Today is the Feast of the Holy Family, the day when we recall in a special way the relationship of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It’s a day for celebrating family relationships. And so I’d like to welcome all of you who are spending the holidays here with your own family and friends and have chosen to be here, today, with our parish family of Christ the Good Shepherd. This celebration prompts me to ask a very simple question for today. It’s a question combining Scripture and what you learned in your elementary catechism. So, are you ready? Today’s question is: what is the Fourth Commandment? The Fourth one of the Ten, that is. Yes, it’s: “honor thy mother and father.” But if you really want to give a complete answer, you need to add the second half, the part which gives the results of honoring your father and mother. The complete commandment is: “honor thy mother and father that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.”
So, while the first part of the Fourth Commandment is appropriate for our celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family, the second part reminds us the Ten Commandments are related to the Exodus experience. Once more, we recall how Moses led God’s Chosen Ones out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, the land the Lord your God gives you.
Today’s reading, taken from the Gospel of Matthew, reminds us, once more, of the Exodus and of Moses, himself. During this liturgical year, we’ll be hearing a lot of readings from the Gospel of Matthew. So it might be appropriate to be reminded how much the Gospel of Matthew focuses on Jesus as the “new Moses,” the one who was predicted by the prophets as being the Messiah who would be greater than Moses, himself.
Just as the Old Testament tells how Pharaoh wanted to kill the infant Moses and how innocent, Israelite children lost their lives because of Moses, Matthew in his New Testament, tells how Herod threatened to kill the infant Jesus and how other innocent, Israelite children lost their own lives because of Jesus. In today’s story we heard how Joseph, in order to protect Jesus from that threat, took Mary and Jesus to Egypt. And later, how Jesus came out of Egypt, just as Moses came out of Egypt. We, also, know from Matthew’s Gospel about other dreams of Joseph and how these dreams protected his foster-son.
Last week I spoke about Joseph, the dreamer of the New Testament and how his dreams changed the world. Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus had many dreams, just as another Joseph, one of his own ancestors, had his own dreams many years before. It was because of this previous Jospeh’s own dreams that he led his eleven brothers and his father Jacob into the land of Egypt in the first place. There the Hebrew people lived until Moses brought them back to the Promised Land.
The Hebrew writings of the Old Testament have many such stories about families and family relationships. These same scriptures, also, have many proverbs, many short sayings, about family life. We heard several of them in our First Reading from the book of Sirach in which the sage wrote: “God sets a father in honor over his children; a mother’s authority he confirms over her sons.”
Which brings me back to that Fourth Commandment: “honor they mother and father.” And this commandment prompts me to raise several other questions. First, who do we, in fact, honor? Second, why do we honor someone? And, perhaps, more importantly: why should we honor someone? It seems, at least in recent years, we tend not to honor our parents very much. Our TV sitcoms and many of our movies tend to make parents into jokes, people not to be taken seriously. And if parents represent so called “authority figures,” it might be said we tend not to honor any other authority figures either.
Rather than honor others for who they are, we seem to honor people for what they accomplish, what they do, no matter what kind of people they may be. As teenagers, we give praise and honor to singers who rap out explosive messages even when these messages hold minimal respect for anyone. As young adults, we give praise and honor to athletes who score high regardless of what else they do with the rest of their lives. As adults, we give praise and honor to entrepreneurs and business leaders who give us the best bang for the buck, regardless of what effect their actions may have on the quality of our lives or how honest they may be.
On the other hand, why should we honor people? What qualities should a person worthy of honor possess? Perhaps, it’s time for us to pay heed to the qualities that St Paul gave for God’s chosen ones, the ones God wants for his very own, the ones who live in God’s company, God’s holy family. St Paul told the Colossians, and he tells us, these qualities are: “Heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” They include “bearing with one another and forgiving one another.”
“Forgiving one another.” Perhaps, this season is, once again, the season for us to remember just why there is a Christmas, why God became incarnated. Why Jesus, the Son of God, was born into this human world. It is again time to remember God gave us His Son to bring us his forgiveness, forgiveness for the errors of humanity going back to the creation of Adam and Eve. It is again time to remember God sent us the new Adam to redeem us, to save us, to forgive us. It is again time to remember God asks us, each one of us, to forgive others, we who are His children.
Yes, today is the Feast of the Holy Family, the day on which we recall the special relationship of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a day to recall that we are to honor our own parents and our own families. Although it is the day to remember that the original Holy Family consisted of a child, a mother and a foster-father. It is, also, the day to recognize that a holy family may consist of a single parent with a single child or several children. A holy family can be guided by a foster-parent, by grandparents or by other relatives. Today, we, also, need to acknowledge that a holy family includes those who are single, both those who have not married and those who are widowed.
A true holy family consists of all individual children of God, his children who seek a relationship of “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” with all of the other children of God, all who are brothers and sisters under “our Father,” a Father to whom we pray that He will forgive us as we forgive others, for it is in this forgiveness that we give honor to one another and together become His Holy Family.
Feast of the Holy Family; December 30, 2001; December 26, 2004 (revised)
Sir 3:2-6, 12-14; Col 3:12-21; Mt 2:13-15, 19 -23