Today, we mark a great feast of the Holy Family in our Church on this first Sunday after Christmas Day as we continue our celebration of the Christmas season. Throughout the last couple of years, the topic of the family has been at the forefront of our Church discussions, with Pope Francis convening a Synod on the Family a couple of years ago. That Synod looked at the questions and issues facing the family in our modern world, with a specific emphasis on the pastoral care needs of the family. The Church rightfully sees the family as the traditional unit upon which society is built, but in our modern reality, the family faces great changes and challenges. Families and religion have traditionally been two of the things that bind us together in society and that help form us as children, youth, and adults. Yet, Cardinal Walter Kasper from Germany has noted that in the past 50 years, modern society has been more about breaking down those things that bind us together, with consumerism and individualism becoming the more important values that are being embraced.
With all the challenges and obstacles families face in the world, the feast of the Holy Family that we celebrate today becomes even more important and relevant to our journey. We see many people in our society today on a quest to find meaning and significance in their lives, to find fulfillment and happiness. And they are looking in a lot of places to find those things. Simeon in today’s Gospel from Luke was on a quest as well: a quest for the Messiah. Three different times in the Gospel, it says that the Holy Spirit was guiding Simeon in his quest, that the Spirit revealed to him that he would not die until seeing the Messiah with his own eyes. We don’t know how the Holy Spirit revealed to him that Jesus was indeed a very special child, but at the moment he saw Jesus and his parents, he took Jesus into his arms and pronounced his quest accomplished, saying that he was ready to depart from this world. But Simeon’s quest was not self-centered or narrow-minded. He saw in Jesus a gift for all the people: a light that would be revealed to the Gentiles and all the nations, a Messiah who would bring glory to the people of Israel.
On Christmas day, we heard from the beginning of John’s Gospel that Jesus was the Word of God made incarnate in our world. Yet, today’s Gospel points out that after Jesus and his parents returned to their home town of Nazareth, after they had fulfilled what was required of them by presenting Jesus in the Temple, Jesus grew up there filled with wisdom and became strong. The baptismal rite in our Church states that the parents are supposed to the first teachers and the best of teachers to the child in the ways of the faith. The Church family, the friends and loved ones, the godparents, the catechists, the priests and the lay leaders in the Church have a role in shaping the faith of the children and youth, yet the primary responsibility in the eyes of the Church falls to the parents and the immediate family. Even though Jesus was the Son of God, he was influenced and formed by his parents, his family, his community, and his environment.
Today's feast of the Holy Family declares the importance of the family in our human development and in the development of our faith. Any of us who are priests or consecrated sister or brothers or lay leaders in the Church can attest to the way our parents and our upbringing had an affect on our vocations to serve in the Church. Today, we honor our families through the example of the Holy Family. I would like to close today’s feast with a prayer that Pope John Paul II wrote for the family. Let us pray:
Lord God, from you every family in Heaven and on earth takes its name. Father, you are love and life.
Through Your Son, Jesus Christ, born of woman, and through the Holy Spirit, the fountain of divine charity, grant that every family on earth may become for each successive generation a true shrine of life and love.
Grant that your grace may guide the thoughts and actions of husbands and wives for the good of their families and of all the families in the world.
Grant that the young may find in the family solid support for their human dignity and for their growth in truth and love.
Grant that love, strengthened by the grace of the sacrament of marriage, may prove mightier than all the weaknesses and trials through which our families sometimes pass.
Through the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth, grant that the Church may fruitfully carry out her worldwide mission in the family and through the family.
We ask this of You, God the Father, who is life, truth and love with the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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