Some families honor their members, and some do not. What kind of family we come from affects how we relate to God, others, and ourselves unless we make deliberate choices against our upbringing.

I’m not a parent, so I may be stepping out on a limb in discussing what the dreams of a parent look like. But not too long a limb, because I do have six brothers and sisters who are parents, plus I had parents myself who had dreams for me.

After the scholars were gone, God’s angel showed up again in Joseph’s dream and commanded, “Get up. Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt. Stay until further notice. Herod is on the hunt for this child, and wants to kill him.”

We arrived at the house. It was the home of five Franciscan sisters—each from a different country. Yet they all lived here in Amman, Jordan. In the back there was a large room full of children: Iraqi refugees. They had come today for their Sunday catechesis. The parents sat outside, chatting and waiting.

A man sat down on the desk chair in his son’s room. His boy was lying on his bed, face pressed into his pillow. For quite a while no words passed between them. 

When I was growing up, families picked up and moved at a moment’s notice because of company transfers or new job opportunities. My family moved three times before I was 5, and my cousins lived in three states and six houses before their oldest child was in high school.

Sisters and brothers, we celebrate the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Let us ask for reconciliation within the human family and between the human family and you.

Love is something we learn; love is something we live; love grows as it is forged by the concrete situations which each particular family experiences.