1st Readings- Sirach 3: 2-6, 12-14 – God sets a Father in honor over his children
2nd Reading- Colossians 3: 12-17 – Over all of these, put on love
Gospel: Luke 2: 41-52 – Finding of the Lost boy Jesus in the Temple
A son took his elderly father to a restaurant for an evening dinner. The father being very old and weak, while eating, dropped food on his shirt and trousers. Other people in the restaurant watched him in disgust while his son was calm. After he finished eating, his son who was not at all embarrassed, quietly took him to the bathroom, wiped the food particles from his clothes, removed the stains, combed his hair, and straightened his eyeglasses. When they came out of the bathroom the entire restaurant was watching them in dead silence, not able to understand how someone could embarrass themselves publicly like that. The son paid the bill and started walking out with his father.
As they were leaving, an old man among the diners called out to the son and said, “Thank you for taking such good care of your father.” The son replied, “Sir, I am only doing for him what he did for me for so many years before”. He, and my mother were always there for me. They cared for me and now it’s my turn to be there for them and care for them. And with that the restaurant went silent.
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family and I think the Church in her wisdom purposely placed this feast right after Christmas to bring us back down to earth. You see, I think amidst all the hustle and bustle, all the noise, all the family dynamics which occur particularly at this time of year, we may forget how important family is, not only to our lives here on earth but also as the means to get to heaven. You see it is only when we embrace the lessons that family can teach us that we can truly become holy.
And this is one of the things that Sirach is trying to teach us today. It is God who created the family. He made us to live as family and with that comes joys, tragedies, challenges, and responsibilities. And it is in our response to these joys, tragedies, and challenges that we learn how to be holy.
Now if we are looking for the best model for trying to be holy, a good place to start is with family of Jesus, Mary, & Joseph. But I think at times it might be easy to think “of course the family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is holy because one of those family members is the Son of God. And I think, it would also be easy to think that this family could not have had the same challenges or struggles as other normal human families, but the Gospels tell us a different story. To begin with, Mary finds herself in an unplanned pregnancy, or should I say a God planned pregnancy after she was already engaged to be married. Then her Joseph her fiancé while trying to decide how to divorce her quietly and shield her from societal consequences receives a message from and angel telling him of God’s plan. Towards the end of Mary’s pregnancy, she and Joseph were forced to travel about 100 miles on foot and donkey, from their home to another town to register for the census. After they arrived, they found that there were no hotel rooms available much less a birthing center or a hospital, so she is forced to give birth to their child in a place meant to house animals. Then sometime after their child’s birth, they are forced to flee to a foreign country because a maniacal king wanted to kill the child. And it can be assumed that the trip was not an easy one for them because of the threat from robbers or attacks by wild animals while on the road. Once there, they had to find a way to survive in a strange land for several years. And then after their return to Nazareth, in addition to the usual challenges of parenting a child, Mary and Joseph had to endure the worry and stress of having their 12-year-old child go missing during a trip to Jerusalem. Later in life, Mary would have to endure the death of her husband, and her son’s father. These are the stories we know about. There is probably much more we do not know. The point is that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus faced many challenges as a family, but they faced them together. Joseph protected and provided for Mary and Jesus. Mary cared for Joseph and Jesus and kept their home in Nazareth. They sacrificed and laid down their lives for each other and for their child. And they were able to handle all the challenges they faced as a family because they trusted in God, they stayed together, and their love for one another was unconditional.
So, what does the Holy Family teach us? Well one thing is to follow God’s lead. Mary and Joseph were a couple who showed and openness to allowing God to lead their life together. They were open to the fact that God might speak to them. Another thing that the Holy Family models for us is to be teachers of faith and virtue. The home in Nazareth, in addition to the local synagogue, would have been the place of instruction for the Christ Child. Joseph and Mary taught Jesus how to read and study the scriptures. And as we know Jesus began his public ministry by opening the scroll in the synagogue and reading from the prophet Isaiah. It was in the home in Nazareth that Jesus would have learned to pray the Shema every evening, “hear O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone. Later, in life, He would teach his disciples how to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Joseph the chaste spouse and Mary the perpetual virgin would teach Jesus about purity and modesty, by the way they treated each other in his presence. Throughout his young life, the virtues of compassion, humility, forgiveness, and charity were taught and modeled by his parents. And He would carry all these things that he learned out in the world.
This is how God intended us to live as family and this is how a family becomes holy. But the challenge to live as family and to be holy has always been at the center of a spiritual battle. Since the beginning when God created the 1st family, and for every family since, it has been the devil’s primary mission to disrupt, diminish, and ultimately destroy that institution which so closely mirrors the love of God.
And today the threat to family is even greater, as we see our government and our society as a whole seeking to destroy the nuclear family. What is happening today was predicted by Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children who witnessed the appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima. In 2005, shortly before her death, she wrote a letter to Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, Archbishop of Bologna, Italy. In it she predicted that the final battle between Christ and Satan would be over marriage and the family. And we are seeing her prediction being played out today in societal and legislative actions which attack marriage, family, and human dignity. We see it in government interference in the raising and education of children by their parents and promoting an ideology which states that not all human life is equal nor is it deserving of protection. And this battle began with the erosion of religious freedom and the removal of God from the public discourse. All the virtues which we are supposed to learn in the training ground that we call family such as forgiveness, compassion, dialogue, selflessness, sacrifice, all of these and other virtues are being erased from our consciousness.
This is why today’s feast is so important. Today we are reminded by the example of the family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that we are called to live, to learn from, to love each other, as family. The family is God’s gift to us. The family fulfills God’s plan for how we should live and treat each other. The family is God’s blueprint for how we are to be holy.
