God looked at everything He had made, and He found it very good.

As we walk through our readings and Gospel for the Solemnity of the Christian Family we should continually focus on the fact that God created everything good.

It is easy to loose that point. We can look at our lives, our jobs, relationships, politics, our fellow Christians, and wonder —“ if He made everything good, including His Church, why do things look so bad?

Starting at the first chapter of Genesis it is easy to see the good. The earth was clean, new, and beautiful. Man had not transgressed. Things were humming along.

It didn’t take long for that scene to break down. Man focused on what he wanted over and above what God wanted, and there you have it, sin.

As we read through Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians we even begin to wonder about the Church. It starts off simple enough:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord.

and

Fathers, do not anger your children.

But then we get into this whole slave and master wording.

We get nervous —“ there’s a lot of history there, especially for us as citizens of the United States. We look at those words and we are struck with images that are painful, and fully loaded with repercussions that reverberate to this day.

We stop listening to what Paul writes and we replace his meaning and intent with our preconceived notions.

These difficult words have but one meaning.

As Christians we must do God’s will. God’s will and Jesus’ teaching are the only thing that matters.

Children are to obey their parents, not out of subjugation, but because they desire to live life the way God intends it to be lived.

Fathers are not to anger their children, not because they take a weak, comme ci comme í§a attitude towards their children’s behavior, but because they are to be fathers as the Lord God is our Father. Fathers are to train their children and instruct them as the Lord trains and instructs.

Being a master or slave is meaningless, and the institution of slavery is nothingness in light of the Kingdom of God.

Regardless of our state in life, our position, our relative degree of freedom as classified by the government, we are to live only as Christians.

Status, that is being a child, father, slave, or master, is all worthless classification. That classification only matters if we take our focus off our roles in the Christian family.

Brothers and sisters,

Now think for a moment.

Isn’t compromise our national motto? We all learned that the United States Constitution was developed in a spirit of compromise. Federalists, states rights, House and Senate, three part government, checks and balances. It all works out because people compromised.

The same thing happens in other life situations. Whether a project at work or school, what we’re serving for dinner, the running of the Parish Committee, or our domestic lives; regardless of the things that happen in life, we tend to focus on making peace and on compromising. We even misquote Jesus —“ the whole thing about being a peacemaker.

That, my friends, is peace at the cost of living the way God intends.

We loose by compromise. We break faith. We focus on what we want over and above what God wants. We sin.

What God created is God’s way. God’s way, the way He wants us to act, behave, worship, live, and believe is the perfect way. He looked at it and said it was good.

What God seeks, and the whole reason for His coming as man, was that God wants us to know and follow His way. He gave us the word, and showed us how to live it. He seeks the only reality that counts: man and God living together in complete harmony.

My brothers and sisters,

Jesus never saw compromise as an option.

Paul said that we must live life in accord with our baptism, as the Christian family.

Jesus didn’t tell the Pharisees that He saw their point. He didn’t tell adulterers that he understood their plight. He simply said, repent and follow Me. If you do that, you have a place in the Kingdom of Heaven.

When Mary and Joseph found Jesus sitting in the temple before the teachers, and questioned Him, He simply said:

—Why did you search for Me? Did you not know I had to be in My Father’s house?—

Jesus told them —“ don’t you see, this is how things are supposed to be.

God created everything good, and asks us to live in unity with the way of life He personally taught us.

How we live, what we profess, what we do with our husbands, wives, children, co-workers, fellow parishioners, friends and enemies all has to be in accord with God’s way, without compromise or abandonment.

When He looks to us, the Christian people, the Christian family who maintain and follow His way, He will say:

‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’

Those will be the sweetest words we will ever hear, words so sweet they are worth any cost.

Amen.