Holy Family

Readings: 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28; 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24; Luke 2:41-52

Video

We prayed in our opening prayer

for this feast of the Holy Family,

“that we may imitate them
in practicing the virtues of family life.”
The family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph 
are offered to us as an ideal 
that we are to strive to live up to
and a pattern for us to reproduce 
in our own families.

So, how are you doing?
How well do you think 
you measure up to this ideal?
If you don’t think you’re doing all that well,
it may be that we tend picture the Holy Family 
as toddler Jesus playing happily at the feet of Mary
with his cousin John the Baptist,
always generously sharing his toys;
or as teenage Jesus and Joseph 
working side-by-side in the carpenter’s shop,
Jesus always diligent
and Joseph quietly admiring Jesus’
preternatural skills with saw and lathe.
So when we look at our own toddler 
bopping her brother in the head with a Tonka truck
or get angry with our teenager 
when he seems so slow—not to mention sullen—
in finishing what really is a pretty simple task,
we may think that there is no way
that our own families will ever measure up 
to the shining ideal of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
 
As children we will never match 
Jesus’ amazing obedience and thoughtfulness;
as parents we will never have 
Mary and Joseph’s endless patience and wisdom.
We will never achieve the holiness
of the Holy Family.
But what if we have misunderstood 
what makes the Holy Family holy?
Part of the problem is that we confuse the ideal
that the Holy Family presents to us
with some nostalgic, and largely false, picture
of families from the past—
television images of children and parents 
happily gathered around the family dinner table,
saying please and thank you
and talking about the exploits 
and adventures of the day.
Or perhaps we think 
of the carefully curated pictures 
of familial joy and togetherness 
that people used to include 
in their Christmas cards
and now post year-round on social media.
Do we think of the holiness of the family
of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as something like that:
a holiness that knows no struggle,
knows no sorrow or pain,
no confusion or misunderstanding?
If that is our picture, 
then perhaps we need 
to look more closely at the Scriptures.
 
We need to see Mary, 
the frightened but faithful young girl,
quite unexpectedly pregnant,
who gives birth in a stable
and whose heart will be pierced
by the sword of sorrow.
We need to see Joseph,
the new father who struggles to provide
safety and stability for his family,
who must take them to a distant country
to avoid the threat of violence.
We need to see Jesus,
the baby born in a barn
who becomes the young man 
who senses a call from God 
that his parents struggle to grasp
and who follows a path
that frightens and worries them.

What makes the holy family holy?
It’s not their being some first-century version 
of the twentieth-century television family 
or the twenty-first-century Instagram family.
In our opening prayer, 
we prayed that we might imitate them
not only in the virtues of family life,
but in “the bonds of charity.”
What makes the holy family holy is their love:
the love that makes Mary say “yes” to God,
the love that makes Joseph care for a child not his own,
the love that makes the eternal Son of God 
empty himself and be born among us,
the love that makes him accept death,
even death on a cross,
the love that raises him from the grave.

This is the love that we hear behind Mary’s words:
“Son, why have you done this to us?
Your father and I have been looking for you 
with great anxiety.”
This is the love that is present in Jesus’ reply:
“Why were you looking for me?
Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
This is the love that is present even amid
confusion and misunderstanding,
fear and frustration.
This is the love that makes Jesus who he is.
For while Jesus is who he is from all eternity
because he is the Word 
who is born of the Father before all ages,
in a very real sense he also becomes who he is
by being born in time into a human family,
by advancing “in wisdom and age and favor
before God and man”
within the matrix of love
that is the holiness of the Holy Family.

But what of our families?
What of our families that struggle, not simply
to live up to a television or Instagram ideal,
but sometimes even to love at all?
What of our families, 
where love at times cannot make itself felt
or cannot forgive the harms 
that we have inflicted on one another?
Even then, we can look to the Holy Family.
The Holy family can teach us that love
is not the exclusive property 
of mythical perfect families.
 
The Holy Family can teach us 
that love can be present
even amid anxiety and confusion;
that we can keep loving people
even when we don’t understand them,
or can’t protect and provide for them 
in the way that we would wish.
But above all, 
the Holy Family can teach us
that there is a reservoir of love 
upon which we can draw
when human love runs dry,
a perfect divine love that can heal
the imperfections of our human love:
“See what love the Father has bestowed on us
that we may be called the children of God.
And so we are.”
This is the love that forgives love’s failures,
that sustains us when the harms we cause
obscure the love we feel.
This is the love that makes us by grace
what Christ is by nature,
children of God,
treasured by God from all eternity. 

May we know such love 
in these days of Christmas,
may we know it in our hearts,
in our families,
and in our world.
And may God have mercy on us all. 

Advent 4

Readings: Micah 5:1-4a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45

Video

Writing shortly before the time of Jesus 
the Roman poet Ovid said,
“Women’s words are as light 
as the doomed leaves whirling in autumn; 
easily swept by the wind, 
easily drowned by the wave” (The Loves bk II).
Alas, Ovid’s opinion of women’s words
was not unusual in the ancient world.
Women’s words were thought trivial, 
unserious and flighty,
unsuited to weighty matters.

But in a world that largely discounted 
the words of women 
as weightless and windswept, 
we hear in today’s Gospel reading 
words spoken between women 
on weighty matters—
the prophetic words of Elizabeth 
speaking of the divine Word
who waits in Mary’s womb:
“Blessed are you among women, 
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”
Her words are indeed windswept,
but it is the breath of the Spirit 
that sends them whirling.

Of course, the weight of Elizabeth’s words
count as nothing compared to Mary’s words
spoken earlier to the angel: “Be it done to me
according to your word.”
On these words hangs the hope of the world.
Perhaps no greater words have ever
been spoken by a human person,
for they are the doorway through which
God’s Word made flesh,
the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb, 
enters into our sorrowing, sin-sick world.
Truly blessed is she who believed.

We should not be surprised, however, 
that the Gospel would give 

such weight to women’s words.
After all, what do we celebrate at Christmas
if not God’s preference for those things
that the world counts as of little weight?
Think of the words of the prophet Micah,
which we have just heard:
“You, Bethlehem-Ephrathah
too small to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel.”
It’s just so typical of the God of Israel,
always preferring the underdog.
God chose David, 
the puniest among his brothers,
from the little town of Bethlehem
(which is simply a polite way 
of saying “nowheresville”),
to be Israel’s anointed ruler.
And now, the prophet Micah foretells,
God is going to do it again;
God will send a new anointed one,
and this ruler whose reign  
“shall reach to the ends of the earth”
is going to come from,
you guessed it,
the little town of Bethlehem,
“too small to be among the clans of Judah.”

What we will celebrate at Christmas 
is the great mystery of redemption:
the almighty Lord of the universe,
creator of all things visible and invisible,
chooses to be with us
not as a king,
not as a general,
not as a scholar
from whom we expect weighty words,
but as a speechless child from nowheresville,
as a wandering rabbi whose followers
are a bunch of scruffy ignoramuses,
as a convicted blasphemer and revolutionary
tortured to death on a Roman cross.
If this is who God is,
if this is how the Word takes flesh 
and dwells among us,
then of course his arrival is announced
by those whose words were counted
as of little weight,
of course it is an insignificant old woman
through whom the Spirit speaks,
of course it is the word of one young girl
upon which our hopes hang.

And if this is who God is,
then who should we be?
If this is how the eternal Word is spoken,
then how should we listen?
Whose words do I think of
as words of little weight?
Who do I think could not possibly 
say something I needed to hear?
Someone of a different political party?
Someone of a different social class?
Someone of a different race?
Someone of a different religion?
How do we learn to listen
and weigh the words
of those we may have written off?

This fall the Church has embarked
on a worldwide synod, which will offer us, 
as Pope Francis said in his opening address,
“the opportunity to become a listening Church….
To listen to the Spirit in adoration and prayer….
To listen to our brothers and sisters speak 
of their hopes and of the crises of faith 
present in different parts of the world.”
Sometimes we might feel that in the Church
our voices have little weight
and our concerns go unheard;
the synod is an attempt to remedy that.
For our part, here at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen,
we will be holding listening sessions in late January
so that our parishioners can have an opportunity
to speak of their joys and hopes,
their sorrows and anxieties,
which will eventually be reported
to the bishops meeting in Rome.
But these sessions will be more 
than an opportunity to speak;
they will also be a chance to learn to listen,
to hear the diversity of voices 
that make up our community,
to hear what others love about our faith
and to hear what causes them pain.
You can sign up on our website,
but even if you don’t sign up
you can simply show up.

During this time of listening
we need the help of God’s Spirit
to open our ears to hear those 
whose words we may have thought weightless.
And so the Church encourages us
to pray the prayer that began
each session of the Second Vatican Council:

We stand before You, Holy Spirit, 
as we gather together in Your name. 
With You alone to guide us, 
make Yourself at home in our hearts; 
Teach us the way we must go 
and how we are to pursue it. 
We are weak and sinful; 
do not let us promote disorder. 
Do not let ignorance 
lead us down the wrong path 
nor partiality influence our actions. 
Let us find in You our unity 
so that we may journey together to eternal life 
and not stray from the way of truth 
and what is right. 
All this we ask of You, 
who are at work in every place and time, 
in the communion of the Father and the Son, 
forever and ever. Amen.