Christmas is a very busy liturgical season for us. In 3 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 today’s Gospel is that it is not some sort of perfect, idealistic, unrealistic view of family life. Instead, 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. 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, 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 to us today. 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 faith.
In recent years, the family has been a very important topic of discussion in our society. We’ve 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. 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 those values. In our Catholic faith, we had a Synod on the Family several years ago as convened by Pope Francis. One article I read about this issue was entitled: “Reality is Messy for US Catholic Families.” Yes, the realities we face as families are messy and complicated and not always so straight-forward. Bishop George Murry of Youngstown, Ohio, one of the official American delegates to the Synod, said that one of the main understandings to come out the Synod saw the family as the basis of society and as the domestic church. 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 that consumerism and secular values could affect that reality. The Synod expressed how we in the Church need to listen to 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, the 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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