The Best Thing You Can Do For Your Family and the Village People

It doesn’t take superpowers to notice that all hell is breaking loose in our villages. Drug addiction, crime, racism, child abuse, divorces, sexual perversions, debt, abortion, and euthanasia have invaded our white picket fenced suburbs. If we’re waiting for our village chief, who promised “change” in his political campaign, to don his Superman costume, and solve all our problems, we’re in for inevitable disappointment. The supreme law of the land (e.g Constitutional right to life) is not always implemented by powerful caped crusaders and if our superhero leaders can’t even hide their britches under their pants, they can’t be expected to fix all the broken hearts in our broken homes.  

So, who’s going to save our society that’s falling apart? Hint: its not singlehandedly you or me. Egoism is the root of many an evil, and if we peruse the list of village problems, they all can be tracked to selfishness, self-centeredness, self-importance. And no, we can’t expect the YMCA to save the village people either.

The key to solving our village problems rests on the shoulders of a Holy Family.   The Latin meaning of family (“familia”) is servants of a household, and it is the family who serves each other, in and through Christ, that is the hope of the village. My fellow blogger, Guy McClung, aptly put it when he said “It takes a holy family to raise a village.”  

Our love and service to our families change the world. Yet we know this is no mean feat; we cannot rely on our limited human love alone. We need the supernatural graces of Christ’s presence in our homes. Christ can transform anyone and anything. But because Christ chose to be born into a family, and destined the Immaculate Virgin to be his mother as the means of the Incarnation, He illustrated the importance of a family as a way of coming to reign in our homes. So if we want to follow Christ’s example, what better way than to include His Mother’s assistance to cultivate a self-sacrificing Christ into our families?

Mary’s pivotal role in Catholic homes cannot be undermined. We Catholics have been given the privilege to accept and the grace to understand that the Immaculate Virgin Mary is no ordinary saint. She is the “theotokos”, the Christ bearer. As her intervention in Cana demonstrates, she is crucial to sanctifying marriages and raising holy families.  Just as Jesus instructed his beloved and most faithful disciple John, He counsels the domestic church to: “behold your mother.”

If we invite Mary into our homes through the following fail-proof devotions, our families will be one step closer to changing the village.

1. Consecrate your family to Mary. This means dedicating your family to God’s plan through Mary’s intercession, example, and unique relationship with Christ. When Mary, the Queen of Families, is welcomed into a home, she quickly takes that family’s concerns, spiritual and physical needs and their hearts into her Immaculate Heart. Scripture says that when the three wise men presented their gifts to Jesus, “Mary kept all these things and reflected them on her heart.” Likewise, when we gift our families to Jesus through Mary, she will shelter us, protect our souls, and secure our interests in her Immaculate Heart. She will present us to Jesus for healing, salvation and sanctification, and bring Her Son to our lives.  

2. Pray the Family Rosary. Fr. Patrick Payton stressed the importance of this meditation prayer when he said: “If families give Our Lady 15 minutes a day by reciting the Rosary, I assure them that their homes will become by God’s grace, peaceful places.” Mary herself made a promise to St. Dominic that the rosary is “a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, and defeat sin and decrease heresies.” Countless of families who have been devoted to the daily rosary will testify that despite the storms of life, their children have stayed faithful to Christ and the Catholic Church. I can also attest to the miracle that my own father’s smoking addiction was broken solely because of our family rosary. 

3. Listen to Your Mother. Mary has appeared all over the world in the last hundred and fifty years: LaSallette, Banneaux, Beauring, Knock, Lourdes, Fatima, Akita, Betania, Kibeho, and still appears to us in unprecedented ways. Mary carries messages throughout the world because she wants to bring our families and our villages to the light of her son. If she works tirelessly to reach out to us, Catholic families would do well to gather at her knees, listen when she speaks and follow her advice.   Read up on any one of her apparitions (or visit her on a pilgrimage); she will have something specific to instruct you. It may be a call to repentance, fasting, praying the rosary, receiving the Eucharist more, doing penance, or something else that’s tailor made for your family. The Church does not hail Mary as “Queen of Families” for nothing.

Our villages are in distress because many families have abandoned the holy family.   Let’s clutch our Blessed Mother’s hand tightly with three simple devotions, and the Christ bearer herself will beam Jesus’s transforming love into our struggling homes and flailing villages. Not just superficial change, but miraculous, immortal ones.