Feast of the Holy Family Year C—2000          

Homily

Families are under threat today. They are under threat all over the world but I suggest even more so in Western Society than anywhere else.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family. Jesus, Mary and Joseph are called the Holy Family for two very good reasons. 1) Because they followed God’s will in every particular and 2) because they strove at all times to love God, each other and the people among whom they lived.

Families are under threat from within and without. Families frequently fall apart because of strong tensions among between the members. Families are frequently put under stress from without, social pressures, changing norms within society and so on.

Make no mistake about it if families are destroyed then society itself will inevitably perish. A glance at history will tell you that this is so—most famously in the case of the Roman Empire.

The changes that have taken place in our society in the last thirty years do pose a great threat to the family. For many young people today marriage is not even considered as an option—it has become so devalued by widespread divorce that the ceremony itself has become meaningless to them.

Our society has become so preoccupied with rights of this group and that group that the basic building block of society has taken a severe battering and is not regarded even officially as a norm within society.

Yes, of course, we as Christians must respect the rights of all. Prejudice of any kind has no place whether it be on grounds of race, religion or sexual orientation. But we do not accept that respecting others is done at the expense of the family.

We do not do anything to downgrade the single parent when we speak in favour of a two-parent family unit. In fact we recognise the difficulties the single parent has and within our community and in society at large we do all we can to support them and give the help they need. This is a duty all of us share.

The family is a unit based on love and mutual respect. It is not easy to live in a family but it is primarily in the family that we grow as fully human beings.

In some families there are great tensions, which can be very destructive; sometimes there are abusive parents or siblings. And there are certainly sometimes circumstances in which it is surely better for parents to separate for the good of the family. We do not always consider that a particular family provides a healthy environment for regrettably sometimes it is in the family that we learn the worst lessons of all.

Yet despite these qualifications we appreciate that the family is the most important social unit within society. Living in a family requires a high degree of self-sacrifice, especially from the parents but we know that it is precisely this self-giving love that makes us fully human. Living for others is what being a Christian is all about, it is the way that Jesus showed us in the manner of his life but most especially in the manner of his death.

This is the Feast of the Holy Family and Jesus, Mary and Joseph are set before us as an example worth following. They are worth following for the two reasons I mentioned already: They loved God and their neighbour, and by neighbour I mean first of all each other.

They carried out God’s wishes in every particular. We, each of us, know in our hearts what God wants us to do. If we are unsure then we only have to read the Gospels or the Ten Commandments to find out. Jesus made it very clear what behaviour is acceptable in God’s eyes and he did this for our own good. Sinful behaviour is destructive—it destroys our very humanity.

Trying to live the way God wants is not at all easy but it is the only sure way to happiness—it will not make us rich, but it will make us good.

And love, loving each other, loving our neighbours, loving ourselves; this is all of a piece with goodness. It is impossible to be good without love. In fact, goodness overflows into love for those around us. We know that our creation was an act of love on God’s part; therefore love is at the very centre of our being and the way to live our lives in a truly authentic way.

And the best place to learn how to love is in the family, the child sees the love and devotion and the many sacrifices of the parents and they form the model for their own parenting later in life.

The Gospel reading we are presented with today is most interesting. It only comes around once every three years so we ought to pay it some attention.

Luke is unique among the Evangelists in giving this story of Christ at the age of twelve. One could regard it as a Gospel-in-miniature.

Every year the parents of Jesus used to go to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. That is what the story is about—going up to Jerusalem for the Passover. It is clear that this was a frequent event, something that Jesus did with his family every year.

But yet, of course, that is precisely what he did with his life. His whole life was a movement from Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. In that thirty-third year of his life he went up to Jerusalem and made the Passover a definitive event for the whole world. He took the old Jewish feast, which commemorated their salvation as a people through their rescue by God from Egypt, and he made it into a New Passover, the most definitive act of salvation of all time.

Three days later, they found him in the Temple, sitting among the doctors. When he is lost his parents eventually find him in the Temple sitting among the doctors of the law. The Temple is his natural home, for he is the Eternal High Priest. He is both the priest and the victim, he is the culmination of everything the Temple stood for; and shortly after his death on the cross the Temple was destroyed never to be rebuilt.

And the three days have their relevance also; they prefigure the three days in the tomb, the three days between death and resurrection when Jesus was apparently lost only to rise in glory.

Jesus is found discussing the finer points of the law with the doctors in the Temple, something he was to spend a lot of time doing during his public ministry when they were also frequently amazed at his wisdom. Of course, it was precisely these disputations which were to cause the plotting against him.

Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father’s affairs? Here we have Jesus’ first spoken words in the Gospel of Luke. They are a direct and very clear statement by Jesus that he is the Son of God. These words effectively bring the infancy narrative in Luke’s Gospel to a conclusion. This account of the events of the birth and childhood of Christ lead up to the statement that he is the Son of God and that he must be bust about his Father’s affairs i.e. he must implement the will of his Father. He has a task to perform and it is to bring salvation to the world.

And Jesus increased in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and men. Jesus returns to Nazareth to live under the authority of his parents. Although, as it says, they did not understand what he meant, he lived his life in such a way that he won the admiration of all.

As he spent these hidden years with his family in Nazareth Jesus grew in stature, by this we mean maturity, and in wisdom. In this way he was prepared for his future ministry. Even the villagers who did not accept him when he took the scroll in the synagogue and effectively proclaimed himself the Messiah still were forced to acknowledge his graciousness. As it says: they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips.

And on this Feast of the Holy Family we are drawn to conclude that what applies to Jesus also applies to us: That the family is the ideal place to grow into maturity, the ideal place to acquire wisdom and graciousness, the ideal place to prepare for our vocation in life. Long may this be so!