Have you heard of the "Urban Dictionary?" It's a crowdsourced dictionary that seeks public help in defining words. I often use it to get a different slant on the meaning of a word. With that in mind, I looked up "family" in that dictionary and found it defined as "a group of people, usually of the same blood (but do not have to be) who genuinely love, trust, care about and look out for each other.” 

That’s not a bad definition and it certainly describes the family we call the “Holy Family,” Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

My sense of “family” has grown because the number of people I care about and who care about me has grown. At first, “family” was simply blood relatives, then classmates (grade school, high school and seminary) were included, then parishioners came along and, in time, “family” began to include even people of different faiths or no faith, which was not true in my earlier years.

As the years went on, staff and patients I got to know as a chaplain in hospitals here and overseas became "family." And, when a group of us helped build and continue to support a school in Haiti, the people who live in that small rural village, as well as the students and staff of that school, became a part of my family. 

My experience in Haiti and my retirement from parish ministry led me to Unbound and again my sense of family was expanded. As I started to travel for Unbound, I saw “family” in the staff and parishioners in any number of parishes who seem to "genuinely, love, trust, care about and look out for each other.” 

I know, however, that my sense of family needs to become still larger.

The New York Times columnist and author, David Brooks, speaks about an experience he had in Penn Station in New York City while waiting to catch a train. As he stood there looking at the crowd of people standing around him, he suddenly didn't see them as different from him by race, ethnicity, language, religion, politics, etc. He saw them, he said, the same way he saw himself, as simply "souls,” all members of the same human family.

I'm not there yet but I’d like to experience what David Brooks experienced while standing on the platform of a train station. And, the fact he experienced “family” as including all of us gives me the hope that I might be able to as well.

Lord, as we celebrate this feast of the Holy Family, help us to enlarge our sense of family to include all those you see as family, which certainly includes those who have gone before us, those who live with us now, and those who are yet to come. Amen.

This reflection for the Feast of the Holy Family is from Unbound preacher Father David Noone.