Merry Christmas to all. While the radio stations have stopped playing their Christmas songs, many Christmas decorations are already down, and most people will look at you like you have three heads if you wish them a Merry Christmas now, it is still the Christmas Season, and there is much to celebrate and much to commemorate at this time. While pondering the joys and the little thought of sorrows associated with Christmastime, it occurred to me that this is a year when the feasts of the Holy Family and the Holy Innocents fall on the same day. What a glaring demonstration side by side of the conflict between the loving, nurturing culture of life we are called to build and the destructive culture of death that dominates so much of society today.
Pope St. John Paul II, when writing about the trinitarian nature of God, said, "God in His deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since He has in Himself fatherhood, sonship and the essence of the family, which is love." Dr. Scott Hahn, points out that John Paul II did not say God was like a family, but a family, and that it was more accurate to say the Hahns are like a family, since those attributes were present in his family (and all others), but only imperfectly. Jesus Christ, as God, is part of the Holy Trinity, the most perfect family. As a man, however, He was also a part of the closest reflection of that trinitarian family, which is the Holy Family. In the ideals of a family, we are called to love, give and sacrifice for others, both in our natural family and in our extended family of humanity as sons and daughters of God. In ways great and small, we have fallen short of that goal, but we have this celebration of the Holy Family the first Sunday after Christmas Day to remind us of that ideal and to renew our efforts to draw closer to one another. In a loving family, life is valued, and people seek to raise up one another, not to hold power over one another. Humility reigns in the kingdom of the family.
The pride that led to the slaughter of the Holy Innocents under Herod was not a one time occurrence. The bloodlust that stands out in such ugly opposition to the family was there when Cain slew Abel. "Am I my brother's keeper?" I imagine Cain, tiller of the fields whose sacrifice was rejected, while that of Abel, keeper of flocks, was accepted, making such a statement with derision, viewing his brother as little more than an animal. As Scott Hahn pointed out, and as should be our approach in life, Cain was not his brother's keeper; he was his brother's brother, and he murdered him in cold blood. Herod, far from being related to Jesus by blood, viewed the vulnerable Babe of Bethlehem not as a brother, but as an enemy. If the potential lurks in the hearts of people to kill their own immediate family, how much easier for a corrupt king to order the slaughter of a village's entire population of boys two years or younger in an attempt to destroy One Who could be a threat to his power.
Over time, people have sought to dehumanize other groups. Slavery and segregation were accepted in the United States and live on in other parts of the world because one nationality, skin color, tribe or other collective arbitrarily decides it is better than another. Such oppressions of one group by another are contrary to the love we must have as children of the same Heavenly Father.
The most horrific attack on the family, which takes tens of millions of lives annually worldwide, and which has killed more innocents in America than Hitler and Stalin combined in their respective countries, is that of abortion. Our modern culture has become one that pits mother against child, and which believes compassion is a case of either/or, while a true sense of family sees it as both/and. It has become a lucrative industry to "fix" an unexpected, inconvenient pregnancy through the destruction of a helpless life, and some in that industry even see their work as a good thing, even an act of charity.
Rather than charity, it is an act of war, which leaves one dead and one wounded. Oppose this war, and you are labeled as one who wants women to die in back alleys or only cares about people until they're born, despite the facts about the pro-life movement demonstrating the opposite. We are a community that provides both brick and mortar and mobile care units, all sorts of baby supplies and a variety of other services. No one single organization or individual can handle all of the responsibilities when caring for the needs of mothers and children. Some are better at filling one need than another, whether praying, protesting, material support or giving up ones time to serve. They all are pieces of a puzzle that together answer the question, how do we help families in need? We must be countercultural and oppose the mindset that says helping a child is done at the expense of the mother or vice versa. That mother and that child, you are their brother or sister. There is much work to be done, much love to be given if we are to build a true family spirit.
If you want to help mothers in need, there are more links to more places than I can possibly fit on my own blog, but here are a few to start, mostly around Long Island where I grew up and New Jersey where I live now:
http://www.cge-nj.org/
http://www.sistersoflife.org/
http://birthright.org/en/
http://www.lifecenterli.org/
http://thebridgetolife.org/web/
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