National Family Week

If it were not for a newspaper editorial yesterday, we would not have known that this is National Family Week. Not only the oldest, the family is also the most important human institution. Of the family, Pope Leo XIII said, "A society limited in numbers, nevertheless a true society, anterior to every state or nation, with rights and duties of its own, wholly independent of the commonwealth."

Sad to say very few families observe Family Week. It is better to have a day’s celebration that many people observe than a week’s commemoration that almost everyone totally ignores. Since we read the editorial on National Family Week, we asked almost everyone we met if they were aware that there was supposed to be a national celebration for families. The answer was 100 percent negative. So something is definitely wrong with the institution that proclaimed the commemoration or the manner in which it is being implemented.

The family is the key to all national progress. As William Thayer phrased it, "If well ordered . . . they are the springs from which go forth the streams of national greatness and prosperity — of civil order and public happiness."

Our educational institutions can teach knowledge. But values, which are far more important, come from one’s family. The very future of any nation, for instance, rests on whether family life is strong or weak. For that matter, even the future of the human race depends on families for it is the basic means to beget children. It is also the family that ensures the proper upbringing of the children. The most tragic thing in life is to begin as a street child with no parents or home. During our lives we generally have two family experiences — first, as the child of a family, second, as parents. No person is more alone than one without a family.

We should have an annual family day. And the best way to insure its success is to, more or less, have a standardized way of celebrating the event. That is what makes any celebration. Christmas would not be Christmas without the dawn Masses and the Midnight Mass that culminates its celebration. There is, of course, the traditional Christmas gift, but as we know the day for giving presents changed from the feast of the Epiphany that commemorated the gold, frankincense and myrrh that the wise men from the East presented to the Holy Infant to Santa Claus on Christmas day itself. Second, we must choose a date that has some meaningful connection with meaningful life.

Let us have a meaningful Family Day next year. The success of any holiday is the number of participants. With mass media cooperating, there is no reason why we can’t have a meaningful National Family Day once a year. The family is the first "we". Our national leaders and celebrities should set the example for its successful celebration.