A pastor approaching his people on this Feast of the Holy Family might find himself saddened at the prospect — and frightened. He might offer a run-down on the current situation in terms of the family and come up with an account sad, on the one hand, frightening on the other. But he might spare himself. The people are very well aware of the scene his figures would summarize. Divorce, remarriage, single parents, double households, abortion, birth control, planned death.

When the missionary society I was associated with for twenty-five years first came to this country from Germany before the turn of the century, they followed a well-established and very successful pattern for the education of missionaries. A program of fourteen years beginning with high school, minor seminary, and leading through college to major seminary and ordination. But what worked so splendidly in Europe, failed here, and they could not understand why. It was fifty years before they came to terms with reality.

The fourteen-year-old American boy was in no way capable of committing himself to a permanent way of life. Be it weakness, lack of character, a feature of society, a late maturing in a complex way of life — whatever, the facts could not be contradicted.

And, as they learned later, that quality was spreading into all areas of life and very fast! A generation alien to commitment. Most people are quite aware of that. Monks are. For all the careful screening and the years of preparation for a solemnly vowed life, later departures are frequent. Granted it all be lawful, it is still a disappointment. We do not need you to remind us.

So there seems little point in berating those who do persevere, as there is little point in scorching the faithful over those who are not.

We are all children of our time and we are so in many ways. We do not live in outer space. We live here and now and cope with this world. You lay it on heavy and people will simply not return. They do what they can and find small comfort in being reminded of what they already know: that it is far from perfect. And not easy without much of a support group.

So I think about New Guinea and some years there. I'm not an ethnologist nor an anthropologist, but I have eyes to see how a so-called primitive people, even a so-called stone-age people there for many thousands of years, came up with a few simple conclusions: permanent, abiding marriage is the only thing that works. It is a matter of survival. Other laws and traditions simply followed from the nature of things, from human experience, from trial and error, from experiment and failure.

So take comfort: the law of God is written deep in our nature. We contradict it at our own risk, peril. But sometimes societies need to do so in order to discover that. And once discovered, it takes on enormous power. Is then blessed by Holy Church to foster, nurture, and sustain it. What outside authority teaches merely confirms what is written in the heart. The combination of outer and inner is of great beauty and strength.

We have reason to believe we are on a similar course. We have questioned, changed,  altered, tampered with tradition. And now come to realize it doesn't work. And so we enter into the arduous business of starting over. A deep-down capacity of the human heart, a God-given ability to begin again, to build anew. It is done in courage and in hope.

All who love God, who seek to listen to Him, to follow Him, who love Christ and His Holy Church, who love family and children and who do the best they can in the world  they live in are engaged, however modestly, in this great endeavor. They need to be encouraged, heartened. For the prognosis is good. The  recovery will follow. So we pray on this Feast of the Holy Family. So I pray. So I beg you to do. Amen.