The Christmas story and season are not simply the recounting of the Son of God beginning His earthly life. It is a lesson in who we are as human beings and as His creation.

God could have chosen any of various means for the beginning of Christ’s appearance among us. However, He chose the means of a family, of Jesus birth from His mother married to His foster father.

The emphasis on Jesus’ family in the Gospels should give us reason to reflect. Jesus came to take on our nature, thereby showing us what God wants us to be. By being born of a family, Jesus showed us the importance of the family in the plan of God. And the family that Jesus showed us is that confirmed by faith and reason, a man and woman committed to each other and open to the gift of life in children.

It is the family, begun by the marriage of Mary and Joseph, that accepts the request of God Himself that they receive as their child His Son entrusted to them. It is the family, in Mary and Joseph together, that makes the arduous trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem in the final stages of Mary’s pregnancy. The family expands in Bethlehem and receives shepherds and Wise Men. The family faces hardships together, fleeing before Herod’s army and returning to live quietly only when it is safe. It is the family that goes to Jerusalem for prayer and demonstrates the love, the suffering and the unity of the husband and wife as they look in sorrow for the lost child.

For so long, it has been simply taken for granted that marriage is between a man and a woman. It was a given that marriage and family are a major part of everyone’s life project. And it went without saying that society recognized the importance of marriage in family. Have we taken those great gifts too much for granted?

All those presumptions are now being confronted in a society that finds itself in doubt about the basics of its own identity. Marriage is being challenged by redefinition away from God’s plan of uniting man and woman. And the very need for marriage and its permanence as well as the value and dignity of children are increasingly doubted or rejected.

In the midst of heavy societal and media pressures, the number of marriages is dropping dramatically. Large numbers of young people are either postponing marriage (perhaps for reasons of work or our current economic challenges) or they are not bothering to marry at all. Cohabiting or random sexual encounters have, in many ways, become accepted as substitutes for the deep happiness of life-long commitment to spouse, children, in-laws and siblings.

It is often commented that many of our young people are experiencing a fear of making a commitment that is to last a lifetime. Having seen or even experienced the pain of family breakups, they are reluctant to make a family commitment, even if they feel the longing to do so. It seems too hard, too uncertain, to trust that deeply to risk being hurt.

Still, our faith tells us that family and the sacrament of marriage, at its heart, is a profoundly good thing. Good things often require effort and sacrifice. But out of them come the testing and the deepening of love. And like all the important elements of life, we truly believe that God gives us the grace to enter into such a commitment, and to see it through joyfully.

This year of 2015 will, in some ways, be a year for the family. Pope Francis has made the family one of the primary themes of his pontificate. Last October he convened the Synod of Bishops in Rome to discuss strengthening the family. Another synod will continue that discussion this coming October. And most significantly, the pope will come to the United States for the first time in his life to attend the World Meeting of Families in September, in Philadelphia.

Of course we need to pray for the family. Family prayer, beyond simply grace before meals, is one of the undervalued means of family love and stability. But we need also to witness to the family by our actions and our words. Parents, make it a point to prepare your children for the day when they form their own families with marriage, prayer and children. Children, love your parents who do so much for you. And as Pope Francis often reminds us, let us love and respect the elderly in our families.

Every family has its joys and its sorrows, its ups and its downs. But in the Holy Family, we see the model of love, prayer and sacrifice. We need to embrace that model in our faith and in society.