Holy Family

Pope Francis’ message to families (points to ponder for families everywhere this Feast of the Holy Family).

“There is no perfect family. We have no perfect parents and neither do we have perfect children.

We have complaints about each other. We are disappointed by one another. Therefore, there is no healthy marriage or healthy family without the exercise of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is vital to emotional health and spiritual survival. Without forgiveness, the family becomes a theater of conflict and a bastion of grievance. Without forgiveness, the family becomes sick. Forgiveness is the sterilization of the soul, cleansing of the mind, and the liberation of the heart.

Anyone who does not forgive has no peace of soul and communion with God. Pain is a poison that intoxicates and kills. Maintaining a wound of the heart is a self destructive action.

He who does not forgive sickens physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That is why the family must be a place of life and not of death; an enclave of cure and not of disease, a stage of forgiveness and not of guilt.

Forgiveness brings joy where sorrow produced pain; and healing, where pain caused disease.”