Feast of the Holy Family 2025 – Year A
Deacon Tom Vert
Preached: December 28, 2025
It’s not easy, but it’s worth it….
I remember my grandfather telling me “It’s easy to become a parent, but much more difficult to be a parent”.
The trials and tribulations of family life are real and affect every family. As Pope Francis has said “A perfect family does not exist.” And “In families, we argue; in families, sometimes the plates fly; in families, the children give us headaches….in families, there is always, always, the cross.”
Every family has crosses to bear…siblings that don’t get along and maybe don’t even talk to one another. Parents and children that struggle to understand each other and try to find the balance between protection and allowing the children to grow. There can be struggles in married couples as they try to live and love together with the pressures of finances, sickness, or job losses…trying to find how to blend their personal uniqueness, strengths and weaknesses. Anyone who has lived in a family and is honest will say that it isn’t always easy…there are the joys, but there are the pain and sorrows also.
On this Feast of the Holy Family, we are called to see the Holy Family as an example of how to live, but if you are like me, sometimes it seems a stretch goal that is impossible to reach, and I feel a bit inadequate even trying.
We are blessed however today to have the 2 nd reading from Paul to the Colossians. He was giving the people of Colossae advice on how to live life in community better. This reading can also be used to give us ideas on how to live the family life in a more harmonious way as ones who are holy and beloved by God.
Paul gives us 10 key words that can help us! A top ten so to speak on living together.
1. The first is compassion – when our family members are going though misfortunes and struggles, even if it is for the tenth or eleventh time, we need to have concern for them and reach out to help.
2. Then next is kindness – to be kind to another as the person needs help, not judging what they have done, but “crying with them” as support.
3. The third is humility – to realize that we do not have all the answers, especially to a family member’s problems, and instead we are called to ask God for His guidance on how best to help.
4. Next, we have gentleness or the ability to help a person incrementally, not trying to get someone, including ourselves, to improve 100% in one day, but 1% at a time, small steps with a hand reaching out to be grasped if they choose.
5. Fifth we have patience – and if you are like me, this can be the hardest one of all, since we love our family members and we want to get back to harmony and joy as fast as possible! However, change is slow and many times it is one step forward and two steps back, but the virtue of patience is one we
must cling to as we walk life’s journey.
6. After this we have forgiveness and Paul tells us that “if one has a grievance against another, as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do”. This can be incredibly difficult as people who are closest to us, can sometimes cause the most pain and hurt. We are called to emulate our heavenly Father to forgive as he does, repeatedly with love.
7. Seventh, we are asked to put on a “cloak of love” over top of all of this, as love is the bond of perfection. Again, this is not easy, because sometimes we don’t feel like loving the people who drive us crazy, annoy us and/or have hurt us, but we know Christ’s own words “love one another as I have loved you!”
8. After this, Paul tells us to “let the peace of Christ control our hearts”. We are called to be people of peace, ones who do not build walls between each other, but instead bridges, even if that bridge is the thinnest peace of rope over the widest gorge that divides us.
9. Ninth, we are called to be thankful and to look at our blessings and the small gifts we receive, being grateful, not that life is perfect, but instead that there are glimmers and flickers of joy and happiness in a journey that some days seems bleak and dreary.
10. Finally, we are called to “do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” …to cling to God when we are weak, tired, frustrated, and just plain worn out by everything that life throws at us. It would be too much if we must do it alone, but he promised that “I will never leave you or forsake you”!
On this feast of the Holy Family, let us commit once again to try, with God’s help, to make our families centers of understanding, acceptance and love as God calls us to.
It’s not easy, but it’s worth it…
