At year’s end …..

YOU CAN PICK YOUR FRIENDS ……….

This is sometimes quoted when there’s trouble of one kind or another within a family and concludes with “ but you can’t pick your family …”

There’s a truth in it, of course, but a sadness too insofar as it usually is an expression of hurt or frustration within the home setting and among relations and family. There’s no doubt that this can be an all too pressing and common reality. Neither is there doubt that this is total tragedy.

Few of us, I like to say, were “born on Walton’s Mountain”, where our dramas are lived out in an hour or so of television and where even the most shattering of storylines sees a house closing down for the night with the gradual switching off of lights accompanied by the “Goodnight John Boy”, “Goodnight Elizabeth”, “Goodnight Granddad” etc. Sadly our dramas are not confined to the set of TV studios where lines and dialogue are carefully crafted and produced. but are rather lived out in the day to day routines and sometimes deep hurt that is the reality of life.

This Feast of The Holy Family may seem as far away from us as Walton’s Mountain but we must not lose sight of the reality that IS this family – a young single mother, a confused and shaken husband and a child born into poverty and uncertainty. This “HOLY” Family is at one with us and is FOR us. They did what was necessary to keep the family as one – took their direction from God and followed the path unfolding before them.

Maybe we look for friendship within the family, even if it’s a bit clouded at times for it’s there we are best known and were first loved.