My father has died, my mother has moved across the country, and my in-laws’ health is declining. Meanwhile my little boys are rapidly becoming men, and my husband and I have more gray hairs every time we look. It feels like the ground is shifting underneath my feet. Yet what did I expect? That everything would stay the same forever?
In our families, we are given the opportunity to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others—in other words, to grow in love that will endure beyond the grave. If our families are less than ideal, the longing for what we should have had can also lead us to God. One way or the other, our temporary, biological families are here to prepare us for our permanent, spiritual family.
Salvation history shows us the ultimate purpose of the family. Israel was formed with literal family ties, and the Old Testament priesthood was lineage based. Jesus leads us from the biological to the spiritual: God and priests are our father, Mary and the Church are our mother, Jesus and all Christians are our brothers and sisters. Devotion to Jesus transcends all family ties: “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Holy matrimony, so beautiful that it is an icon of the Blessed Trinity, is temporary. Family goods point beyond themselves to something even better, something that will last forever.
May God give us the wisdom to “use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure” (from the Collect of the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time).
Summa Vanessae 
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