I wish you many blessings during this Christmas season and during the New Year, and I thank you for your continued spiritual and material support.

Christmas provides us many opportunities to contemplate the sublime truths of faith and, by retaining them in our hearts, to become living likenesses of the Son of God. However, many people are so caught up with the commercial distractions of this season that they loose the abundant graces these opportunities provide and rather than drawing closer to God are drawn away by the spirit of the world.

Pope Leo XIII once said that he was convinced that nothing would tend more to check the spirit of worldliness and of licentiousness, to make men contented with their lot, and to bring back Christian faith and charity, than the contemplation of the Holy Family of Nazareth, which was divinely established to be the model and example for all families.

It is not too difficult to see the truth of what he says. For if you sanctify the family, you sanctify the community; but if the family life becomes corrupt, you may despair of the life of a nation.

The divine and sacred institution of God, called the Christian Family, is made up of the father, the mother and the children. In the family we have the most primary of human relationships; a society on which all society rests; a society and relationship which God has sanctioned and blessed in a thousands ways, and which ought to be the strongest, the sweetest, and the holiest upon earth.

A young man and a young woman join their hands and promise each other, before the altar of God and in the fear of God, perpetual trust and truth. From this moment they belong to one another and to God and they will set up a home apart. The father, as he toils with his head or his hands, will share his earnings with his wife and children; it is the thought of his wife and children at home that makes him brave and patient, and it is his best reward to be welcomed home by those to whom he is more than all the world beside. The wife, the mother, with all her labors and strivings, never forgets who it is to whom she has given her heart in the early days, and she is ready to sacrifice herself for him and to believe in him to the last. Together they are happy yet anxious as they watch their children grow and develop in body and mind. Happy as they thank God for the wonders of life and intelligence; anxious as they fear for themselves in the responsibility thus laid upon them. Thus this little community lives on through a generation, till the years start to tell on father and mother, and the children whom God gave them are themselves fathers and mothers who carry on God’s dispensation in their turn.

Yet, sad to say, the beauty and the sanctity of the Christian home, which ought to beautify and sanctify the whole world and every generation of the world’s history, are too often marred and spoilt. This we know only too well, especially in today’s world. Too often the family has become a lamentable and miserable failure. The reason for this is that no home can stand unless it is built upon a solid foundation. No family can be worthy of God and of Jesus Christ unless it stands upon Religion. This means that Religion must be first and foremost, or else there is no order, no fidelity, no dignity, and no success. Without this foundation a family may be respectable in the world’s eyes, and even outwardly prosperous, but one day these souls who lived for earth and time will realize their loss if only when time is no more and earth has passed away. A husband who does not believe in God is a man who will live for himself, and not for his wife or children. A mother who cannot teach her children to pray remains half a stranger to them. She may clothe them, feed them or instruct them but she can never enter into the Holy of Holies where the immortal soul speaks to its Creator. Religion alone lifts the hearts of fathers and mothers to heaven and to eternity, and thus teaches them that the only true education they can give their children is to educate them for eternal life.

But what can be said of those who know and believe in God and in holy Religion, yet by negligence, bad example, and culpable laziness, do as much to ruin their children as if they were heathens or atheists? What can be said of responsible fathers and mothers who drink, curse, and quarrel in the very sight of their children; or of those parents who never kneel to pray, never come to Mass or the Sacraments, or who allow their children to desecrate the Sunday, to stay away from school, to grow up ignorant, disreputable, and vicious? It is not too difficult to see how such fathers and mothers are doing a great deal of work to destroy the Kingdom of God, purchased by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. For children are the future and to neglect them and to ruin them is to fight against God Himself; for He looks for the day when they will be good men and women. Such miserable parents carry out the work of the devil and bring up their children to live as if there were no God at all.

When speaking of what may be good or bad in a family, we are naturally led to think chiefly of the children. In fact, fathers and mothers will be good or bad, virtuous or wicked, in proportion to their understanding and fulfilling of their duties towards their children. Parents must understand what they owe to God in connection with the children He has entrusted to them. Many look upon their children as mouths to be fed, as encumbrances or playthings or at best as naturally lovable possessions. But it is not merely the bodies of children or their physical welfare that are committed to the responsibility of the parent, but it is their immortal souls. The child is the end and purpose of God’s creation, the subject of Christ’s redemption, the beloved object of the heavenly Father’s solicitude. The child has to be brought to the knowledge of its Maker and of its last end, to be made to discern good from evil, to be disciplined to self-restraint, and to be instructed in things Divine. God does not do this by personal interference but rather leaves this to be accomplished through the parents’ hands as part of His Providence. He leaves to father and mother the care of the body and soul of His little one. If it is to be taught, if it is to be turned toward heaven, if it is to be sanctified and saved, it is they who must do the work. If they do not instruct it, by their own labor, by taking it to the priest, and by sending it to a Catholic school, it will not be instructed. If they do not see that it approaches the sacraments, the chances are that no sacraments will sanctify it. If the parents keep it in darkness, and bring it up in wickedness amid bad example, then that soul will most likely be lost, and it is they who will have its blood upon their heads.

We read in scripture how "zealous" our heavenly Father is in regard to those who do harm to their neighbors’ souls or who do not, as far as they can, help their neighbor to save their souls. While it is true that a man must, by cooperating with God’s grace, save his own soul, and that he can save his soul in spite of his surroundings, it is a general rule that he is saved or eternally ruined by the words, advice, persuasion and example of those among whom his lot is cast. How much greater must this "zeal" be toward parents who do not care for their children, for a child is most certainly either saved to God or lost to the devil by its father and mother. There may be exceptions, but this is what is true in the majority of cases. It is no wonder, then, that Almighty God has prepared awful judgements on parents who neglect their duty to His little ones. Let us remember that they belong to God first; they are only entrusted to their fathers and mothers as the book of Genesis says: "These are the children whom God hath given me" (Gen. 33, 5).

Thus with such responsibilities in regard to their children, parents must make careful preparation with all earnestness in order to live worthily in the holy state of marriage. The hearts of husband and wife must be united, and united in God. The love and service of God must sanctify the house; and where such reigns no house, however humble, can fail to be holy and admirable. In God alone can husband and wife truly love one another. To Him must they lift up their hearts in the morning and the evening; to Him they must offer their employment and every word or act. For His sake they must seek the Church, and frequent that Sacrifice and those sacraments in which they will find the fountains of Divine Grace, ever open and abundantly flowing for the benefit of their souls. Thus they will, by the strength of God, and for the sake of God, watch over, bring up and prepare for God’s service the children He blesses them with.

There will, of course, be many trials and many temptations in the married state. But for those who really wish to live God-fearing lives, God has made it easy to love and honor Him. For by the Incarnation He has come very near to us; and we need only turn to Bethlehem, Nazareth or Calvary to understand and have our hearts drawn to Him. Above all He has given us an example, an instruction, an attraction such as He has given no other institution on earth, upon which we are able to model our Christians families. He has not only taken flesh but has so bowed down His majesty as to have lived in a family Himself. He has chosen to be subject to His creatures. He chose the most holy Mary for His mother and St. Joseph for his foster-father; and lived with them for the greater part of His earthly life. We can only imagine how this holy House, which stood unnoticed in the little town, was illuminated in the sight of heaven. Jesus was there; and the light of God’s presence shown in the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as they lived in the thought of God, of heaven and of eternity.

The light of mutual love and devotedness also shone bright in the holy House. St. Joseph labored, watched and suffered for Jesus and Mary; the Virgin Mother had given her whole being —her thought, her will, her feelings and her every act —to her Son. She reflected and repeated all His sufferings in her own heart and stood by Him in the work of Redemption. Jesus, though Master and Lord, was subject and obedient, accepting work, sharing in the hardships and devoting Himself to Mary and Joseph; and this to teach future generations how blessed it is to obey, to be obscure, to be poor, and to suffer. Their virtuous lives bore witness to all around them, edifying them by their kindness, self-denial, modesty and justice.

The example of the Holy Family was intended to shed its rays upon every house where father, mother and children are gathered together. Every Christian family should live in the presence of God and the thought of eternity to come. Every family should seek and cherish love for one another and mutual devotedness as exemplified in Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And every family should live in such a way as to edify all men by a good, pure, sober and honest life. Contemplation on the Holy Family, with devout prayer and loving imitation is the easiest means to this end.