To begin, I want to welcome all of our visitors to Christ the Good Shepherd – to all of you who are spending this long Christmas weekend here with family and friends. It’s especially good to have you here this Sunday, the Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s … the Sunday when the church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family. The readings for today emphasize family relationships, even ones we sometimes might be reluctant to hear. And, as usual, I have a question for you. Actually, there are two of them. They’re straight forward, but the answers may not be easy. The questions are: what is a family and, what is a “holy family?”
In our first reading from the Book of Sirach, we hear about the relationships within a human family – relationships which involve authority, honor and respect. These virtues are ones that prevail in a scriptural holy family … in a family like the one of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Our second reading, taken from a letter of Saint John, also speaks of a family. But in this family, God is the Father who bestows his love on us, his children. We are His children who are capable of growing and changing, of loving one another – until we become more like Him in our years of maturity.
Our gospel reading for today also addresses relationships found within a family. In this case it is, in fact, the specific Holy Family – the one consisting of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. However, upon hearing this story, we may believe it seems like a strange event in their mutual lives. At least it seems strange to me when I look at our modern society in which we tend to protect our children from strangers – and from all forms of external harm … from almost everything and everyone they might meet.
I mean – can you imagine your own family visiting New York City with a tour-group and returning home without your child in plain sight … and not worrying about the twelve-year-old for three whole days!? Evidently people had a different view of what it meant to be an extended family some two thousand years ago … and about trusting that this extended family would care of each other, at all times.
However, the point of the gospel story is not how thoughtless Mary and Joseph might have been by modern standards, but rather the fact that Jesus was dedicated … from the beginning of his life … to the service of God – to doing what God, the Father, had sent him to do for others. And at the same time, for him to recognize his own humanity and to remain with his family until the appropriate moment arrived for him to fulfill the prophecies made about him. As Luke reports: “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them, and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.”
The four gospel writers tell us no more about the life of the Holy Family of Nazareth. But we can surmise that their relationships mirrored those that make up all holy families. After-all, there is more than the one holy family consisting of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Yes, a family – a holy family – can be composed of the classic father, mother, and single child. A holy family can also have a single parent (mother or father) with one or more kids. A holy family can have birth children, adopted children, foster children or no children. A holy family can have step-parents and half-brothers or half-sisters. A holy family can have grandparents raising their grandchildren with their own child seldom in sight.
In fact, there can also be holy families even without parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles around. There are some who work in an occupation where the members call one another “family.” We can be part of a “family of Christ the Good Shepherd.” Or we can be part of the family of humanity. From time to time, we even hear about a “family of nations.” Each one of these families can, indeed, be a holy family.
A holy family is a set of relationships: not relatives – not just those linked to you by blood or marriage – but by relationships as well: a union of hearts and souls. And what conditions lead to a holy family?
I am sure there are many; but, today, I want to talk about only three of them: authority, obedience, and respect … those virtues we heard about in all three readings for today. However, before you become upset with me for bringing up these virtues, I’d invite you to hear what I mean by these words which have become tarnished by our modern society.
First of all: “authority.” Every family, and especially every family that seeks the blessing of God – every family who desires to be a “holy” family – must recognize the need for “authority.” Now I do not mean a totalitarian regime in which the husband-father controls the thoughts and movements of the wife-mother, the sons and daughters and everyone else living under his roof.
The word authority is related to the word “author.” And what is the role of an author? The author directs and guides the development of the characters in the author’s story. “Authority” offers guidance when events overwhelm us, when we lack direction and need encouragement to return to the path we must follow. Such authority comes from those who have wisdom sufficient to help us recover our way through difficult times.
We seek the authority of God through prayer. We seek divine guidance and help. In a family blessed by God, in a “holy” family, we seek guidance, not only from God, but from those who speak for God: from prophets. And who in our own holy family might these prophets be?
It could be dad. It is often mom. It may be a grandparent who has experienced life and God’s participation in that life. It may even come from young children, who have not lived long, but who, nevertheless, can provide prophetic direction for us. The words of God can even come from teenagers – although, sometimes, the prophecies they offer are not ones the parents would prefer.
And what about “obedience?” In the translation of the gospel we heard today, it was said that Jesus returned from Jerusalem to Nazareth with his parents and was “obedient” to them. What did he do? He listened to them. He really listened to them.
And that is what obedience means. To listen intently. To listen not with the ears alone but with heart and soul. To appreciate what is really being said. To hear the love and concern being expressed, even when the words, themselves, might seem harsh and uncomfortable … when the actions being requested are for my own good but seem to be ones I want to avoid at all costs. In a holy family, authority – the search for guidance and direction – is combined with obedience – a listening that casts the best light possible on what is being said by the one who offers guidance.
And finally, there is “respect” – the partner of obedience. For as obedience is to listen intently, respect is to “see” intently: to look deeply into the character and nature of a person and behold the grace of God within the individual.
Respect is to see the underlying goodness and to respond to it. And so it is that a holy child sees the holiness of the parent – the God within the parent – just as the holy parent must see the holiness within the child – the spirit of God within the child, even when it is masked by mischief. For that matter, all of us are called to see the holy spirit within each and every human being we meet.
The ancient virtues of authority, obedience and respect are not out-of-date. They remain virtues which show forth the relationships within each and every family. The Feast Day of the Holy Family should remind us that we are urged to respect the divinity within each one of us; to look deeply and intently into the person next to us; and discern that, together, all of us make up the Holy Family of God.
Feast of Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph; December 27, 2009
Sir 3:2-6;12-14; 1 Jn 3:1-2, 21-24; Lk 2:41-52