Today is the feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, put before us by the Church as a model for our families. We call them “The Holy Family” but that does not mean they did not have problems.

What kept The Holy Family together and sane throughout all their trials and crosses? The answer is: love for each other and God — Jesus’s love for Mary and Mary’s love for Jesus, and the love of both for God the Father. We could see Jesus’s love for his mother Mary when he was dying on the cross and asked his close friend and disciple, John, to look after her, saying to Mary, “Woman behold your son,” and to John, “behold your mother” (John 19:26-27).

What also holds our families together in times of difficulty are love and forgiveness. Love that triumphs in the end, even if for a while love may have to take the form of some honest talking. When discipline needs to be given, if it is not given in love it is reduced to abuse. If our families ever fail in any way, it is because of a lack of love on someone’s part.

Whenever our families are successful, it is because they are in a place of love. Now, because of modern technology the greatest threat facing families is simply that we don’t spend enough time together. Aside from spending more time on social media we are so busy working, or socializing, or watching TV that we have less and less time for each other. What a pity.

Spending time together is a way of showing our family that we love them. When we love our family, we want to spend time with them, more so when we realize that by not spending time with them we are depriving them of our love and are hurting them.

The Holy Family’s many challenges come to mind as we read the Scriptures: We can imagine how both Mary and Joseph must have been misunderstood when Mary conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit. A story that not all would believe. It must have been very difficult for Mary when Joseph was considering to divorce her when he found out about her pregnancy before their marriage.

When Jesus was born it was under the most difficult of circumstances as the birth took place in an animals’ cave. We see images of families fleeing war-torn countries as refugees and The Holy Family had a similar experience as they had to flee to Egypt to escape the greed of an insane man, Herod.

Mary and Joseph suffered the awful experience of losing Jesus for three days when he was twelve years old as we heard in today’s Gospel. We do not hear of Joseph anymore, so we presume that before Jesus began his public ministry in Galilee Joseph had died — The Holy Family suffering the greatest pain of all families, the pain of bereavement and separation through death.

Jesus’s public ministry must have taken its toll on Mary, that a sword of sorrow would pierce Mary’s soul. We can imagine one such occasion when Jesus returned to Nazareth and there was the growing hostility towards Him from the Jewish authorities that must have caused a huge pain to both Mary and Jesus, especially as it became increasingly obvious that Jesus would have to pay for his mission by dying.

The saddest moment of all came when Mary watched her Son die on the cross. Just as The Holy Family survived all its crises through their love for each other and their faith in God, we pray that our families will conquer all our difficulties through love for each other and our faith in God.