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 today. 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? That’s what we all strive for. But families are messy, they are broken, and imperfect. They are often far from holy. Our families can be, at the same time, our greatest joy and our deepest sorrow.

 

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 there was that crazy cousin John 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 today 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 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 so often different.

 

The Holy Family lived those virtues. Mary and Joseph actually lived with Jesus at the center of their lives. Everything was focused on him. The Kingdom of God that Jesus preached began in their household. But that didn’t mean they had it easy, that 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’s 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? We are each called to take up our cross and follow him.

 

What each member of the holy family had was hope. Just like us, they were given the choice to remain faithful to the promises God had made to them. Mary had the choice to accept her role as the angel had foretold for 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 had each other to lean on as they faced the struggles and evil of the world that sought to destroy them. They had been given a promise by angels that if they trusted in God not only would they be blessed, but the world would be changed forever.

 

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.

 

Emmanuel, God with Us, they called him. God was truly and literally a part of the Holy Family, and his presence allowed them to withstand the onslaught of the forces of hell itself and yet experience his peace. God is present in your family and you too can live in His peace. When you pray to Him around your dinner table, at bedtime and throughout the day, He is the center of your life. When you live a life of charity and hospitality, you are modeling the savior. When you forgive one another you are showing the greatest love of all.

 

For Mary and Joseph, Jesus was right there, a constant reminder of the promise God had given them. Jesus is right here, in your family, and He has made the same promise to you.

 

 

 

Christmas is for Children

 

There’s a saying that Christmas is for children, and I guess in many ways it is. There’s something about children at Christmastime that makes it what it is. If we adults were in charge it would lose a lot. To us older folks Christmastime is often full of stress, with so many things to do and plan. We have parties to host and attend, presents – and not just any presents, but just the right ones – to buy, wrap and give. And we have so many responsibilities around Christmas that we have to weave in and around the whirlwind of our everyday lives. Many of us dread Christmas because of this. We have so many expectations of what the perfect Christmas should be that we get all wound up in the stuff of Christmas while forgetting what Christmas was for us when we were children.

For children, especially little children, Christmas is so much simpler, so much easier, so much more wonderful. Little children have not yet been spoiled with the expectation of presents. For them it’s not about what they expect to receive that is so wonderful. It is all the sights and sounds and smells, especially around the baby Jesus. There’s something about a newborn baby that captivates us all, but especially for the little children.

I love to see parents each year bringing their little ones up to see the holy family statues here. You see it at every creche. Moms and dads clutching little hands, bringing them up close to see the manger scene, pointing out the baby Jesus. Telling them the story of that first Christmas. When I was young my job was to set up the creche in our home. I would carefully unwrap each porcelain figurine and gently place it in its particular place in the creche.

After everything was just right we would then as a family read the story from the gospels of that Christmas night. Many of you have similar traditions, or I hope you do.  That is one of the first lessons in faith many children receive from their parents, the reality of the baby Jesus. Silent night, holy night. Calmness, heavenly peace, shepherds and angels on high. Peace on earth, goodwill towards men. Isn’t that what Christmas is all about? For one shining moment, the entire world is focused on one single event in history, on one single person, on one single baby.

 

Children understand what Christmas is really all about. That is, until we spoil it for them. They understand the reality of what a baby truly is. A baby is hope. A baby is the ultimate proof that God exists, with its perfect little fingers and toes, in its wonderful complexity and simplicity. We don’t remember what we were like as babies, we must see in our children what we once were.

 

Jesus was once like that. Have you ever stopped to think about just how radical the Christ child is? The very thought that this little baby, so vulnerable and innocent and perilous, is God himself? The most radical and cataclysmic event in all of human history, the incarnation, God becoming man, started out in such a simple way? God chose to become one of us in the same way he chooses to have each of us enter the world. And the result of that is peace on earth, goodwill towards men, glory to God in the highest. In a newborn baby we see the goodness of the world, the rightness of creation, even for a brief moment. That’s how we all started and how we should all view ourselves, as goodness and right. As persons of hope.

 

Jesus said that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Unless we become like the perfect child, Jesus Christ, we will not and cannot be one with him forever in heaven. Because that child, who started out so innocent and calm, shook the world to its core and set up a choice that has divided the world for 2000 years.

 

You see, the entrance of God into history as man demands a choice for every human being. We have no choice in how and when and why we are born. But we are all ultimately confronted with a choice. Will we follow that perfect child? Will we model our lives after His? Will we submit to the will of the Father has he did, and can we live with the consequences of that choice?

 

That child grew up and lived an unconventional life, a radical life. He cured the sick, raised the dead, admonished sinners, set the existing religious order upside down, challenged the status quo in every individual heart, and had a simple message. Come, follow me. He demanded of us no less than what he himself did. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners, care for the poor and the marginalized, go out and make disciples of all the nations, spread the good news that God himself has become one of us so that we can become one with Him.

 

Do you see that man in the creche before you? Do you see the choice before you tonight? Can you see that beyond all the sentimentality of the scene and the season is the awesome reality that that child was born to die? His very reason for living was to die…for you. The quiet and peace and innocence of the baby’s nativity was to end in the horrible violence of the cross. Do you see that just as we enter into the remembrance of his birth we must also enter into the reality of his death and what that means for each of us? The hope that began with Jesus’ birth continues in the hope of his resurrection and his promise of eternal life.

 

It is good that we become like little children at Christmas. It is good that we enter into the sights and sounds of the season in order to reconnect ourselves with the simplicity and innocence of the manger scene. It is good that we, for one brief moment every year, look upon the baby Jesus and see ourselves, what we can become, what we are called to become.

 

The message of Christmas is one of renewal. Our children are our hope for the future and each newborn baby is a sign that things will continue. Each newborn baby is a regeneration, a renewal for our families and for our world. I think that is one reason we are all drawn to them, wonder at them, and make such a fuss about them. And I think that is why Christmas is for the children. Because it is about the children. It’s about the children we once were, and about the children we can become again.

 

It’s all about the children.  It’s all about the child.