All in the Holy Family

Today is the Feast of the Holy Family. So the readings on the topic of family were of course rolled out.

The first reading was from Sirach:

My son, take care of your father when he is old;
grieve him not as long as he lives.
Even if his mind fail, be considerate of him;
revile him not all the days of his life;
kindness to a father will not be forgotten,

… outlining at least in part what it means to “honour your father and your mother”: to care for them in their old age.

And the second reading was from Colossians:

Children, obey your parents in everything,
for this is pleasing to the Lord.
Fathers, do not provoke your children,
so they may not become discouraged.

The last two lines jumped out at me.

Recently, psychiatry has come to the conclusion that depression is generally the result of childhood abuse or neglect.

But this seems to have been pretty well understood right up until Freud proposed his “Oedipus complex” as an alternative explanation.

Here we seem to have the Bible saying as much: a parent “provoking” his children makes them “discouraged”—that is, depressed.

I checked the meaning of the original Greek:

“provoke”: “to stir up, arouse to anger, provoke, irritate, incite.”

“discouraged” : “to lose heart, be despondent, be disheartened. From a compound of a and thumos; to be spiritless.”

So at last we are back to the obvious.