Homily for the Feast of The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

The Church in her wisdom places the Feast of The Holy Family here in the middle of Christmastide, when families who may be far-flung come together. Strictly speaking, Christmas is not primarily about families, but our families were and are
the first schools of faith where the true meaning of the Christmas story was imparted. So, beyond the nostalgia that often guides our thoughts of this season, it makes sense for us to re-unite, to renew the bonds of faith as well as bonds of love
within our nuclear and extended families.

As we think about today’s Feast Day, we can certainly bring to mind various paintings, statues, or stained-glass images of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, which can seem distant or unapproachable, and so much unlike our own. It would be good for us, then, to look at
+ what it is to be holy
+ what it is to be family.

Holiness is the presence of the divine to humanity. There is a yearning for holiness within the human soul which a person can choose to seek out or to ignore, but those who reject this yearning assign themselves to a perpetual dance of self-definition in which the ego denies the soul as the center-point of self-knowledge, as the core of one’s being.

Some people can survive the rejection of the divine by sheer force of their personality, and actually live what appears on the surface to be good lives. But there are consequences to these choices that they will eventually have to face: consequences both temporal and eternal.

The eternal consequences are easily defined, as we say in the Act of Contrition: the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. The temporal consequences, however, are more subtle, and certainly more immediate, and visible. These would include: 
+ loss of respect for the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person
+ re-definition of marriage according to secular thought
+ the breakdown of the family
+ divinizing the profane
+ and perhaps the simplest, and most frequently overlooked: giving bad example.

But holiness is attainable in this life, or the Lord would not ask it of us. We just heard an inkling of this on Christmas, when we heard in the Gospel the angels sing to the shepherds: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” We learned that peace on earth is intrinsically linked with giving glory to God… and giving glory to God is linked with possessing good will.  The good will of which the angels sing is more than benevolence on Man’s part, it is the fruit of aligning our human will with the holy Will of God.

Ridding ourselves of willfulness or ego-centeredness is the means of not only finding peace, but of bringing peace on earth. We find this modeled par excellence in the life of Jesus in the Holy Family: Let’s look at two examples:

First: While following the Will of His Heavenly Father in the story of the “Finding in the Temple,” Jesus also acquiesces to the will of His earthly Mother, Mary, and sets aside a budding career to return with His parents to Nazareth at her insistence.

Second: At the Wedding Feast in Cana, though He hesitates at first, He once again — in obedience and humility — aligns His Will to hers.

It is obedience and humility, then, that lead not only to personal holiness, but also to the development of our own “holy family,” bringing at least a small measure of “peace on earth.”

Let’s look now at the meaning of family in this context:

In recent years, the word “family” has been borrowed by other institutions in order to attract and build a sense of belonging where it would not exist otherwise. For example: I’ve seen a television advertisement for a bank which describes itself as “your banking family.” Well, as warm and welcoming as it may sound, customers of the bank do not belong either to the business or to other customers. 

To be family means, primarily, to be bonded to one another through blood or marriage. Recent re-definitions of marriage by civil authorities do no real good for the societies they seek to enrich, or to develop in a new and different direction.

Because human beings are imperfect, families, too, will be imperfect. How many times have you heard a person bemoan: “I come from a dysfunctional Family.”? Dysfunction does not always denote an absence of love; it’s something more like the imperfection of love, made visible. Nor should the admission of dysfunction serve as permission to do nothing about
+ personal growth
+ interpersonal striving for forgiveness and peace
+ the hard work that love often requires

A few years ago, while visiting with my sister and her husband, we were driving to an extended-family gathering. As we approached our destination, my brother-in-law said to his wife, “Let’s go over the list.” “What list is that?” I inquired. Then my sister began counting out forbidden topics for discussion: “With Dan you don’t talk about the President… with Mike you don’t speak about the Pope and with Joe you don’t breathe a word about the Cleveland Browns.” So, then, we all know ways of bringing peace on earth, don’t we?

To become a family beyond dysfunction, one must remain steadfast, stout-hearted, and true to the True… and then speak the truth with prudence and charity. When addressing family values that stem from our Catholic faith, some people, be they strangers, or even family members, may think you naïve or “un-evolved,”  because even though they may have rejected or re-defined for themselves ultimate, universal, eternal truth for their own purposes… the Truth of God and the Faith remain, haunting the inner chambers of the minds of the fallen away.

Good example is always good. You need not be perfect to give good example, you need only be
+ genuine
+ loving
+ patient
+ forgiving…

… and constantly seeking, preferring, and attempting the good.

This work, this struggle, is at the root of of holiness, and will be at the core of a family growing toward holiness together, because holiness seeks a constant re-connection with the divine that is deep within every person. This search is what faith empowers, and religion enacts, even in the midst of our weakness and sin.

Holy persons make for holy families…holy families make for a holy Church… a holy Church makes for a better world. Our personal and familial search for holiness, then, will bring “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to men of good will.”