30 December 2022 – Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

     Today, we mark a great feast of the Holy Family in our Church in this first week of the Christmas season.   Throughout the papacy of Pope Francis, the topic of the family has been at the forefront of our Church discussions.  You may remember that the pope called a Synod on the Family during the early years of his papacy. 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 many 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 modern 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.  We see the Holy Family in the Gospel today moving twice according to the message they received from the Angel.  They fled to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod.  They then returned to their town of Nazareth when it was safe.  Many families today also face a hard reality that causes them to respond in different ways.  

         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 sisters or brothers or lay leaders in the Church can attest to the way our parents and our upbringing had an influence 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. 

12/27/2015 – The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – 2nd reading: Colossians 3:12-17, Gospel: Luke 2:41-52

     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.