This Christmas season, as we celebrate in the midst of the joy and challenges of our own families, we also celebrate the Holy Family. Yes, the Holy Family is filled with grace, awe and wonder.. However, we might ask if they always spoke to each other with calm and deferential tones? The Holy Family did have to deal with the daily challenges of living in poverty, working long hours, facing political strife, and even their own fear and uncertainty about the path their lives would take.
Maybe the Holy Family is more like our own family than we realize.
Corinthians 3:12-21 provides a blueprint for what we, as God’s chosen ones, should stive for in our relationships with others: heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. These attributes are considered ideals of communal stewardship, or the stewardship each of us has for our community and our relationships that are part of the larger community. This means caring for a healthy and fruitful interpersonal and, by extension, communal dynamic. As we approach the start of a new year, we might reflect on how well we fulfill our role of communal stewardship. What are we “best” at…humility, gentleness, kindness…and where do we need to improve? Can we pick one attribute to start with, to improve upon…being an empathetic spouse, a gentle sibling, a patient teen, a kind parent?
Surely we can all pray for greater patience when dealing with family members.
Living our lives in gratitude encourages us to be compassionate stewards of our relationships with others. Perhaps even more challenging than patience is our ability to forgive one other, as our holiday gatherings might be an opportune time of resolving grievances with extended family. Again, Corinthians shows us the way by: “bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.” Perhaps we can even find joy in this practice.
For, “whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
