Reflections on a Family Reunion

I recently attended a week-long family reunion near Okemo Ski Area in Ludlow, Vermont. At the peak of the week we filled two log cabins with 25 people aged 2 to 69!  Our days began quietly with coffee on the deck, then developed into various excursions like paddle-boarding on a lake, hiking along waterfalls and swimming in their pools, visiting cheese factories, mountain-biking, and riding the gondola to the top of Killington Ski Area. Our days ended with homemade meals, card games, and soaking in the jacuzzi. It was as good of a family reunion as I had hoped for considering the level of dysfunction and pain with which some family members are struggling. 

My extended family includes some who are divorced, some of whom remarried outside of the Church; some who have drug or alcohol problems, same-sex attraction or speech impediments; some who are living with cancer, arthritis or other ailments, and some who live alone. Although all were raised Catholic, most no longer attend Mass regularly. Perhaps some of these characteristics are also known to your family.

The effects of original sin permeate us all, though some of those effects are more obvious. As a priest among them I struggle to navigate the family dynamics. How can I live my priesthood among those who know me as “Sonny,” the nickname I grew up with?  I offered to celebrate Sunday Mass with them and only three accepted my invitation:  my two brothers and my 15-year-old second cousin. It was wonderfully intimate and peaceful. 

Although I was glad to spend this week away from the work of the parish, I also felt out of my comfort zone. My older brother, Jeff (a divorcee who lives alone), put it to me bluntly:  “We are not ‘part of’ their nuclear families; rather, we are ‘included’ by them.”  This realization hurts a little, but it would hurt even more to not be included. So, our family reunion invited us to accept our limitations, our wounds and dysfunctions. It invited us to make sacrifices to be together, to tolerate, to affirm, and even enjoy one another. The most painful part for me was the times of silence, pregnant with mixed emotions, when I just did not know what to say. And as the week drew to a close, I felt a mysterious contradiction between wanting to return to my parish and wanting to cling to my family. 

On the last day, as Jeff and I drove to the Albany airport singing with the radio’s Sunday Praise music, the Lord urged me to praise Him for my family, especially for Jeff. For he has chosen to surrender his battered and broken life into the loving hands of our Redeemer. I praise the Divine Healer for transforming Jeff’s maladies into humble faith, holy love and courageous hope. May He do the same for the rest of my family, and yours too. For God not only wants to “include” us in his family, but to make us “part of” his family. So let us pray for the healing our families need to reach the heavenly family reunion. For we are all the work of God’s hands.

“The Lord is exalted, yet the lowly he sees, and the proud he knows from afar.

Your kindness, O Lord, endures forever; forsake not the work of your hands”

(Psalm 138: 6, 8).