A Revisit of Fr. Grant’s Holy Family Homily
A priest once posed the question, “What is the one thing you would want the people of God to say about you after you die?” Ironically, it was just a casual conversation.
But a parallel question might be, “What’s the one thing you would want your children to say about you after you die?”
One of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me growing up was praying with me every night before I went to bed. I was the youngest, so naturally the family gathered around in my room to say our night prayers. And it wasn’t anything impressive—just some simple prayers, like the Our Father, Hail Mary, Angel of God, and Glory Be. Sometimes my mom or dad would have to finish them for me because I’d be falling asleep as we prayed them.
But that simple, repeated routine of prayer, done in love, sewed a seed of faith deep in my heart. I probably couldn’t have articulated it at that time, but that seed was a conviction that there is a God and He listens to my prayers.
That’s the best lesson my parents ever showed me, without telling me.
The Holy Family is a reminder that sanctity and the redemption of humanity begin in the family. John Paul II points out that while it is through a married couple that sin enters the world with Adam and Eve, it is through another married couple—Mary and Joseph—that grace and the Savior of the human race enter the world. Marriage is the hinge around which all of salvation history turns.
If salvation history isn’t just a nice story, but a blueprint of the human heart that gets played over and over again in each one of our lives, then marriage is the hinge around which every human heart turns, too. The most important years of a person’s life and development are lived out in a family. And it’s the experience there that is most determinative for a child’s engagement with the Lord and the life of virtue once they become adults.
A study conducted by Georgetown University and published in 2023 noted that the percentage of Catholics regularly practicing the faith once they became adults was 15%. That’s a bad number, but also a guarantee that we have room for improvement as a Church and as families.
When the researchers looked at the concrete practices of the families whose children remained faithful, they weren’t terribly mystical or impressive. Eating meals together as a whole family regularly was one. Praying before meals and bedtime was another. One parent tended to stay at home with the children as they grew up. They went to Mass weekly together. The experience of faith was a place of affection and curiosity rather than punitive. And when children had questions their parents couldn’t answer, parents showed curiosity with their children to try to find out what the Church teaches, rather than dismissing the question or dismissing the Church. You don’t have to be Immaculately Conceived to raise kids in the faith.
Perhaps these ties between family life and growth in faith are why our Lord emphasizes family life throughout Scripture. We hear in the Book of Sirach, “God sets a father in honor over his children; a mother’s authority he confirms over her sons,” not to give them despotic or arbitrary power, but to cooperate with our Lord as He nurtures and grows in their hearts, as He fosters and reveals their God-given identity and mission.
Joseph and Mary were given this task for Jesus. And Joseph fulfilled it by being so in tune with the Lord himself that when an angel appeared to him in a dream, he didn’t wait until the next day but took them to Egypt that night, as the Gospel tells us today. He was prompt to obey the word of the Lord.
Joseph knew the Lord, and he showed his family how to follow Him, too.
Are we doing that for our children?
Are we doing it for ourselves?
Because if our children are to remember one thing about us, I think maybe the most important thing they could say, beyond whatever inheritance we left them or whatever education we provided them, is: “They knew the Lord, and they showed me how to know Him, too.”
Father Grant Huslig, Parochial Vicar