To have a family is such a valuable thing! The family is where we were born, we grew up and the place where we learn how to build good relationships with others. In the family, we feel loved, and so we learn how to accept and have a balanced relationship with ourselves. Then, in the family, we encounter our first neighbors: our parents, our sisters, and brothers. In the family, therefore, we learn how to love others, how to care, how to forgive. It is the “primary” (in the sense of “fundamental”) school where we learn how to love our neighbors. Furthermore, in the family, we learn how to relate to God. God is love, but He wants His love to be mediated by the concrete love of human beings. Our parents, our lola and lolo, therefore, with their love and care, words and deeds, were the first missionaries who announced to us the good news: “God loves us immensely!” Finally, according to Pope Francis: “The triune [trinitarian] God is a communion of love, and the family is its living reflection” (Amoris Laetitia, 11). A family united by love, therefore, is the best image available on earth for understanding God! What a wonderful gift is the family! 

Jesus himself needed a family for growing up and become a man. This was an on-going journey that required much care and love on the side of Jesus’ parents. Joseph protected Jesus from Erodes’ hatred, by taking him to Egypt. Then he taught Jesus how to work as a carpenter. Joseph is so important in Jesus’s life, that the pope has just written the apostolic letter Patris Corde on the role of Joseph in the plan of salvation. Then, we can also imagine Mary feeding the baby Jesus, and then sweeping the house, cooking for him, teaching him how to pray, how to deal with friends and neighbors. Jesus became man, therefore, not only at the very moment of his birth but also through a long process of growth in which his parents brought him up, just as it has happened to each one of us. In a word, the Incarnation of the Word made flesh needed a family, a holy family.

There is a striking thing in today’s gospel: the announcement of Mary’s suffering through the word of Simeon: “And you yourself a sword will pierce” (Lc 2:35). It is difficult to understand the suffering of Mary. We usually connect our suffering with our mistakes. We are used to say: “what have I done in order to merit such suffering!” It is understandable that someone who commits a sin, is destined to suffer… but Mary? She is conceived without sin, she is the pure one! How can she possibly suffer, and suffer up to the point of witnessing the cruel death of her Son on the Calvary? Yes, also Mary suffered, and probably more than all of us. And this happened because suffering is not only connected to human mistakes, but it is also very much connected with love. Mary suffered a lot because she loved immensely. The gospel today, therefore, is announcing to us that we must be prepared: it is impossible to love without feeling pain, just as it is impossible to give someone a gift without feeling that it slips away from our hands, and so it will not be ours anymore. 

The family is a beautiful gift, the place where we grow and become ourselves, the place where we feel peace and the warmth of our deepest relationships. At the same time, this gospel is telling us that we must be ready to pay for this love. It is not enough to say “I love you!” but we must deny ourselves for caring for our partners, parents, and children in a concrete way, by spending time with them, by giving signs of love, by providing what they need (education, health care, attention… money), by providing a tidy and healthy place to dwell… and this is costly. How many times fathers and mothers become anxious because they do not know how to pay school fees or medicines, or are worried about the misconduct of their children. But this is the beautiful love we experience in our families, a love which is “pierced” because it cares, a love which is pierced like the heart of Mary.