Your Holy Family

The Feast of the Holy Family

Christmas Day has ended, and many of you spent it with family. Your own nuclear families and often extended family and those close friends we consider to be part of our families. I see many of them here tonight. The media often portray families this season as clean, happy, affluent, laughing and smiling around the tree or the table. And why not? That’s what we all long for, isn’t it? But families are messy, they are broken, and imperfect. They are often far from holy. 

Jesus’ family was also messy. Not his nuclear family but his extended family. On Christmas Eve we heard the beginning of Matthew’s gospel rolling out the genealogy of Jesus, and it was far from perfect. Liars and cheats, murderers and adulterers, faithful and unfaithful kings. And a crazy cousin running around the desert yelling at people. But if we go through the scriptures and read about the lives of the people in that family tree, we find that the one thing that is constant is that even in the midst of their sinfulness and lack of faith in God, even at their worst, God was always faithful to them.

The ultimate sign of that faithfulness is that at the end of that long genealogy is Jesus. God incarnate on the earth in order to reconcile the world to himself. And God chose to begin that reconciliation within a family. It is through the family that we have the best chance for eternal life.

Our families exist to help us get to heaven. We are shown the way to do so in the first two readings today. Sirach lays out God’s plan for the structure of the family, with each person having their proper role. And while there is a hierarchy, there is no power struggle. Sirach uses words like honor, reverence, kindness, prayer, justice and comfort. It is in the home that these virtues are first and best nurtured and lived. And it is from the family that these virtues spread out into the world first through the extended family, then to the community.

 Paul speaks tonight about how the community of faith is to live. He adds to Sirach’s list of virtues heartfelt compassion, humility, gentleness and patience, gratitude, and above all forgiveness. We are to put on love, which is the bond of perfection that holds all relationships together. We are to submit to one another out of love, because that’s what love is – diminishing ourselves for the benefit of others. The Church is called to serve, and not to be served. If we do these things, the peace of Christ will dwell in our hearts, and we will bring that peace to the world.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if each of our families lived by these virtues and experienced that peace? What would the world be like if every family strived to live this way? But in reality we are often the most unforgiving, cruel and judgmental to those closest to us. Many of us have experienced unhealthy, even violent relationships in our families, and it is sometimes difficult to relate to the images of father, mother and child we hear today. That might be the ideal, but reality is different.

In the Holy Family we get a glimpse of what it would be like if we lived a holy life together. Just because they were holy doesn’t mean they lived in a warm little bubble, unaffected by the world. On the contrary. Mary still heard the snickers of her neighbors behind her back, gossiping about the dubious circumstances of her son’s conception. Joseph had to deal with keeping Jesus safe from a king who wanted to kill him. And Jesus, well, his neighbors even tried to throw him off a cliff when he preached the gospel to them.

Just because Jesus, Mary and Joseph were holy does not mean they were not affected by sin and death. Their faithfulness to God did not preclude the threat of death against them. Mary was conceived without original sin, but her soul was still pierced by the sword of sorrow. And Jesus, God himself, was tortured and killed. To be holy is to be like God, and if God allowed these things to happen to himself, why would things be different for us?

What each member of the holy family had was a choice. Just like us, they were given the choice to remain faithful to the promise God had made to them. Mary had the choice to accept her role as the angel had told her. Joseph had the choice to believe the dreams he had and accept his role, even though of the three he probably understood it the least. And Jesus himself had a choice to submit his will to that of his Father’s. Father, if it is possible let this cup pass me by, but not my will but yours be done.

And they each had the choice either to let the struggles and evil in the world destroy them and make them bitter, or to accept the peace of the Lord that living those virtues would give them.

In so many ways the Holy Family is just like ours. And just as they were like us, we can become like them. We too have choices to make. We can choose to love or to hate. We can choose bitterness or forgiveness. We can choose discord or reconciliation. We cut deepest those closest to us, and so the best place to begin healing is within the family.

But it goes beyond just our own families. On the cross, we all became part of the holy family. We are the beloved disciple to whom Jesus gave his mother. Jesus described his relationship with his Church as that of a bridegroom and his bride, the foundation of the family. Jesus is the head of our family of faith, and it is within that family that we are saved. We are the holy family when we live as church. We are the holy family when we treat each other with compassion, forgiveness, honor and respect. And we are truly church when we extend those virtues to the way we interact in the world, outside these walls.

Emmanuel, God With Us, they called him. God was truly and literally with the Holy Family, and his presence allowed them to withstand the onslaught of the forces of hell itself. Is God present in your family? Is He the center of your lives? Do you pray to Him around your dinner table, at bedtime and throughout the day? That is what Mary and Joseph did. How could they not? Jesus was right there, a constant reminder of the promise God had given them. That’s the real choice you have to make. Will you allow Jesus to be that close to you, be that intimate a part of your family?

It is wonderful that tonight we will be witnessing the baptism of baby Blake. Thomas and Emily have chosen to give their child the greatest gift a parent can give, the promise of eternal life. They understand that their greatest responsibility as parents is to give their child all he needs to get to heaven. Baptism is the necessary first step on that journey. They will be the first teachers of their children in the ways of faith, just as Mary and Joseph were. They know that it takes a Church to raise a child in the faith, and that’s why they are here tonight, with us in community. As the shepherds gathered around the baby in the manger that Christmas night and rejoiced with the angels, so we gather around a little child and his family tonight and rejoice with them as they see the hope of eternal life shine on him. We will continue to support and nurture this family as church so that together we will all share one day in the gift of eternal life.