I’ve been thinking all day: the Feast of the Holy Family can sometimes be troublesome for us who are children of divorce or come from broken families.

For the longest time, I thought that this feast told us we had to have a perfect family. I wondered if holiness was even

possible for us. When I first felt called to the priesthood, I wondered if it could even be true. Our family wasn’t perfect. What would people think?

We need good, holy families, but I think we need to stop thinking and preaching that there’s only one way to be a good

and holy family.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe the ideal is a happy marriage of a man and woman who love one another and their children.

But the holiest man I ever knew was my dad, twice married and divorced, who strayed from the Church for a bit, but found his home within it,

who taught me how to love Christ above all and His Bride, the Church. The holiest woman I know is my mom, because with the incredibly rough life she’s had, it’s been a deep faith in God that has been the only thing to see her through.

They taught me to strive for holiness.

We weren’t, and aren’t a perfect family. But neither is yours, or any one else’s either. The only perfect family is the holy family.

But the Holy Family gives us something to strive for—perfect love. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus teach us all how to perfectly love one another and

help the other grow deeper in relationship with the Father.

And maybe, in deepening our relationship with the members of the Holy Family, we find something that’s been lacking in our own earthly family.

Okay, end of stream of consciousness.