Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph (Cycle A)

Making Our Families Holy

Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Colossians 3:12-21; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

One Sunday, on the Feast of the Holy Family, a priest gave his homily presenting Jesus, Mary and Joseph as the ideal family. As he was talking he noticed a man muttering to himself. Like all priests, he tried to ignore the man, but the man’s upsetment grew as the homily went on. Finally, the exasperated priest asked, “What seems to be the problem, Sir?”

“This is all a waste of time,” the man said. “You talk about Jesus, Mary and Joseph as being the ideal family, but Mary was a virgin, Joseph never opened his mouth, and Jesus was the Son of God. How can any family consider realistically modeling themselves on the Holy Family?”

That’s a good question, and perhaps one that has come to your minds. I think it would help if we consider what the word, “Holy” means. To be holy means to be separate for the Lord. Our families can be separate for the Lord, our families can be holy. How? Here are three suggestions for our families to be holy. Actually they are just three words.

The first word is JOY. Families need to play together, goof around, laugh together and not take each member too seriously. Families need to find ways to laugh together, whether it’s the beach, a board game, or a pillow fight. Joy is not a part time business for a Holy Family. The famous author C. S. Lewis put it this way: “Joy is the serious business of heaven.” A joyful family is a sign that the one who brought joy to the world is present in our homes.

The second word is TIME. If a little child could spell love, he or she would spell it this way: t-i-m-e. Jesus only spent the last three of his thirty-three years serving people. The first thirty were focused entirely on his family. Based on their culture, Mary and Joseph started sharing scripture with Jesus when he was five, the Mishna or oral tradition at age ten, and the commandments and law at age thirteen, Joseph would have taught Jesus his trade, that of a carpenter. Jesus would have had to learn how to use an axe, hammer, chisel and saw. Joseph also taught him the difference between various woods, cedar, cypress, olive, pine, and sycamore. This all took time. Mary and Joseph would have spent time with their child out of love for him.

Our families need to do this to be holy families. We have to stop crowding our day with tasks that take us outside of the home. We have to limit the number of activities we let the our children be involved in. The greatest need a child has is to spend time with his or her parents.

The third word is PRAYER. The ancient Jewish family would recite the prayer of Eighteen Benedictions three times each day. The lesson was that the family must always look to the God the Father, praising Him. Our families need to be families of prayer. It is not just a cliché; the family that prays together, stays together. Grace before meals and bed-time prayers are a minimum. Even better than the bed-time prayers are prayers together as a family every evening.

None of our families are ideal families, but all of our families can be Holy Families.

The readings for this Sunday present some aspects of a Christian home. The first reading from Sirach says that children need to respect their parents. At first it refers to young children as it notes that mothers and fathers have their authority from God. Then it refers to older children when it says that children should take care of their parents when they get older. Little children learn respect for their parents from the respect they see their parents giving their grandparents. The way you treat your parents will be the way your children will treat you. If your relations with your parents are motivated by respect and love, and are evident in your kindness to them, your children will have learned this aspect of Christianity and will treat you the same way as your years mount.

The second reading deals with the interrelationships of the family. Paul tells the Colossians and us to deal with each other out of kindness, to be patient with each other, to forgive each other continually, not to let out pride determine what we say and do to each other. If we strive to live this way, than as a family we can pray together not just in Church, but in every aspect of our lives. "Whatever you do, whether in speech or in action, do it in the name of the Lord." Paul goes on to mention the roles of a family in his epoch. At that time the equality of women was not recognized. In the Roman empire women were seen as property that needed to be protected by their fathers and their husbands. It would be rare that a woman would be given the respect due to every individual. That's why we have the phrase, wives be submissive to your husbands. Closely followed by husbands love your wives. In our society, with the recognition that most roles in a family have nothing to do with gender, the real meaning of this part of Colossians is that husbands and wives must respect each other. This same line of thought continues with children being told to respect their parents, and parents being told not to nag, to continually find fault, with their children.

It used to be fashionable for the American media to claim that the family is no longer a viable unit. Now, it claims, there has been a resurgence of the family and family values. This is all a bunch of rhetoric. The family has and will remain strong as long as there are people of faith, people like you people here, who are doing their best to make the love of God real in their homes.

Today we pray for all our families. May your home be a little church, displaying your reverence for the presence of the Lord in your homes by the way you care for each other. May your families be Holy Families.

The Fourth Week of Advent (Cycle A)

The Greatest Gift

Isaiah 7:10-14; Romans 1: 1-7; Matthew 1: 18-24 

Christmas is a time for stories. It’s a time for re-reading the story of that “squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner” named Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL. It’s a time when children are lifted upon parents’ or grandparents’ laps to hear A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS (“The Night Before Christmas”) by Clement C. Moore. In that spirit, this evening I’d like to tell you a story.

It’s the story of a man by the name of Barnaby. He was a juggler who lived from day to day on the small donations he received. He went from town to town and he would take knives and balls and rings and juggle them. But that is all that he could do. He was embarrassed over his lack of talent and felt totally useless. People in the towns in which he juggled would be involved in their business work. Some ran small shops. Some were doctors, others teachers. And Barnaby would see all these people working, using their talents, making a difference, and he became more and more discouraged with each passing day.

One day on his travels, he was passing a huge monastery and he started to think and pray, “Maybe, if they let me enter this monastery I can do the most menial tasks, do something positive and save my soul and have more meaning and happiness in my life.”

And so he knocked on the monastery door and was greeted by the Brother who was in charge of all the monastic duties. Barnaby told him he would perform the most menial tasks for just a place to sleep and a little something to eat. He was admitted and was given a small room in which to live and told what time the Brothers ate their meals. He did his menial chores for months and seemed to find more meaning and happiness to his life. But then his sense of meaning and happiness started to diminish. He knew that all the Brothers of the monastery were preparing for Christmas. One Brother was writing a new musical score for the midnight Mass. Another Brother was making special bread to be given to the poor on Christmas Day. Another Brother was making a beautiful Christmas crib for the Christ Child to lay. Barnaby, in seeing what was done by others so talented, felt more and more inadequate. His sense of his own inferiority became more painful than ever. Christmas was coming closer, and what was he doing, but the most menial jobs in the monastery. He went to bed each night heartbroken.

Early on Christmas Morn, his despair reached its lowest point, and feeling he had nothing worthwhile to give, Barnaby decided to leave the monastery. Without even a goodbye to his fellow monks, he packed his tattered, well-worn travelling bag with his knives, his balls, his rings and visited the chapel for one last prayer. There, before the statue of our Blessed Mother, he saw the gifts of the other brothers. He saw the musical score that had magnificently praised God just a few hours before at Midnight Mass; he saw the loaves of delicious bread that would feed the poor later that morning; he saw the exquisite hand carved crib in which the Baby Jesus rested. And Barnaby cried.

But suddenly, as he stood in front of the statue of Our Blessed Mother, he decided to give her the only thing he had, the art of his juggling. At that moment, as balls and knives and rings flew in the air with the greatest of precision, something extraordinary happened. The statue of our Blessed Mother seemed to come alive with a radiance that Barnaby had never seen before. The Brothers of the monastery, seeing how the chapel was becoming filled with this new light, rushed in thinking that something tragic had taken place. And as they came into the chapel, they saw Barnaby, standing in front of the statue, juggling with joy and happiness. They all thought that Barnaby has gone mad. The Abbot screamed, “Sacrilege!” And they all rush at Barnaby to forcibly remove him from the chapel. But suddenly, the Blessed Virgin’s image came to life. She descended from her shrine, and with her mantle she wiped the sweat off the juggler’s forehead! The Abbot fell to his knees, and bowed his head to the floor. The other Brothers knelt behind him making the sign of the cross. And the Abbot quietly and prayerfully proclaimed: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God;” to which all the Brothers behind him respond in unison, “Amen.” For in the name of her Son, Mary accepted the gift of the juggler, who in his humility, thought he had nothing of worth to give, but who gave everything he had, everything he was, his entire self, and it turned out to be the greatest gift of all.

Today in our gospel, we hear another story about another man who was pure of heart; another man who, like Barnaby, gave the greatest Christmas gift to the Child Jesus . . . his entire self – everything he had, everything he was. His name is Joseph, the humble carpenter of Nazareth.

Matthew’s Gospel, describes Joseph as “just,” which can means pious, quiet, kind, not given to quarreling, and that sort of thing. But he is also called “righteous.” The term “righteous” means being in a right relationship with God. As God carefully selected the woman who would be the mother of his Son, he must have been equally careful in his selection of the foster-father. For genes are not the only thing parents impart to their children. Jesus, in his humanity, had to grow in wisdom, age, and grace. And Joseph must have been responsible for a good deal of this growth. It was Joseph who was Jesus’ male role model. From Joseph Jesus learned the trade that he himself would practice for some twenty years.

But there are even more important things that Jesus learned from Joseph. For Joseph was a just man, an honest man, a courageous man, a man of integrity. His betrothed was pregnant but not by him. Imagine the shame, the hurt, and the anger that he must have experienced assuming what anyone would assume in such a situation. His integrity would not allow him to marry an adulteress and pretend the child was his. But neither would he expose the woman he loved to shame and punishment. He didn’t procrastinate or waffle. He made the difficult decision to divorce Mary quietly.

But then God's messenger, an angel, visited Joseph in a dream. This was Joseph's Annunciation. He was disposed not only to the encounter, but to the invitation it presented, to pour himself out in love and for Love. He heard the message and, without hesitation, did what the Lord commanded and took Mary into his home. This was Joseph's Fiat, his YES. He exercised his freedom by saying Yes to God's invitation. His response was his song, his Magnificat.

Mary’s great claim to fame is her faith. When told the unbelievable, she believed. Joseph’s claim to fame is also his faith. He too was told the unbelievable and dared to believe. His response of faith entailed taking action – he change his plans, received Mary into his home, and accepted responsibility for this special child. Through his response of faith, he would receive the greatest gift promised for all men and women, and held in His arms the One that Kings and Patriarchs and Prophets had only longed to see.

Joseph’s importance can hardly be overstated. He saves Jesus and Mary from a life of shame and exclusion from the community. He gives Jesus his social identity, by naming him and including him in his own descent from King David. He’s indeed a righteous man, with a generous nature that goes far beyond the letter of the law. He listens, he loves, and he chooses the right path, no matter what people might say. His openness to God’s guidance makes the whole story of Jesus possible. Joseph emptied himself in order to be filled with the love and life of God. He gave himself fully as gift to God through accepting his unique and specific vocation as guardian of the Redeemer. Before angels give their gift of song, before kings present their gold, frankincense and myrrh, before shepherds kneel and offer their praise, there in the solitude of the stable, Joseph the Humble Carpenter offers the first gift, the greatest gift: the gift of himself.

What about us? This Christmas, as we come to the stable and bow our head and bend our knee, what gift will we offer? On Jesus’ Christmas list is no latest toy or fashion, no iphone, no flat screen TV. But what’s on his Christmas list actually is more costly and infinitely more valuable. On his list is US . . . Our hearts, our wills, our devotion, our praise, our service, our total dedication to him and to his gospel . . . the gift of ourselves. Total and complete; no wrapping necessary. It is the only one that is truly worth giving. Because, after all, that is the gift He gave to us.