lawfully wedded wife.

Armed with these principles, some men go so far as to concoct new species of unions, suited, as they say, to the present temper of men and the times, which various new forms of matrimony they presume to label "temporary," "experimental," and "companionate." These offer all the indulgence of matrimony and its rights without, however, the indissoluble bond, and without offspring, unless later the parties alter their cohabitation into a matrimony in the full sense of the law.

Indeed there are some who desire and insist that these practices be legitimatized by the law or, at least, excused by their general acceptance among the people. They do not seem even to suspect that these proposals partake of nothing of the modern "culture" in which they glory so much, but are simply hateful abominations which beyond all question reduce our truly cultured nations to the barbarous standards of savage peoples.

As the errors described by Pope Pius XI actually shape how most families live today, we must take every necessary measure to avoid any taint of corruption by said errors. This means that it will be necessary at times to shield our children--and ourselves--from friends, relatives, and acquaintances whose conversation and immodest and/or inappropriate attire are a threat to the sanctification of our families. Although some steeped in the ethos of sentimentality like to excuse their unwillingness to take difficult measures to shield themselves from bad influences by saying that their own good example can convert others, one cannot easily dismiss the fact that it is far easier for children to become accustomed to spiritual sloth, if not contempt for First and Last Things, than it is for those steeped sloth and a contempt for First and Last Things to be converted. Conversion to the fullness of the Faith is usually a very long process. Slipping from the practice of the Faith can take but a split second. If we really want to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth, therefore, we must see to it that the utmost of caution is exercised before we let anyone into our home on a regular basis who can start our children or ourselves on the path to spiritual sloth and to an "openness" to a world that is in the grip of the devil.

To this end, therefore, it is necessary to reiterate that the devil's tool called the television must be thrown out and baptized, as Father Lawrence C. Smith has noted, in three hundred gallons of Holy Water. We are not to patronize professional sporting events, where overpaid  and frequently overdrugged athletes perform to the beat of "rock music" and in front of all manner of obscene displays on gigantic television screens. We are not to patronize motion pictures, save for the rare example of The Passion of the Christ, or to have anything to do with contemporary "music." The Holy Family of Nazareth needed none of these things. The saints needed none of these things? Why should we jeopardize our chances of getting to Heaven for participating in Hell's agenda for us here on earth?

We are sinners in need of constant use of the Sacrament of Penance. Most husbands and wives have at least a few moments (only now and again, you understand) in which they are impatient with each other or do not understand each other. Apart from forgiving each other immediately after such incidents and never holding grudges thereafter, the weekly use of the Sacrament of Penance will help them to grow in patience and forbearance with each other so as to help their children to overcome their own selfishness and self-centeredness. Young children who have not reached the age of reason learn a lot from seeing their parents on the line for Confession. Our little Lucy Mary Norma, who is so very observant, watches us stand on line for Confession week in and week out, which has prompted her to start "playing Confession" in closets and other hiding places. She even knows why people go to Confession, to ask God forgiveness for the sins that they enumerate. Oh, yes, children watch as their parents try to live out the Faith despite their own sins and failings.

A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth is one that lives in joy even in the midst of difficulties and crosses. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth has complete confidence in God at all times, never doubting the wisdom of His Holy Providence. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth will consecrate their homes as enthroned castles to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth will renew their Total Consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart each day, offering her all of the crosses and difficulties of daily living as her consecrated slaves. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth will seek to foster vocations to the priesthood and to the consecrated religious life as a first priority of the formation of their children. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth will rely upon the patronage of Saint Joseph to help them to discharge the duties of state without complaint and to help to prepare them for a holy and sacramentally-provided-for death. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth will be ever ready to defend the fullness of Catholic Tradition without compromise, always ready to make whatever material and physical sacrifices that might be necessary to bear a visible, tangible witness to the Faith. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth will not shrink in the performance of the Spiritual and the Corporal Works of Mercy for themselves and others, mindful that Charity does indeed begin at home.

A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth is one that seeks to restore the Social Reign of Christ as the King of all nations by first enthroning Him as King of their own hearts. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth is one that prays fervently for the Vicar of Christ and for all of his bishops and priests, especially in these times when the Holy Father and many of his bishops and priests are making war against the Deposit of Faith. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth will fast on the days appointed traditionally by Holy Mother Church and will be ever ready to make endless sacrifices for themselves and the good of all souls, especially those in Purgatory. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth will keep the nine First Fridays and the five First Saturdays assiduously. A family trying to imitate the Holy Family of Nazareth will move, if necessary, to have access to the fullness of the Mass of Tradition, understanding that there can be no contact at all with the Novus Ordo Missae and the conciliarist religion from which it was spawned and which it enshrines at every turn.

We have been made by God to know, to love, and to serve Him in this life so as to be happy with Him for all eternity in Heaven. We enter the world as members of a family, which has the responsibility of bringing us to the baptismal font to have us made citizens of Heaven by being incorporated as members of the Catholic Church. Parents must rely upon the example of the Holy Family of Nazareth so that the bonds formed in the domestic cell of the Church can be enjoyed for all eternity in the presence of the Beatific Vision of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, joined together in the company of Our Lady and Saint Joseph, who were chosen by God Himself to be our own models as to how to get ourselves and our children safely home to Him.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we love you. Save souls.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for us now and in death's agony.

May God grant us priests.

May God grant us many priests.

May God grant us many holy priests.

May God grant us many holy religious vocations.