Not Mine

Feast of the Holy Family

    One of the things that we learn from a young age, which is not necessarily good, is the concept of “mine.”  Certainly there is a natural, perhaps genetic, reaction to items that we need to survive.  But anyone who has dealt with a toddler who has learned the word, “mine,” can attest that it quickly goes beyond basic necessities of life like food and drink, and becomes the M.O., the modus operandi, or way of operating, when it comes to just about anything.  And toddlers have a grip strength that seems to defy logic.  Hopefully, the child grows out of this obsession with mine, though some adolescents, and even adults are still fixated on what is mine, such that they sound more like the seagulls in “Finding Nemo,” or like Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings.”
    Contrasted with the idea of mine is the family, as we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family today.  Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, had experienced difficulty in conceiving, and had wept copiously in the temple, such that Eli, the priest, thought she was drunk.  But she, with God’s help, conceived and gave birth to Samuel, and, as promised, she returned Samuel to God after she finished weaning Samuel.  
    This probably does not make sense to us.  We would never give up a child.  But this theme of a child that belongs to God runs through the Old Testament.  Think of Isaac, the son of Abraham.  Or Samson, whose father and mother couldn’t conceive, but who received the blessing of a child as announced by an angel, as long as the parents didn’t drink alcohol or eat unclean foods.  And their son, Samson, could not cut his hair.  In fact, the Mosaic law commanded that every firstborn son had to be presented to the Lord in the Temple and redeemed with a sacrifice, as Mary and Joseph did with Jesus, which we will celebrate at Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  So offering one’s child to the Lord was not unknown to the Jewish People before the birth of Christ.
    But even after the birth of Christ, we should offer our families to God.  No, I’m not saying that when you child is misbehaving you can drop him or her off at the church and not have to worry about the child again.  But we should be ready to offer our family spiritually to God each and every day.
    Because, after baptism, before we belong to anyone else, we belong to God.  Yes, naturally we belong to our human family, but the bonds of baptism bind us to God in a way that supersedes our bonds to the human family.  That is how Jesus can say that if we cannot give up father and mother, we cannot truly be His disciple.  Most of the time we don’t have to give up family to follow God, but if our family asked us to do something wrong, our first allegiance should be to God.

    For husbands and wives, that means that your spouse, who is probably the most precious person to you in the world, doesn’t really belong to you.  He or she belongs to God, and your vocation as a spouse is to help your spouse get to heaven, because that’s where God wants him or her to be.  In the Episode III of “Star Wars,” Anakin Skywalker turns to the dark side because he cannot stand the idea of his wife, Padmé, dying, and so the Sith Lord, Emperor Palpatine, tricks Anakin into following him with the promise that Palpatine will help save Padmé’s life.  He forsakes all the good he could do for the opportunity to hold on to his wife.  Ironically (spoiler alert), Anakin himself ends up killing Padmé in his anger towards her for not going along with his conversion to evil.  Certainly, husbands and wives should love each, and sacrifice their own good for the other.  But your spouse belongs to God first and foremost, who allows you to be a good steward in caring for your spouse.  But you do not fully possess him or her.
    For parents, this applies to children, as well.  Your child is yours.  But your child is primarily God’s.  You are called to help the child know God and follow God.  Sometimes children will thank you for this and make this part of your vocation easy.  Sometimes children will not like you making sure that you know about God and about how following Him leads to perfect happiness.  And, to a certain extent, we can’t control how children end up.  But parents are responsible for doing all that they can to help their children grow in the faith through prayer, Bible reading, instruction, and even discipline to help children grow in virtue.  From the second you have your child baptized, you acknowledge that your child is “on-loan” to you from God, and God will want to collect on that loan with interest.  God doesn’t want your child to remain a child in the faith, but to grow to adulthood in his or her relationship with God.  That is the interest God expects on what He entrusts to you.
    So please, by all means, care for your family members: your spouse, your children, your parents, your siblings.  But do so recognizing that they are not primarily yours.  We cannot be toddlers when it comes even to our families and say “mine” all the time.  To paraphrase St. Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians, you are not your own.  You belong to Christ, and Christ to God the Father.  May we each find ways of offering our family to God each day, and helping them get to our true home in heaven.