God, holidays and extended family
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
19 Jan 2003
God loves us and we have duties towards those who love us. God is also the creator, sustainer and end point of all creation. Earlier generations, much earlier, realised that better than us. Even the English word "holiday" has a religious origin in the holy days without work dedicated to God.
We owe God a lot and He will judge each of us, mercifully and reasonably, at the end of our lives.
God is slipping in Australian society. Very few are anti-God, but God often gets crowded out by our busy lives, surfacing for some only at Christmas and Easter (C and a Christians) and for others at births, marriages and deaths.
God should not be sent away on holiday during our holiday times. This rarely happens in Church-going families and the congregations at holiday resort churches swell enormously at January and Easter.
We all have more free time at holidays and it is right to give some of this to God. One wonderful Catholic mother, whose family were regular Sunday worshippers, brought along all her family, young adults and teenagers too, to a weekday Mass once every January holidays. They were there to thank God for the good things they enjoyed and to ask God's blessing on the year ahead.
a celebrated daily Mass at the same holiday resort for about 25 years. It was wonderful to see the same families, changing through marriage, births and death, often with three generations present, return for this extra worship year after year.
Recently a reader complained that a was too Anglo-Celtic in my praise of the nuclear family (mum, dad and children) and was ignoring the advantages of the extended family of grand-parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, which is much more of a strength in Australian ethnic communities.
As part of a family of 28 first cousins on my mother's side and 12 on my father's side a was fortunate to grow up with many first cousins and close enough to others for holiday visits.
a have the fondest memories of family get-togethers, long lunches, much talk, cards in the evening or singing around the piano (more of this before television arrived). Unfortunately, a only knew one of my grandparents, but a have seen what a wonderful support grandma and grandpa can be to their grand-children.
In Communist Russia it is claimed that one reason the Christian faith there survived the years of Lenin, Stalin and other anti-religious dictators was through grand parents quietly instructing their little ones in the Christian basics. While we have complete religious freedom there is scope for such a role for Christian grandparents in Australia too!
It is an old saying that you can choose your friends but not your relations. And unhappy experiences, more often within the immediate family, can cause adults to distance themselves from their own.
But the extended family can bring us life-long friendships, wonderful mentors and advisers among aunts and uncles, models to admire and strive to imitate, support in times of sadness and trouble.
The inevitable squabble once in a while and the skeletons in every family cupboard across the generations are useful reminders of our own frailty and of the need to persevere.
Holidays are a special opportunity to strengthen our extended family links.
