Holy Family Sunday

Weren’t you just here yesterday?  I thought that was you!

But here we are again, continuing to celebrate the Christmas Season, for like Easter, Christmas is too great of a mystery to celebrate it in just one day. Easter last for fifty days, and Christmas for twelve, as the song reminds us.

And on the Sundays of Christmas we meditate on three realities of the Incarnation: On Christmas itself we center on the child born in a manger. On Epiphany (next week) we reflect on the Glory of God made manifest in our darkened world. But in the week in between we reflect for a bit on the mystery of the Holy Family.

For of all the places God could have chosen to come into the world, he chose a family.  Just like your family. Maybe it’s a big family (you needed two pews at Christmas) or maybe it’s a little family. Maybe it’s a new family, or maybe a couple of you have grown very old. But we all belong to a family. We are all someone’s child. And that’s what the Church asks us to reflect on this week.

The mystery of the Holy Family is, it seems to me, as mystery of love, of love incarnate, God calls every child to honor his parents in gratitude for the “gift of life, their love, and their work.” (CCC, no. 2215) The author of the Book of Sirach tells us as much: "With all your heart honor your father, and do not forget the birth pangs of your mother. Remember that through your parents you were born; what can you give back to them that equals their gift to you?" (Sirach 7:27-28)

As a child, we owe our parents not only respect, but obedience, for they are our first teachers of all the mysteries of life and living. As Proverbs reminds us: “keep your father's commandment, and forsake not your mother's teaching. . . . When you walk, they will lead you; when you lie down, they will watch over you; and when you awake, they will talk with you.” (Proverbs 6:20-22)

This is why Saint Paul reminds children of their obligation to "obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” (Collosians 3:20; Cf. Ephesians 6:1) Day to day, in everything from waking up to going to school, children should obey their parents: it is what God wants them to do. It’s their job!

As children grow up, they still owe a debt of love and respect to their parents, although this takes on new and unique dimensions. For no son has ever grown up to be exactly like his father, and no daughter will be exactly like her mother. Which is why adolescence, the end of childhood and the beginning of being an adult, is such an interesting time!

As years pass into adulthood, the obligation of obedience grows into an obligation of respect, as new challenges emerge. For the first time, sons and daughters begin to see their parents for who they really are: as human beings with strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears. There is a wonderful opportunity at this stage of life to make friends of your parents and to learn from the couple of decades of experience they have under their belts. 

There are temptations at this stage as well. Such as the temptation of allowing unresolved adolescent tensions to become petrified states of alienation between child and parent. The only cure for such temptations, of course, is the forgiveness and love which can lead to respect of another adult, who, with their gifts and faults, first helped you (literally) to stand on your own two feet. 

It’s like the great story of Naomi and Ruth. Naomi’s son, Mahlon, fell in love with and married Ruth. Then Mahlon died. So the widow Naomi, sobbing and all alone in the world, tells the still young Ruth that while she will miss her and bless her for all she had done for her now dead son, she must now go back to her own mother, for Naomi has nothing more she can give her.

But Ruth protests to her mother-in-law: "Do not ask me to abandon or forsake you! For wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Wherever you die I will die, and there be buried." (Ruth 1:16-17)

Ruth provides an example for every child of the debt they owe to their parents, to ever be their child and to love and respect them until the day they die. So Ruth returns to Bethlehem with Naomi and, with the help of God, provides for “the comfort and support of her old age.” (Cf. Ruth 4:15)

So it is with each of us. We all grow old, parents and children alike (although parents have a bit of a head start on their children). But when we are old, the obligation of respect and love perdures. “As much as they can,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, children must give their parents “material and moral support in old age and in times of illness, loneliness, or distress.” (CCC, no. 2218)

So, when parents and children grow old (although parents have a bit of a head start on their children) and we find ourselves caring for those who first cared for us. It’s when Sirach’s advice should be heeded: “when [your father] is old...be considerate of him...for kindness to a father will not be forgotten…” (Sirach 3: 14-16)

And even once our parents have returned to God, our obligation to them continues, as we owe them a debt of prayer, that God might look upon them with mercy and show them perfect peace. Our love for them, like theirs for us, cannot be stilled, even by the separation of death.

For what makes the Holy Family holy is the honor and respect which Jesus, Mary, and Joseph held for each other. May we follow their example, showing to those who brought us into this world that “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” which the Lord had shown to us.” (Collosians 3:13)

A Christmas Homily

Once upon a time there was a great tall tree on a hill in the woods. He stood there all day long, dreaming of what he might become. Some days he would dream that he would be carved into a great treasure chest, filled with gold, silver and precious gems and decorated on every side so that everyone would admire his beauty. On other days he would dream that he would form the massive timbers of a mighty ship which would carry kings and queens across the oceans to the four corners of the world. He wanted to be great and powerful.

One day a woodsman came and looked up at the tree and cut it down, making it into neither a beautiful chest nor a mighty ship, but a feed box for the animals. He placed it a barn and filled it with hay. The tree was very sad, because he would never be great nor powerful.

Then one day, a man and woman came to the barn. She gave birth and placed her baby in the feed box, because there was no place for them in the inn. But then a strange thing happened, as the whole manger seemed to fill with light, and there were angels and a star above the baby’s crib, and shepherds and wise men came to worship the child, not like a baby in a crib, but like a King upon the finest royal throne.

But soon they all left and the memory of that wondrous night began to fade, and over the years the barn grew old and the crib grew rickety, until it was sold for scrap to some Roman soldiers and carted off to Jerusalem, where it was made into a Cross for the execution of criminals.

That was the cross they placed on the shoulders of a man who was made to carry it, a man who who seemed to glow with the same light as the baby so long ago in Bethlehem. The man fell three times and was finally affixed to the wood with nails which dug deeply. The people jeered at him and mocked him, while only his mother and a younger man stood weeping at his feet, until the man looked to heaven, prayed and breathed his last.

And three days later, when the sun rose, so did the man rise from the dead, and the tree stood taller and prouder than he had since he lived in the forest, for he knew now that now he was, indeed, great and powerful, having been made little and weak. He had never been a chest for earthly treasures nor a ship for powerful princes, but he had been a throne for the Son of God, as his crib and his cross.

And what about us? Do we want to be rich and powerful? Do we want the whole world to acclaim our beauty and our strength? Sure we do.

In fact, especially at Christmas we expect that everything is going to be perfect. It’s that idea of Christmas that people my age got from the Cleaver family in the 1950’s. Everyone sitting around a beautifully decorated Christmas Tree with a perfectly constructed fire burns in the fireplace, decorated with overflowing Christmss stockings with the name of each child neatly inscribed on each.

And everyone is singing Christmas carols as they smile at each other with understanding and love. There’s grandma in the rocking chair sharing her wisdom with all who sit in rapt attention, while mom and dad look lovingly on, holding hands with the trace of a tear in their eyes. Meanwhile, each child asks permission to open their next gift and giggles with joy at each lovely surprise. Soon they will leave for Church as snow gently falls from the sky and dad leads them in Christmas carols until they genuflect and kneel in their pews dressed in their new Sunday clothes….

At Christmas time we expect everything to be perfect, but most of the time it is not. Many of you lost someone you loved this year, and they are not here this Christmas because they have died. Some who hear my voice fought about some stupid little thing all the way to Church and are not particularly looking forward to going home in the same car. Some worry about what the doctor said or about the people at work who already got laid off or about their son who did not come home from school this year. Some worry about addiction or that one who drinks too much, or about how hard it is to pray or even to sleep.

But the great good news of this night is that you do not have to be powerful or perfect. The great good news of this night is that, like the tree on the top of the hill, you need only be little enough to be a throne for the Son of the Living God. Little enough to make your hands into a throne to receive his incarnate flesh…Little enough to prepare your heart to be a crib where the incarnate Son of God might rest this night…with his healing, his love and his hope.

God does not expect from us perfection or power. We are not made for that. God waits for us to make ourselves as little as the Babe of Bethlehem, that we might receive him this night and he might rest in our hearts.

Just one more week...

Just one more week until Christmas, and the Church helps us to prepare with the story of the Visitation. You heard it: Mary, having learned that she is pregnant with Jesus and that her elderly cousin Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist and goes to visit her.

In the words of our beloved Pope emeritus, “Before worrying about herself, Mary…thought about the elderly Elizabeth, who she knew was well on in her pregnancy and, moved by the mystery of love that she had just welcomed within herself, she set out in haste to go to offer Elizabeth her help.”

Elizabeth recognized the immaculate holiness of her cousin, which is why, when she catches sight of Mary she exclaims: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb…and blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

Blessed is the fruit of your womb. How many times have we said those words? And today we reflect on their meaning.

There’s an ancient story, told from the Middle Ages, that supposes that the Angel Gabriel was sent from God the Father to search for a place worthy enough for his Son to be born into the world. 

At first, the story goes, the Angel considered the most magnificent Temple on earth, bedecked with fine jewels and built atop ten thousand marble steps From its’ gates four powerful rivers flowed, abundant with life and embanked with the tallest trees and most beautiful flowers. Surely this would be a worthy dwelling place for the Son of God, he thought. But when he suggested it to God, he found it was not worthy enough.

And so the Angel flew to the peak of the highest mountain on earth, where winds blew the snows to even greater heights, and upon which the sun glistened and danced. Nowhere was the sky more blue or the heights more breath-taking. Perhaps here, the Angel thought, we could build the temple with jewels and marbles and rivers, that this might become a worthy dwelling place for the Son of God. But it was not worthy.

So Gabriel, the story continues, looked up at the heavens, where the stars twinkled and shone against a cold night sky with an unimaginable beauty, where God had so woven the distant stars together that they seemed to embrace the earth with a transcendent power all their own. Here, at last, he thought is a worthy dwelling to enthrone the Son of the living God. But it was not worthy.

Discouraged, the old story goes, the poor angel returned to heaven and begged the Most High God to show him a worthy dwelling place upon the earth for his co-eternal Son.

And so it happened, that the Angel Gabriel was “sent from God

to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary.”

She, in her littleness, of all the great palaces and places upon the earth, was the only one worthy to carry the Son of the Most High God as the fruit of her womb. This confused and frightened little girl, was alone full of grace. This handmaid of the Lord, who surrendered all to his will; she alone was worthy, and she alone was “a fit dwelling place” for the Son of God.

So, when you are looking for God, when you want to see him and listen to him and offer him the gift of your life, there is only one place to find him. He’s not enshrined in a mighty jewel-encrusted temple on the top of a mountain, or so far up in the sky that he dwells beyond the stars. No, he’s as close as the little virgin Mary, who runs to carry the fruit of her womb to the hill country to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and runs even more quickly to you.

So, like the Magi, let us go to this beautiful lady who holds in her arms the one who is our hope and salvation. Let us entrust ourselves to her intercession, her example and her care. And let us beg her in whose womb the Lord willed to be formed, to teach us how he might be formed in us, as well.

On John the Baptist

 Today the Church introduces us to the perfect Advent companion: Saint John the Baptist. You, no doubt, recall the pictures of him dressed in the skin of a camel roughly tied with a leather belt. He is the the wild eyed prophet, proclaiming Make straight the way of the Lord.

Saint Augustine described him this way: “John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word.” He is the forerunner, the last of the prophets to point to the coming of our Redemption. And his whole purpose in God’s plan is to prepare us for Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One of the Lord.

Here’s the way Zechariah, his father, spoke of his son’s mission: “And you, my child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.”

The fulfillment of this prophecy came to be when, thirty years after his father spoke those words, the Baptist earned his name by calling people to repentance from their sins by baptizing them in the Jordan River in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. 

And that’s where we meet John in today’s Gospel, baptizing the people and preaching the coming of the Christ. We hear him announce the one who is coming, who is mightier than he, and who will baptize not in water but in the Holy Spirit and Fire.

His passion was contagious, Saint Luke tells us, and “the people were filled with expectation” for the coming of the Lord.

And that is why he is such a good companion for Advent, because with us he longs for the coming of Christ and thus helps us to prepare our hearts as a sort of manger for the Lord.

But how do we do that? What should we do?

You heard the people ask John that same question in Gospel a few minutes ago, and he gave them three answers, three ways to prepare their hearts to recieve the Lord when he comes.

First, he tells the soldiers: Stop lying to people: “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone…” Jesus will go a step further, telling his disciples to forgive even those people who lie about you, who “revile us and utter every kind of slander about you.…” We are to forgive them even as we wish to be forgive, not just seven times, but seventy times seven times…as many times as they ask us to forgive them.

Then to the tax collectors he says stop stealing, “Stop collecting more than what is called for by the law.” Again, Jesus will go one step further and tell us to: Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.”

And finally to the crowd: John tells them to prepare for the Lord not just by lending them your posessions, but when you have two coats, give the second one away. And, as you guessed, Jesus goes even further, saying that if someone wants your shirt, give it to them, and go get your coat out of the cloest as well and give them that as well!

So how does the Baptist tell us to get ready for Christmas? Stop lying to people, forgive people, don’t steal from them, and give them whatever they need.

In other words, love, for God is love and the Son of God became a little child out of love for us and died on a cross that we might learn to love others as he has loved us. That’s how to prepare our hearts to recieve him this Christmas: by loving others, as he first loved us.