Sometimes I Wonder… If My Family Was a Tv Show… What Would Be the Ratings, and What Would People See?
Homily | Year A | Holy Family | 12/29/2019 Sometimes I wonder… if my family was a tv show… what would be the ratings, and what would people see? Most of the most memorable TV shows I’ve watched have all revolve around family dynamics. As a child I remember watching The Wonder Years , Family Matters , Full house and Home Improvement . Then in the Early 200’s it was Malcolm in the Middle , Everybody Loves Raymond , and most recently Parenthood , Modern Family and The Middle . Now, all these TV shows showcased very different families; different cultural backgrounds, different economic status, even different values than those of my own family experiences growing up as a Mexican-American; yet, somehow, they were all relatable. The same can be said about the many families we encounter in scripture; from the Old Testament families of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Lot, and Jacob… to the New Testament family stories like that of the prodigal son, Martha and Mary, Zachariah and Elizabeth, and the Holy Family… these are all families very different form our own, yet they are somehow still relatable. That is because family values, although they might be lived differently generation to generation, culture to culture, family to family; they all emerge from universal values that all people can relate to. These values are mutuality, respect, and service, and we encounter them in scripture today. We see these universal values in Old Testament Wisdom through the example of parent-child relationship. In the Jewish tradition, parents had a God- pg. 1 Homily | Year A | Holy Family | 12/29/2019 given responsibility over their children and vice versa, children once adults had a God-given responsibility over their parents, especially when the caretaker role was reversed… First parents had the responsibility to care, feed, clothe, and bathe their children… but there would come a time when the parent would grow old and frail and this responsibility would flip… the adult child would now have the responsibility to care, feed, clothe and bathe the aged parent.
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