I am a writer and an editor at the same time; in the
Reflection below, I did a minor edit, rendering several instances of
"mothers" to "mother" because of the grammatical sense of
the sentence. I decided to share the Reflection in full because of 2 things:
One, the Lesson
of Family.
The Son of God being in a family; that is new to me. And
eye-opening, heart-opening. The Family is all-important. The Philippines is
blessed by God because as a nation we are family-oriented, and that is why we
have the so-called and beloved Extended
Family. In the Philippines, not in the US, "In God we trust" –
"we" being the Family. Now I know; it is the Keeping of the Family that is the reason why the Philippines will
be/is becoming The New Jerusalem.
On Facebook, in the group Deplorables where my name has been included by Maria, with my
consent, I have just made the following comments on a post by The Activist Mommy – Elizabeth Johnston captioned
"Pelosi Claims Trump Is Forcing The American People To Fund An 'Unnecessary
Wall" – with this note below an image of Nancy Pelosi: "'On The First
Day Of Her Speakership She Pushed For Taxpayer Funding Of Abortion. Let That
Sink In.' – John W Reid." Here is my comment (yes, I type my comments like
that on Facebook, so I don't have to press Shift,
saves my energy; let's just say I'm being spoiled by Word 2013, which I'm using now, as the use of the Autocorrect feature
is so much pleasure! duh):
Frank A Hilario:
elizabeth: my suggestion is to stop featuring someone who is crazy – she likes
it that way! why not focus on the positive, like cultivating family values?
then everyone will love what you're doing - and so will you!
Following my own Elizabeth suggestion now, I will stop reading
negative comments and write on & pay more attention to positive things!
Two, the Lesson
of Readability.
You will notice in the image
above that I superimposed part of the "actual" un-enlarged view of
the front page of Sambuhay; sad to say, it is hard to read. At 78, without glasses I can read it, thank God!
but I'm sure a non-writer would not
look twice at it; I repeat: It's hard to read. The lesson is lost on the
target reader not because he is illiterate and cannot read but because the text
is in a font size that is difficult to decipher. So, here's my unsolicited
advice to St Paul's Media: Double the size of your 4-page Missalette and turn that Reflection font into at least 12 pt, no
longer 8 pt, for God's sake!517
Jesus In The Life Of A
Family
Christians everywhere
celebrate Christmas as the day of the birth of the second Person of the Trinity
in human form. But more than his birth as an individual human being, we also
celebrate, on the Sunday after Christmas, the birth of Jesus into a human
family. Together with Joseph and Mary, Jesus finds himself partaking of the
life of a family. Perhaps we can focus on three points to help us appreciate
the significance of what that means.
The first point
invites us to reflect on the family and how it is integral to what it means to
be human. "No human being is an island." We have heard this so many
times. And we know it is true: to be human is to be with other humans. And the
first human with whom we find ourselves is our mother. In our mother's womb we
find ourselves bonded to her, receiving sustenance and nourishment from her,
and growing within her to the point where we are ready to be born. The nine
months we spend in our mother's womb indicate for us our dependence on our
mother for life, for growth, for sustenance. Is it too farfetched to imagine
the child clinging for dear life to the womb of her mother, unconsciously
perhaps wishing to remain there forever, not knowing at all that such a wish,
if it were fulfilled, would put her mother's life at risk?
The second point
invites us to reflect on that moment of birth, when in labor and pain our
mother then bring us forth from her womb, freed as it were from the nurturing
environment of her womb into an independent life. This event, fraught with fear
and hope and experienced as both a suffering and a joy, is literally
life-changing that some philosophers who have reflected on this have said that
the very first crisis we experience as human beings is birth itself, when we
emerge from the darkness of our mother's womb into the light of day, and begin
to breathe on our own. This crisis does not of course take away our vulnerable
state; we remain fiercely dependent on our mother, nursing at her breasts and
seeking the warmth of her flesh. And yet something of the mother's smile
awakens in the child that first flush of consciousness; the child becomes an
"I" because the mother addresses him by his name. we no longer merely
exist; we are also called into an awareness of that source of love that stills
our anxiety and assures us of life and the goodness of life.
The third point marks
the widening of this circle. We grow and, in our growing awareness beyond our
mother and immediate environment, the figure of the father appears. This can
signal a second crisis for us because the father may appear as the one who cuts
our ties to the mother. And yet this paternal figure reassures us that we have
nothing to fear about growing into independent selves, that we remain protected
and kept safe. And so we nestle ourselves within the bosom of our parents,
their love nurturing us while at the same time challenging us to take our first
baby steps, to awaken to the wonders that life has in store for us, enabling
and empowering us to become free-standing human beings.
These are in fact the
first three critical moments of what it means to be human: they are all
initially tied up with belonging to a family. When God sent the Son into the
world, this also meant sending Jesus into a family. Mary and Joseph were the
two most important people in the life of this Child. Their love and care and
protection would bring him, at that point in the Temple, to realize that he
must be about his Father's business. Joseph and Mary would not always
understand what Jesus said and did; this Child was very mysterious. But that
the child "Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and
man" was due in no small measure to the mother who gave birth to him,
suckled, and nurtured him to life, and the father who brought him up and taught
him to love God and others.
Let this day be a
celebration of the family, for God so loved the world that God came to us not just
as a human being in Jesus; God also came to us as one who became a member of a
human family.
– Fr Antonio Francisco B De
Castro SJ
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