YOU’RE NOT GOD.
THIS AIN’T HEAVEN.
DON’T ACT LIKE A JERK.
Sirach 3: 2-6; 12-14; Colossians 3: 12-21; Matthew 2: 13-15, 19-23
We all know that THE Holy Family consisted of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. But what about our own families, yours and mine, the ones we grew up in . . . the ones we’re members of now: Is your family a holy family?
Before you jump to a quick answer to that question, let’s take a moment to consider what makes a family holy. And to do that, we have to reach some agreement on what we mean by “holy.”
Many people believe that “holy” means “perfect.” Well, God is holy and God IS perfect but outside the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, perfection is pretty hard to find. But I don’t need to be perfect to be holy. To be holy is to strive faithfully to be and to become more and more the person God made me to be. It’s not all that complicated. Spiritual writer Fr. James Martin put it this way: "Just remember three things: You're not God. This ain't heaven. Don't act like a jerk!" That’s holiness! In other words: God’s in charge. Life is hard. Love one another even when it hurts.
Actually, to be HOLY is to recognize honestly that I’m NOT perfect. A big part of being holy is being honest about the times when I’m un-holy, when I need to ask for God’s forgiveness and help to keep me from making the same mistake again. And if I fall, if I fail again, then I need to depend more and more on God’s mercy and strength to help me be more faithfully the person God made me to be, to help the sinner I am to be a little more – holy.
It’s a waste of time to judge my holiness by comparing it with someone else’s. But people do this all the time. God isn’t going to judge me by how I measure up to St. Therese of Lisieux or St. Francis of Assisi. I’ll only be judged on how faithfully I became the person He created me to be. Saint Theresa might be a great model for me, but I’m not called to be her – I’m called to be me, and you’re called to be you – as God made you.
In the Second Reading today, St. Paul writes to the Colossians and calls them “holy and beloved” but still sees the need to remind them to put on: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; to bear with one another and to forgive the grievances they have against one another; to put on love and to let Christ’s peace rule their hearts. This is the advice he gives to those he thinks are HOLY! In other words, he’s saying: Remember this: You're not God. This ain't heaven. Don't act like jerks! Be holy. Strive to be the persons God made you to be. And when you fail, and you will, ask for mercy and try again.
Families are called to be holy, too, since families are made up of human beings. A family is called to strive faithfully to be a community of persons who love and care for one another.
While it’s true that Jesus in his divine nature knows all about love because He is Love, we cannot simply whitewash the fact that because Jesus was also 100% human (remember, He’s true God and true man), He had to learn about human love from somewhere and someone. That somewhere was during the silent time in his home in Nazareth, hidden away from the public eye. And those someone(s) were Mary and Joseph – one sinless, and one a sinner with incredible virtue.
It was in the home of Joseph and Mary that Jesus learned the meaning of love. From the moment of his divine conception, he was received as a gift. Jesus would grow up seeing how Joseph treated Mary, how he interacted with others, how committed he was to taking care of his family. Jesus watched Mary, the most-pure of all women, the one that had been selected from all eternity, interact with her husband. Through their love, He witnessed how their marriage and family life quietly impacted the lives of those around him.
Although our family may not be like the Holy Family, God calls every family to be a holy family - to strive, faithfully, to grow together in and through its own circumstances, with all the gifts and graces, all the beauty and the brokenness, the generosity and the greed, the sacrifice and the selfishness, the hopes and the hurts that mark every family. He doesn’t judge a family by its brokenness but rather by how a family seeks to heal and reconcile with one another in the brokenness. And when they do this, they too become a holy family.
When it comes to our own personal holiness or a family’s holiness, we might be tempted to think that “one size should fit all.” I hope our own experience of ourselves, of others, of other families might show us what I’m sure God knows, that every family has its own size and fit when it comes to holiness. THE Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph certainly didn’t fit the customary pattern: a virgin mother, a foster father, a 12-year-old son who runs away, convinced that he must preach God’s word in the temple in Jerusalem. And THEY are the HOLIEST of all holy families! Each of these three strove, faithfully, to be what God's love asked of them.
Not because we're all that holy, but because we seek to walk the holy path to God, the Lord invites us, our church family, to his table this morning. And we come here, as a parish, with all the gifts and graces, the beauty and brokenness, the generosity and greed, the sacrifice and selfishness, the hopes and the hurts that mark every family. And as HIS holy family, our Lord calls us to look past faults, to forgive, to see the good in each other, to appreciate each other’s talents and gifts, to not judge each other by the standard set by those who previously stood at this pulpit or who sat in those pews, but to strive to be the holy parish family He calls us to be.
May the sacrament we receive here renew our desire in the New Year ahead to walk that path that leads each of us, our families and all of us who make up the St. Therese Parish Family to the holiness of God.
