Families gather at Christmas. And this weekend the Sunday after the feast is devoted to recalling the family in Nazareth, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It is an opportunity for appreciating what our families give us. For Christians the family is the original source of social life. But we should be wary of facile sentimentality. Our homes are filled with memories. Many are joyful, but some are not.

The old saying tells us that charity begins at home. That may be true, but not because the family setting is always one where life is easy and conflict unknown. On the contrary, it is much easier to star as the perfect guest when staying for a few days with friends. We can hold our breath and be charming and considerate for a weekend.

The family as a school for loving is a much tougher place. We are too well known there. Put on an act and the others see through it at once. All the same, while those who love us won’t tolerate our nonsense, they will commonly be loyal.

Part of the challenge that families create comes from a combination of expectation and disappointment. We can too easily be seduced by that sentimental view that expects family life to be easy, because it is where we will be accepted, which may be true.

Disappointment sets in if we then suppose that we need not, therefore, make any effort. That is a great mistake. One fundamental lesson about loving that we learn from home teaches us the need for unselfish, faithful commitment, which means sometimes accepting things that don’t always suit us.

And that is hard. And so some people will be dismissive of family life and what it has to offer. Commitment may be regarded as a trap, curtailing my freedom, and fidelity as dull, limiting my opportunities, and unselfishness as stultifying, denying me fulfilment.

Imagine, however, that you have gone out to dinner. In the same restaurant a group of people has gathered in evident high spirits. When the waiter takes your order, you ask about them and learn that it is not in fact a Christmas party. He points to a happy elderly couple who are the obvious centre of attention and tells you that it is a family celebrating that couple’s golden wedding anniversary. Then suppose he leans towards you confidentially to say, “Think about it. All that time together. Just themselves. Never playing the field. What a waste.” Once spoken, the shallowness and absurdity of his words are self-evident.

If there is one desire common to the human heart it is to love and to know that you are loved in return. To be sure of that is a gift beyond compare. Secure and stable relationships are not to be undervalued. Perhaps some of our impatience with what is passed off as conventional family life comes from our failure to recognise the cost at which it was won.

Those of us born in the aftermath of the Second World War were probably born to parents who were themselves born during the First and who then fought in the Second. They were only too aware of their society being at risk. When they married and had families, many of them worked hard to supply their children with the security they themselves had not been able to enjoy.

I sometimes wonder whether they did not achieve that aim so successfully that those of us born at that time have taken that security for granted, not realising the effort that was required to create it. Taking it for granted, we may then have failed to create for our own children that stable setting which is vital, if happiness is to flourish.

Commitment, fidelity and unselfishness are demanding qualities. They do not come to us naturally. We need to develop them deliberately.

A generation without them will be deeply insecure. Relationships will fracture, because love is not expected to last.

Family ties make demands on us. When the Nazareth family visited the Temple, Mary was warned that they would wound her. But her child grew to maturity and was filled with wisdom. In spite of the cost, faithful loving bears fruit in plenty: to love and to know that you are loved in return is a gift beyond compare.

Monsignor Roderick Strange is the Rector of the Pontifical Beda College, Rome