Christmas is a
very busy liturgical season for us in our Catholic faith. In only 2 ½ weeks, we not only celebrate the
birth of our Savior with our Christmas eve and Christmas day celebrations, but
we also will celebrate the Holy Family, Mary the Mother of God, the Three Kings,
and the Baptism of our Lord. That is a
lot in terms of major celebrations in our Church in a very short period of
time.
What strikes me in the Gospel account for today’s feast of the Holy
Family is that it is not some sort of perfect, idealistic, unrealistic view of family life,
but rather, it presents Jesus and his parents at a moment of crisis, of Jesus
being separated from his parents for three days as they were traveling to
Jerusalem for the Jewish holy days. The parents with
us here at mass today can only begin to imagine how they would feel if one of
their children went missing for three days and they had no idea where he was. And remember, Mary didn’t have a cell phone
that she could pick up to call Jesus to find out what was going on. When Mary was looking for Jesus, she was probably frustrated and confused, anxious and frightened. But we are told
that Mary kept all of these things in her heart and learned from them. Mary shared this
event with the early Christian community so that it could be recorded in the
Gospels and passed down with the community of believers throughout the
ages. The finding of Jesus
in the Temple shows the challenges and obstacles we face as families, how we
can overcome them with perseverance and respond to them in a loving way in the
context of our faith.
If we look at all
that has been going on in our world this past year, the family has been a very
important topic of discussion. We have had court
decisions and government policy changes in our country and in many other
countries throughout the world that have looked at our very definition of marriage
and family. And as secularism
in the modern world is battling Christianity, we see how families are finding
it more and more challenging to live out Christian values in their family life
and to form their children in these Christian values. In our Catholic
faith, we have had the recent Synod on the Family. A final document of the Synod has just been
issued in English and there is the expectation that Pope Francis will be
issuing his own document on the Synod on the Family. One article I recently
read about this issues was entitled:
“Reality is Messy for US Catholic Families.” Yes, the realities we face as families are
complicated and messy and not always so straight-forward. Bishop George
Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, one of the official American delegates to the Synod, saw the family as the basis of society and as the domestic church as one of the main understandings to come out of the Synod. Some of the
bishops from places like India and Africa stated that the family unit was still
very strong in their countries, but that they were afraid how consumerism and
secular values could affect that reality. The Synod
expressed how we in the Church need to listen how our families are struggling
with what the Church teaches before we look at changing Church teaching.
Paul challenges
the Colossians to live out the values of Christ’s Gospel in their relations
with each other. He tells them to use heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and
patience, being able to bear with one another and forgive one another. Do we try to live
up to these Christian values in our relations within our families? Are we trying to
live by those values as a parish community? Today, as we
celebrate the Holy Family that nurtured Jesus throughout his lifetime, let us
think about the ways that we are called to holiness in our own families, they
ways we are called to cultivate this holiness in our families and have it
infuse how we live out our lives of faith.
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