Sunday of the Holy Family, December 28 Year B December 28, 2014
Roman Rite: Jan 15.1 to 6; 21.13; B 11, 8.11(J12.1719; Luke 2, 2240
Sunday Fourth of the eighth day of Christmas
1) The Family who is Holy, hence true.
The liturgy proposes to celebrate the Holy Family as a model of all human families and not just of Christian ones[1]. In a time of deep identity crisis of families especially Western ones, with separation, divorce and cohabitation of all kinds, to bring to the attention of our families this unique family of Nazareth means to "to rediscover the vocation and mission of the family, of every family. And, what happened in those 30 years in Nazareth, can thus happen to us too: in seeking to make love and not hate normal, making mutual help commonplace, not indifference or enmity".(Pope Francis, General Audience, December 17, 2014).
The Holy Family of Nazareth shows what is the beginning and the central point of each true family: Jesus Christ. The Family of Christ was holy, because it is His, because it welcomed Him and gave Him to the world. Our families are called to do the same. If you are rooted in Him who has lived in it, you can understand and live the great assets that are marriage, family and the gift of life. You will also understand what great danger for man and for his dignity is its degradation in civil institutions.
I think that it is useful to start from the episode narrated by St. Mark in Chapter 3, in which to those who tells him, "Your mother, your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you," Jesus replies "Who is my mother and brothers?$B!I(J
Looking around on those who sat about him, he said: "Here are my mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, sister and mother "(Mk 3: 3135). It is as if Jesus Christ said:
"My family is all here. I have no other families. The blood relations do not count unless they are confirmed in the spirit. My brothers are the poor who are crying, my sisters are women who have said yes to the Love, who has purified and elevated love. "
Jesus did not despise His Mother, St. Joseph, his legal father, and his relatives. He did not disown the Mother of whose womb He was the fruit. He meant that he did not belong only to the "small" Holy Family of Nazareth, but to His mission of the Savior of the "great" human family. God comes to reconstruct the true meaning of the human family, the vocation of every man is the one of son and brother. God convenes his family to teach to be really a family, because he wants to free us from the temptation of loneliness. God knows that it is never good for man to be alone. God himself does not want to be alone, thus He creates a family for "all nations", as sung by Simeon.
2) Pilgrims to Nazareth.
As Pope Francis has recently proposed to every family, to every mother, every father and every child, let us make a spiritual pilgrimage to Nazareth to fill your own spirit with the sublime virtues of Mary, the humble servant of the Lord, of Joseph, the righteous man, the carpenter, the Keeper of the holy family and of Jesus, the Son of God, who was obedient to them and grew in age, wisdom and grace.
Today's liturgy presents us with a meditation all centered on Christ, which is of particularly interested for the Christian families. It presents us with the mystery of the life of the child Jesus with his parents.
The passage of the Gospel today presents a familiar picture of great effectiveness for the understanding of the mystery of the Savior. We are at the time of presentation of the Lord to the Temple. Old man Simeon, who now occupies the main scene of the Gospel on the Holy Family, awaits this large and anticipated event. He recognizes Jesus as the true and awaited savior and is happy that the Lord allowed him to see this day. He is the person of gratitude, but also of prophecy, of courage and of the absence of any particular fear of death because in the Child Jesus he already sees the victory over it. Now this holy man of God, who had waited years for the coming of the Messiah, can leave happy the earth to meet the Lord in eternity.
In our families let us teach the sense of the eternal and of communion. Children grow up watching how adults live. Therefore to educate children means making them participate in the reality of the communion of the father and mother, who gave them life. To educate children means introducing them to life by teaching them gratitude.
3) A forgotten hero.
The Holy Family was not a family without problems. Mary and Joseph shared the condition of that disconcerting son, following him step by step in the revelation of his mystery. It is precisely because of this total availability that they deserve our admiration. It is not easy to know to have custody of the Son of God, to flee to Egypt, to return home and live in Nazareth, a village considered suburban for the Jews, to see Jesus grow in wisdom and grace, leading an ordinary life with no exceptional events up to his thirtieth birthday.
One would like to know more about the life of this extraordinary family; in the end, though, St. Luke says just enough to outline its physiognomy. Although extraordinary in many ways, it is a family like all the others, with its joys, its pains, its secrets, leading a life according to faith, to experiencing the joy of the birth of a child who grows healthy and strong and is affected by prophecies that announce a difficult future. In all families not always the years run without troubles; sooner or later problems, sufferings, concerns arise and all the more painful if caused by the lack of love. The Family of Nazareth faced joys and difficulties of life under the guidance and custody of St. Joseph.
It is important to understand the greatness of this unique man who was the husband of Mary, and that was often reduced to be the supplier of material goods, as if in the Holy Family he had only the role of "external", a man to whom rely unimportant tasks that do not require highest virtues. In fact if we think of the situation of Mary, when she carried in her womb the incipient carnal life of the Son of God, from the legal point of view this situation is something shocking for Joseph, because humanly and legally speaking his girlfriend had to be considered an adulteress worthy of the punishment of stoning.
How could Joseph acknowledge that Mary was innocent? Yet he was not even touched by doubt. His love for the Mary was not injured and he protected her reputation so that she would not risk her life. Joseph believes the Angel, and takes in Mary, so that she doesn't fall into danger. She and her baby need Joseph, who with his spousal love even agrees to remain virgin so that He who is in Mary by the Holy Spirit can be born, grow and save the world. The angelic announcement: "Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife" is the seal of God on this unique wedding and at the heart of the deeper, more authentic, more divine human love. A man who is capable of such a greatness belongs to the race of giants and of saints. Joseph accepts to live his virginal love so not to inflict the slightest injury to his beloved. The marriage of Mary and Joseph has allowed Christ to enter the world with honor and to live the hidden life of Nazareth well protected, growing in wisdom and grace. In Nazareth, Joseph, Mary and Jesus lived day to day in a heroic way, so that the heroic becomes day to day and we too might imitate them in our daily lives.
Joseph participated with his whole person in the work of the Redemption of the Son of Mary: he has given to God the substance of his tenderness and his heart, sacrificing his love.
If we are parents due to marriage or fathers and mothers spiritually, the example of the Holy Family asks us to be ready for the sacrifice that makes life true.
I ask St. Joseph, who is the guardian and protector of virgins as he was of Mary, so that he may make the consecrated virgins in the world know how to bear fruits from the riches of their heart so to persevere in the path of holiness through the total gift of themselves to the Lord, who loves us with infinite patient and tender love.
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1 Pope Francis: " I have therefore decided to reflect with you, this year, precisely on the family, on this great gift that the Lord has made to the world from the very beginning, when he entrusted Adam and Eve with the mission to multiply and fill the earth (cf. Gen 1:28); that gift that Jesus confirmed and sealed in his Gospel. The nearness of Christmas casts a great light on this mystery. The Incarnation of the Son of God opens a new beginning in the universal history of man and woman. And this new beginning happens within a family, in Nazareth. Jesus was born in a family. He could have come in a spectacular way, or as a warrior, an emperor.... No, no: he is born in a family, in a family. This is important: to perceive in the nativity, this beautiful scene$B!I(J. ( December 17, 2014)
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Here in the middle of the Christmas Octave, the Church bids us to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. On the old calendar, the Feast of the Holy Family falls on the Sunday after Epiphany, which makes a little more sense since the gospels appointed for the feast often take us far forward in time mere days after He is born. The gospel this year is only forty days into the future (unlike other years when the gospel takes us twelve years into the future), but today’s gospel is still well past the Feast of the Epiphany, which we have yet to celebrate.
Nevertheless, here we are. Perhaps it is a good time to reflect on family life. For, at Christmas time, family and extended family often gather together. We are also in the midst of a reflection by the Church at Synods in Rome on the modern problems associated with the family. These problems are rooted in the loss of God’s vision for human families and sexuality. Pray for the synod members, that they will look less to diseases now and more to the solutions given in God’s Word. It is true that we must understand the problems, but it is even more important that we understand what God teaches and effectively proclaim it.
In terms of this Feast of the Holy Family, let us consider marriage and family along three lines: structure, struggles, and strategy.
I. Structure - All through the readings for today’s Mass, we are instructed on the basic form, the basic structure of the family. For example,
And thus we see the basic structure of family:
Here, then, is God’s basic teaching on family and marriage. Here is the basic structure for the family as God sets it forth: a man who loves his wife and a woman who loves her husband. And in this stable, lasting, and faithful union of mutual support and love, they conceive and raise their children in the holy fear of the Lord.
Add to this, the principal description of the book of Genesis, which lays out how God sets forth marriage: “A man shall leave his father and mother, cling to his wife, and the two of them shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). And to this first couple, God gives the mandate, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:22).
Note, too, how the structure of the family takes its basic form based on its essential work: procreation and the rearing of children. Why should marriage be a stable and lasting union? Why is Adam told to cling to his wife, to form a stable and lasting union with her? Why? Because this is what is best and just for children! Children both need and deserve a stable and lasting union of their father and mother, and the complementary influence of the two different sexes. This is what is best for children to be raised and formed. Hence, the family structure of a father and a mother, a male and a female parent, flows from what is best and just for children. The structure of the family, as set forth by God, is rooted in what is best and just for children. This is what is sensible and best, sociologically and psychologically, for the proper development of children.
Even before we open the Bible, it makes sense that a child should have a father and a mother, the influence and teaching of both a male and a female. There are things that a father, a male, can teach a child that a mother, a female, cannot teach as well. Further, the mother, a female, can teach and model for children what only she knows best. Both male and female influences are essential for the proper psychological and sociological development of the child. Clearly, then, God’s biblical mandate that marriage should consist of a father and a mother is not without basis in simple human reason and common sense.
To intentionally deprive a child of this context is both unjust to the child and unwise. Hence, we see that the basic structure for marriage takes its shape from what is best and just for children. Both God and nature provide for a father and a mother, a male and a female, to conceive and raise a child.
It also makes sense, based on simple human reasoning, that that relationship should be stable, something the child can depend on from day-to-day, month-to-month, and year-to-year, through all the formative years.
Here then is the proper structure for marriage. It is set forth both by God and human reason.
II. Struggles - And yet, what should be obvious to us as a culture seems to be strangely absent in the minds of many. Let us be clear: sin clouds judgment and makes many think that what is sinful and improper is in fact okay or even good. It is not. In our current culture we gravely sin against God and against our children by consistent misconduct and by the refusal to accept what is obviously true. The words of St. Paul are fulfilled in our modern times: their senseless minds were darkened, and they became vain and foolish in their reasoning (Rom 1:21).
It is clear today that the family is in grave crisis. And it is also clear that it is the children who suffer the most. Our modern age in the western world shows forth a mentality that is both deeply flawed and gravely harmful to children.
Marriage and family are in great crisis due to the willful and sinful habits of the vast majority of adults in our culture regarding sexuality, marriage, and family life. The rebellion of adults against the plan and order of God has caused endless grief and hardship, and has set forth a culture that is poisonous to the proper raising and blessing of children.
Last week, we commented on this on the blog. Without repeating that whole blog post, the following excerpt stands forth:
Children have much to suffer in this world of our collective making. And while not all of us are equally guilty of contributing to the suffering of children, none of us is wholly innocent either, if for no other reason than our silence.
Consider that most children born today are no longer born into the stable and lasting family units they justly deserve, with a father and mother committed to one another till death do them part.
The problems begin with fornication, which is rampant in our culture. And while most do not think of this as a sin of injustice, it is. It is so because of what it does primarily to children.
The fact is, many children are conceived of fornication. Tragically, most of these children who are thus conceived are outright murdered by abortion. 85% of abortions are performed on unmarried women. And for all the vaunted declarations of how contraception makes every baby a wanted baby, nothing could be further from the truth. Abortion has skyrocketed with the availability of contraception. This is because the problem is not fertility; it is lust, promiscuity, fornication, and adultery. And contraception fuels these problems by further enabling them with the lie that there is no necessary connection between sex and procreation. The promises associated with contraception are lies; contraception does the opposite of what it promises.
Thus fornication and the contraceptive mentality (founded on lies) cause grave harm to children, beginning with their death in huge numbers. And the children conceived of fornication who do (thankfully) survive are nevertheless subjected to the injustice of usually being born into irregular situations. There are single mothers, some single fathers, and many other irregularities.
Add to this picture the large number of divorced families. And make no mistake about it, these shredded families cause great hardships and pain for children that include children being shuttled back and forth between different households each week, having to meet “daddy’s new girlfriend” or “mommy’s new boyfriend,” and all sorts of other family chaos. Blended families also dramatically increase the likelihood of sexual and emotional abuse, since legal relationships seldom have the built-in protections of natural relationships.
All of this misbehavior, individual and cultural, harms children. Not being raised in a traditional marriage dramatically increases a child’s likelihood of suffering many other social ills, starting with poverty.
The chief cause of poverty in this country, is the single motherhood, absent fatherhood.
71% of poor families are not married.
Children of single parent homes are 2 times more likely to be arrested for juvenile crime,
2 times more likely be treated for emotional and behavioral problems,
Twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school,
33% more likely to drop out of school,
3 times more likely to end up in jail by age 30.
50% more likely to live in poverty as adults,
And twice as likely to have a child outside of marriage themselves. [*]
And add to the burdens children must experience, the new trend of same-sex adoption. Never mind that it is best for the psychological development of a child to have a father and a mother, a male and a female influence. No, what is best and just children must be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. Same-sex couples must now be given equal consideration under the law (in many states) to heterosexual couples. It’s the adults and their rights that seem to matter most here; what is best for children is quite secondary.
Here then are our struggles. Our families are in grave crisis and MOST children in our culture are not raised in the stable and committed homes they deserve. And let us be even more clear: to intentionally deprive children of this sort of home by raising them outside of marriage, or in same-sex unions, etc., is sinful, wrong, and an injustice.
Disclaimer – Let us also be clear that it is not possible to personally judge every case of a broken family. The modern world has experienced a cultural tsunami and many have been influenced by lies and other false promises. It may be true that, if you are divorced, you tried to save your marriage but your spouse was unwilling. Perhaps in a moment of weakness, perhaps before your your conversion to Christ, you fell and bore children outside of marriage, but have done your best to raise them well.
But in the end we must say that children have had much to suffer on account of adult misbehavior in our culture. It is a true and sad fact, and we need to repent and beg God’s grace and mercy to undo our grave sins of commission, omission, and silence. We have set forth a bitter world for our children to inherit.
III. Strategy - What are we to do? In a phrase, “Preach the Word.” Whatever the sins of us in this present generation (and there are many), we must be prepared to repropose, unambiguously, the wisdom of God’s Word to our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Even if many of us in the current generation have fallen short, we cannot hesitate to announce God’s plan for sexuality, marriage, and family.
Our strategic proclamation must include these key elements:
Whatever the personal failings of any of us in this present evil age (cf Gal 1:4), our strategy must be to preach the undiluted plan of God for sexuality, marriage, and family to our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
In short, “Back to the Bible! Back to the plan of God! Away with modern experiments and unbiblical schemes!” God has given us a plan. And we, thinking we had better ideas, have caused great sorrow and hardship for our descendants. We have acted unjustly, murdered our children through abortion, and, sowing in the wind, have caused those who have survived our misbehavior to inherit the whirlwind. It is time to repent and help our heirs to rejoice in chastity, marriage, and biblical family. Otherwise we are doomed to perish.
God has a plan and it must be our strategy to get out of our struggles and back to God’s structure for our families.
This song says, “So, humbly I come to you and say. As I sound aloud the warfare of today. Hear me, I pray. What about the children?”