Author: Deacon Bob

As a kid, it was hard for me to understand the Holy Family. They were so unlike any family that I knew, including my own. As a kid, I thought of them as an idealized version of the Anderson Family from the television show, “Father Knows Best.”

We do not know much about the Holy Family. The gospels provide very little information. But then, the gospels are not biographies of Jesus, but a faith community’s understanding and experience of Jesus, which accounts for the differences and contradictions that we find from one gospel to another, and the different way Jesus is portrayed from gospel to gospel.

What we do know is that Joseph, Mary and Jesus do not quite fit our definition of the normal nuclear family. This is what we know. An angel of God asks to be the mother of God. Mary, a young girl, agrees. Mary who was engaged to Joseph is all of a sudden pregnant and Joseph, knowing that he did not father her child, decides to break off his engagement to her quietly, so that she would not suffer the severe consequences of her scandal. An angel intervened and Joseph agrees that he will wed Mary, and be the step-father of her child. The rest of the story we heard on Christmas and will hear on the feast of the Epiphany.

What the Church has always taught, being fully human, Jesus had to learn exactly as all human beings learn. He had to learn to walk, talk, eat, and dress himself. He had to learn how to write and read. And over time, he gradually came to know about the special relationship he had with God the Father, the gifts with which he was blessed, and how he was to use those gifts. When did he know who he really was? We really don’t know. Luke would say he had a good idea at the age of 12 years. Mark, the earliest gospel written, would say, at his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. John’s gospel would say he always knew. We really don’t know, and the Church has never made a definitive statement about it.

Our faith teaches that Joseph, Mary and Jesus had the perfect family and are the Holy Family. However, I am pretty sure that their neighbors in Nazareth, knowing the situation behind their marriage probably didn’t think they were all that perfect or holy.

How can we, with our normal families, relate to such an extraordinary family? This is where the letter from St. John, which we heard proclaimed in the second reading is important. God doesn’t call our families to be perfect. God calls our families to be holy.

St. John writes, “Beloved, See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called children of God. And so we are.” It is God and our relationship to God that makes a family holy.” St. John tells us in his letter that it is not the configuration of a family that makes it holy. Whether the family has both a mom and a dad, or is a single parent family (for whatever reason that may be), or whether the family has no mother or father, but a guardian who takes care of children, it is God that blesses that family and calls the family holy.

St. John writes that there are certain qualities a family has that makes the family holy. 1) Having confidence in God, 2) keeping his commandments, and, 3) doing what pleases God which is, “believing in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and loving one another just as he commanded us to do.” So how do we go about building these qualities into our own families?

There is a story about a newly ordained, young, unmarried Protestant minister who liked to preach a sermon entitled, “How to raise children.” The young minister got married and he and his wife began to have children, and the sermon was re-titled, “Suggestions as to how to raise children.” When his kids got to be teenagers, he quit preaching on the topic altogether.

At the risk of falling into the predicament of the young minister, I would like to offer 4 suggestions as ways for fulfilling the qualities of which St. John speaks in his letter to us today.

First, prayer is paramount. Parents, you must make prayer a priority in your family. It is important for your children to see you pray. Children learn by example. Lord knows, they copy all the bad things we do to our own embarrassment. If they see how important prayer is in your life, they will copy you. Pray as a family. Back in the 1950’s, Fr. Patrick Peyton ran a Rosary campaign with the slogan, “the family that prays together, stays together.” Find a prayer that is suited to your family and do it, whether it be reading the Bible and sharing your thoughts on the Sunday scriptures, reading the Bible, praying the rosary, praying a devotion, or gathering as a family and just making up your own prayers.

Second, bless one another. I lived at home until the day I got married. Every night before I went to bed, my dad would give me a simple blessing, “May God bless you and keep you.” Then, he would make the sign of the cross over me. Of course, on those occasions when I got home around 2 or 3 in the morning, it was not a blessing I received from my dad. All of my kids are adults, and I still bless them every night whether they are at home or not. Ruthie works night shifts as a nurse at the State Veterans Home in Minneapolis. On those nights that she works, I try to make sure I am home from work in time to wake her up and to bless her as she drives off to work in the night. Children, bless your parents. They need your blessings, too! If you need a resource, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has published a wonderful book entitled, “Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers.”

Third, express your love to one another not just in words, but in action. An expression of love can be anything from clearing off the dinner table and washing dishes, or taking out the garbage without being asked, to giving a loved one a big hug and a kiss. It can be calling a loved one up in the middle of the day to see how things are going, or just listening to a loved one’s day when he or she gets home from work or school. It is what we do for one another and how we express that love in action that we know God’s love for us.

Fourth, worship together at Mass. As important as a private and family prayer is to us at home, it is most important that we gather with our greater family here on Sunday to worship God together. We all are children of one large divine family, brothers and sisters of Jesus. We need to gather together, just as we do with our nuclear families, to deepen our relationship with one another, and to deepen our relationship with the God who loved us into existence, whose breath fills our lungs, and who feeds us with the words of sacred scripture and the Body and Blood of his Son, Jesus. God is the divine parent who loves us to death. As a family, we need to give thanks for having such a wonderful , divine parent.

Today, Ruthie and I celebrate the 41st anniversary of our wedding. Over our 41 years of marriage we have tried to create a holy family. Is our family perfect? Absolutely not. Is our family holy? Absolutely! Is this not what all families strive toward? My greatest experience of God has been in my relationship with her, and in our relationship with our four children, Andy, Luke, Meg, and Beth. On this feast of the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, may you celebrate the holiness of your families.

When children are born into the life of a couple, life is utterly changed and transformed. It makes no difference whether it is the first pregnancy or a later pregnancy. Life takes on a new normal, a new way of being. The same happens when we give full assent to God to enter into our lives.

In today’s Gospel, we see two women, one about the age of 14 years and the other woman very elderly, pregnant for the first time. Both women, in giving full assent to God to enter into their lives, are utterly transformed. Their lives are turned upside down. That is what happens when God is invited into human lives. Over these weeks of Advent we have heard the prophets and John the Baptist proclaim that when God is invited into human history God’s peace will reign, mountains will be made low, crooked roads made straight, deserts will bloom will flowers and vegetation and dry places run with life-giving water. Wolves and lambs will lie down in peace, as well as leopards and goats, lions and cows. Little children will play with poisonous snakes and not be bitten. Nations will come to the mountain of God and feast around the table of God, weapons of war made into plows and pruning hooks, and war abolished forever from human life. Human life will be turned upside down and a new way of life begun.

In order for all this to happen we have to take the words of St. Elizabeth, spoken at the end of today’s Gospel, very, very seriously. She spoke to Mary, “Blessed are you who believed that was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” As we approach the celebration of the birth of Jesus, do we as his followers truly believe what he spoke to us, or do we not take Jesus’ teachings seriously? Are we to be counted among those “blessed” who believe and want our lives turned upside down by God?

The week prior to Advent, Pope Francis lamented humanity’s unwillingness to believe what Jesus taught. His homily generated headlines like “Pope Francis called Christmas a charade” or, “Pope Francis calls Christmas phony,” However some news agencies interpreted what the Pope preached that day, that was not what he preached. To clear up any misconception, the Vatican released the text of his homily. This is what Pope Francis said:

“Jesus approaches Jerusalem, and seeing the city on a hill from a distance, weeps, and says, “If this day you only knew what makes for peace–but now it is hidden from your eyes. Today Jesus weeps as well: because we have chosen the way of war, the way of hatred, the way of enmities. We are close to Christmas: there will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity scenes – all decked out – while the world continues to wage war. The world has not understood the way of peace.”

The Pope went on to say, “Everywhere there is war today, there is hatred.” The Pope then asked, “What shall remain in the wake of this war, in the midst of which we are living now? What shall remain? Ruins, thousands of children without education, so many innocent victims: and lots of money in the pockets of arms dealers.” Pope Francis then said that Jesus called those who make money from war, weapon manufacturers, the dealers of weapons and the politicians who profit from war, cursed, criminals. The Pope went on to say that Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers!’ A war can be justified – so to speak – with many, many reasons, but when all the world as it is today, at war – piece meal though that war may be – a little here, a little there, and everywhere – there is no justification – and God weeps. Jesus weeps.”

Pope Francis concluded his homily that day with these words, “It will do us well to ask the grace of tears for ourselves, for this world that does not recognize the path of peace, this world that lives for war, and then cynically says not to make it. Let us pray for conversion of heart. Here before the door of this Jubilee of Mercy, let us ask that our joy, our jubilation, be this grace: that the world discover the ability to weep for its crimes, for what the world does with war.”

With Pope Francis’ lamentation for our world, and the lack of human belief in the teachings of Jesus, in what can we find hope and joy for the upcoming celebration of Christmas this year? The hope lies in today’s gospel.
Our Blessed Mother, Mary, a young pregnant girl, walks alone without any fear through country populated by robbers and revolutionaries. She is armed only with the baby growing within her womb whom the prophet Isaiah, named long before “wonder-counselor”, “God-Hero”, “Father-Forever”, and “Prince of Peace.” Her belief and her trust in God make her fearless in the face of the violence and war that surrounds her.

Is not the best the way to honor Jesus this Christmas that of emulating the example of Mary and Elizabeth, giving full assent of our wills to the one whom Mary carries within her womb? Are we ready, like Mary and Elizabeth, to say to God, “May it be done unto me according to your word?” Are we ready to take the leap of faith necessary to trust and believe what the Son of God and the Son of Mary taught?

As the living, breathing, visible Body of Christ in the world, we can effect great change if only we as individual members of Christ’s body begin to transform our lives into being peacemakers of Christ. At Christmas we celebrate the light of Christ entering the dark world of humanity. Let us use the light of Christ to examine all the areas of conflict and hate in our lives that need to be transformed, that need to be turned upside down, and ask God and trust God to make us peacemakers of Jesus in our world. From this Christmas on, may our gift to the baby Jesus in the manger be that of being sowers of peace.

Baptized in Jesus Christ, we carry within ourselves the wonder-counselor, God-hero, Father-forever, and Prince of Peace. Without any fear, without any doubt, let us take to heart the words of St. Elizabeth today, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” As the lives of a couple are utterly changed by the birth of their children, so may our lives be transformed into God’s living presence of peace and love.