Faith-Love-Holy Family

HOMILY – FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

(Sir 3:2-14; Ps 128; Mt 2:13-23)

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The International Marian Centre, near the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, is built over the ruins of a 1^st century home, one our guide pointed out could have been a home the young Jesus may have run in and out. That comment made the reality of the Incarnation a bit more vivid for our pilgrimage group.

Today’s feast of the Holy Family invites us to deepen our appreciation of not just the Incarnation, but also of the important role of the family in our lives.

Saint Pope Paul VI, in today’s Office of Readings, claims the home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus – the school of the Gospel. The first lesson we learn here is to look, to listen, to meditate and penetrate the meaning – at once so deep and so mysterious – of this very simple, very humble and very beautiful manifestation of the Son of God. Perhaps we learn, even imperceptibly, the lesson of imitation.

First, he states, we learn a lesson of silence, more needed than ever, with so many strident voices, general noise and uproar in our over-saturated modern life.   May the silence of Nazareth teach us the need for and the value of preparation, of study, of meditation, of personal inner life, of the prayer which God alone sees in secret. I would add may it teach us the importance of Lectio Divina, praying with God’s word in a very contemplative way.

Next, he claims, there is a lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character. Let us learn from Nazareth that the formation received at home is gentle and irreplaceable. Let us learn the prime importance of the role of the family in the social order.

Finally, there is a lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the ‘Carpenter’s Son’, can help us to understand and proclaim the redeeming law of human work; the nobility of work; and reaffirm that work cannot be an end in itself, but that its freedom and its excellence derive, over and above its economic worth, from the value of those for whose sake it is undertaken.

Bishop Robert Barron adds an important element of “mission” to family life. On this feast of the Holy Family, the Gospel shows us Joseph and Mary’s flight into Egypt, pursuing their mission to protect the Christ child. This story invites reflection on the Christian family’s mission.

The family is, above all, the forum in which both parents and children are able to discern their missions. It is perfectly good, of course, if deep bonds and rich emotions are cultivated within the family, but those relationships and passions must cede to something that is more spiritually focused.

A biblical prioritization of values helps us to see what typically goes wrong with families. When something other than mission is dominant—a son’s athletic achievement, a daughter’s success at university, etc.—family relationships actually become strained. The paradox is this: precisely in the measure that everyone in the family focuses on God’s call for one another, the family becomes more loving and peaceful.

John Paul II spoke of the family as an ecclesiola (a little church). At its best, he implies, the family is a place where God is worshiped and where the discernment of God’s mission is of paramount importance.

Fr. Jeffrey Kirby, in Crux, adds that in a uniquely human way, this radically peculiar family, reflected on earth the all-powerful and ever-living union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Like the Divine Family, the three members of this single earthly family – the God-Man, the perfected Virgin-Mother, and the Most Chaste Spouse – all lived together seeking to form a communion of love and selfless service. And so, the Holy Family serves as an icon of the Triune God.

In being such a window into the inner life of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Family stands as a model for every family on earth. Saint Paul tells us that every family receives its name from the heavens. And every Christian family is given a weight of glory as it receives the vocation to live the Trinitarian life on earth. This is not an easy task and every positive example and every form of assistance is needed. To such a need, the Holy Family is paramount.

I was visiting an Indigenous family one way, chatting with the father while the mother prepared supper, when their teenage daughter returned home from a soccer tournament. She barged into the house, threw down her duffle bag, marched right past me to her dad, jumped on his lap, put her arm around him, leaned her head against his, and lay there for a full two minutes, just soaking up his love.

My heart was touched and I was deeply moved by this sight. I felt such warmth as I drove away after, and reflected gratefully that this was perhaps as close as I was ever going to get to seeing God with these eyes, in this lifetime.

Drawing from the lives of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the Christian family is marked by the love that is shared between its members: parents to children, children to parents, siblings among themselves, and the nuclear family to the extended family. The Christian family labors to be zealous in its faith, ardent in its charity, and firm in its hope. The family dedicated to the Lord Jesus desires to be a place of prayer, mercy, hospitality, and kindness.

As the Christian family is inspired by the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, as they display the life of the Triune God, so the Christian family itself also begins to display the interior life of the Trinity. And so, in these ways, we can see the basis of the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that tells us: “The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.”

And so, on this Holy Family Sunday, we thank Jesus, Mary, and Joseph for their modeling of the Trinitarian life, and encourage every Christian family to do the same, to reclaim the importance of Christian family life.