Fr. Rick’s Homily: The Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. 12/29/24
1 Sm 1:20-22, 24-28; 1 Jn 3:1-2, 21-24; Lk 2:41-52
1 Jn. 3:2 “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed/ We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (And by extension, we will see each other and all of creation as God sees it.
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.“
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church ‘hearts’ refers to “our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.” (CCC. 2563)
When this level of knowing and seeing is aligned with God’s knowing, THEN we receive from Him whatever we ask.
Of course, maturing into this level of knowing and seeing requires a lifelong process. Since Jesus was fully God, but also fully human, He too had to grow in wisdom as noted in the last line of today’s Gospel, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.”
Notice that in the Gospel today Mary and Joseph are not mentioned by name but as His mother and father or parents. Jesus refers to the need for Him to be in His Father’s house, but then He obediently returned home with His parents to Nazareth. The priority is on the Father in Heaven. He grew in wisdom in His parent’s house because they were a devout Jewish family and knew that Jesus was destined for some kind of a sacred mission. It was a setting where Jesus could continue to grow and mature even though they were still left pondering what that would eventually mean.
The first reading today also describes a family that realized their child Samuel was a gift from God. In gratitude for this great gift and in faithfulness to Hannah’s promise they returned to the Temple and dedicated Samuel’s whole life the service of God.
In both instances, Samuel and Jesus lived their young lives in an environment where their ‘hearts’ could mature in a manner earlier defined by the Catechism. They would be trained to hear God and develop the capacity for obedience to the mission given to them.
So, this is a day when we just sit back and rejoice in the faithfulness of Samuel, Hannah, Elkanah, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, our ancestors in the faith. We celebrate these Holy Families and ask them for strength and guidance when our plans don’t work out as we intended. THANK YOU, HOLY ANCESTORS!!
ERRNNTT (basketball buzzer noise)
I wouldn’t want us to leave Mass today without feeling a little bit guilty. (Wink, wink) Recall in the second reading today from First John, that we are God’s children now. We as parents and children are supposed to emulate these holy families. Elkanah knew what type of sacrifice his tradition demanded from him and Hannah recalled the promise she made when pleading to God for a child. And of course we have been hearing about Jesus, Mary and Joseph for several weeks now and we know the adventure they were on as a result of their faithfulness.
When we baptize our children, we are dedicating their lives to the mission of the Church. We promise to raise them in the Catholic faith by word and example. In the sacrament of Matrimony, the couple promises to educate the children in the faith and prepare them for the mission to teach the nations. In both of these public ceremonies celebrated in the church, the whole assembly promises to participate in the forming of children and the support of the parents. GULP.
I suspect many of us don’t recall ever being actually prepared to make such commitments or support these commitments of others. It’s likely that ‘teaching the nations’ was something that just happened if we were reasonably faithful in obeying the commandments or maybe it was something the professionals did, the priests and bishops and people in the religious orders. I suspect there is a wide variety and disparity in the levels of religious formation received just in this group at Mass today.
I couldn’t help but recall my own religious upbringing amidst the Sherman family. Our six children were fortunate to get 9 to 12 years of basic Catholic school education in Iowa during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Although we did not live on a farm, our parents grew up on farms in the 20’s and 30’s. They were literally grounded in reality. They lived through the depression, fought in WWII and coped with the PTSD afterword (which was not well understood at the time). And then ran a family business for 30 years. Our parents knew how difficult and even brutal life can be, but also knew the good times and success that come with lots of effort and good sense over the years. They also had wonderful children with one who was particularly amazing. (wink, wink). They probably could have benefited from an ongoing involvement in Marriage Encounter retreats, but for many years there was a significant coherency between Church, school and society during an often-complicated period. In the 90’s I was blessed with a seminary education which helped me understand how the Church really speaks to our historical circumstance and how we should respond.
I mention all this because I realize most people don’t have these opportunities or circumstances; however, over the past couple decades the Church has enormously improved its ability to prepare Catholics for true discipleship. In a sense we have had to catch up after the onslaught of consumer culture, pop culture, borrow-yourself-up-to-your-eyeballs culture, the sexual revolution and the acceleration of everything with modern technology. The devil’s job is actually much easier: to just appeal to us with excessive sensate experience, materialism and the most base understanding of what it means to be human. The Church has a much more difficult task of making sacrifices and seeing and acting from the ‘heart’. In our rapidly changing world, it seems the Church is always trying to catch up.
We need to reconnect with the true posture of the Church’s mission established by Jesus. We are a people sent forth. We are charged with making the world look more like heaven than hell for our grandchildren. There is no neutral. We can see plainly enough what happens when our families and our clergy are not truly holy families and truly holy teachers and leaders.
Advent and Christmas seasons provide this time of renewal, refocusing and strengthening. We will be providing several opportunities to mature in our faith in the coming months. For now, I invite you to consider these reflection questions which are included in today’s bulletin. If you are feeling a little guilty or inadequate, welcome to the crowd.
Reflection Questions
The citation on the front of this bulletin is from today’s first reading from the First Book of Samuel. It denotes a devout Hebrew family dedicating their son’s life to the temple i.e., the service of God’s Holy People. Their son, Samuel, would eventually anoint Saul and David as King of Israel. The parents did not know the exact mission of their son, but in their enormous gratitude to God they trusted that God would use him as needed for the good of the people.
- When Catholics baptize our children, we too dedicate them to the service of the Church and the mission given to us by Jesus Himself: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Mt. 28:19-20.
Reflect on how you prepared your children to dedicate their lives to the Church’s mission? Consider their prayer lives, the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, and Catholic Social Teaching. How did they continue to renew these commitments throughout their lives.
- 2. “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.” 1Jn. 3:21-22
How do we attend to this level of our ‘heart’? How has our attention to our heart changed as we aged through our 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s? How have we shared this with our children?
- 3. In today’s gospel, at age 12 Jesus shows a first big rift between the expectations of his parents and His own. The rift involved God’s immediate will for Jesus. As adolescents can be expected to start pulling away from their parents, recall the first big rifts between you and your adolescent children. What might have been the religious implications of the rift? What truth were they expressing either consciously or subconsciously (however clumsily).