Homily for the Week of December 30, 2012

HOMILY: Feast of Holy Family, 2012
1 Samuel 1:30-22; 24-28
1 John 3:1-2, 21-24
Luke 2:41-52

On this last day of the calendar year we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What’s really great about this feast day is that it’s about something to which we can easily relate. Each of us are members of a family. Families come in many different sizes: traditional family, or a blended family, or a single parent family, or like myself, a member of a parish family. So when we celebrate the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we also celebrate our own families.

We know very little of Jesus' life between His birth and when he was about 30 years old. We also know little about his family life. Joseph, his foster father, was a carpenter, so it would have been customary that Jesus would follow his father’s trade as a carpenter. Nazareth was a small village of about 300 persons. In the Jewish homes of Jesus' day, until a child was about 12, the mother was the teacher in religion as well as in learning. When a boy was 12 years old the father took over and began to teach him a trade.

The Bible story about Jesus which I just read took place when Jesus was 12 years old. Each year parents and their older children went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. Can you identify with Jesus in this story? Jesus at the age of twelve is on the verge of becoming a man in the Jewish society of his day. He and his parents have traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. After the departure of Mary and Joseph, Jesus remains behind in the Temple. There he amazes the religious teachers with his wisdom and intelligence. When Jesus' parents discover him missing, they are upset. Jesus explains the importance of putting God first in our lives. When we do this, everything else in life will fall into place.

The Church has placed this Feast of the Holy Family in the Christmas Season as an encouragement for all families to be holy. What does that mean? Being HOLY does not mean that we go around all day with our hands folded and our head bowed. Being HOLY means keeping our mind on what it is that the Lord wants us to be and to do. It means having a place in our family for religion and prayer and trying to live the religion and prayer we talk about.

Today's readings remind us that we must care for one another in our family. Even when parents misunderstand or nag, or when children seem not to listen to parents, we cannot say, "That's it. I'm leaving home!" Like Jesus, we go on loving one another and trying to work things out together.

Throughout the ages, the family has been the cradle of the Christian religious spirit. The first places where the Christian communities gathered were not churches, but the homes of families who opened their doors to the Christian way of life. These domestic churches nurtured the spread of Christianity for over two hundred years. And since then the family has been the single most important teacher of Christian virtue and Christian faith.

Many families today are what are known as blended families. This can happen in two ways. A couple practicing different religions get married. Another type of blended family is when a man and a woman who were previously married and both have children, get married a second time. This can be especially challenging when their children become teenagers if their mother and father did not prepare them for this.

The family is the first community we experience where we begin to develop relationships. We all learn the meaning of forgiveness from our experience of being forgiven within the family. We all learn the meaning of thankfulness as we experience thankfulness within the family. These are done in the ordinary moments of daily family life: at mealtimes, household chores, washing dishes, cleaning rooms, workdays, vacations, expressions of love and intimacy, caring for a sick child or elderly parent, or the death of a child. and even at times of conflicts over things like how to celebrate holidays, discipline children or spend money. All of these are threads from which families can weave a pattern of holiness. It is within family that we are either called to God or driven away from God.

This does not mean, however, that family life is always easy. The family photos you receive with Christmas cards show the perfect family. They don't show debts, arguments, times of anger, people who have left their faith, people who are addicted, kids on academic probation,kids with behavior problems. Yet these are the situations of family life. But in the Bible God never really gave us the picture of the ideal family. Consider even the Holy Family of Nazareth. Joseph considers divorcing Mary when he learns she is pregnant. But in all of these God's love overcomes all division. On this feast of the Holy Family, take a inventory of your family. Be generous with thanks and praise for what you do well, ask forgiveness for times you have hurt, and praise God for having given you the gift of marriage and family.