NOTE: This reflection on the Holy Family of God arose out of my pastoral experience of 41 years of ministry in many diverse parish communities.
J.M.J.
When I was a kid attending Catholic School in the 1950’s, it was taught that the first thing to be handwritten at the top of each page were the letters J.M.J., initials for Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Of all families, the penultimate family was not those portrayed in TV sitcoms of the time, namely, the Andersons of “Father Knows Best”, or the Nelsons of “Ozzie and Harriet”, nor the Cleavers of “Leave It To Beaver.” The penultimate family, was the “Holy Family” consisting of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. The fact that the evangelist Mark, Matthew, and Luke brought up the “other” brothers and sisters of Jesus in their Gospel accounts was not the immediate concern of the religious Sisters who taught me. That was an issue left to the pervue of Biblical scholars and Christian denominations over which to argue and resolve. As far as far as the Sisters were concerned the most important point to impart was that the family unit of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph was the perfect family. Hence, the constant reminder of inscribing J.M.J. at the top of all handwritten pages.
I am sure that many homilies given this past weekend painted a picture of a family so perfect that the aura of holiness around them protected them like an invisible force shield from all the violence, all the injustices, and all hunger and poverty of their real world in first century Palestine and Judea. One of the homilies I heard gave me the image of “real life” bouncing off this sacred force field that surrounded them as they went about their daily business. The primary difficulty of this image is that the Holy Family becomes no more than a fairy tale that has nothing in common with the real life daily struggles of the typical human family. It is so totally “other” that the Holy Family is nothing more than a just stain glass window. There is no “common” ground of humanity that is shared with real families from which to learn or to emulate.
The other primary difficulty is that the gospels paint a different picture of this Holy Family. The Holy Family was a family living in destitution, their child born in a barn. They were political refugees who had to flee the violence of a cruel, despotic king and live for a while in a foreign land until that despot died. The Holy Family was a family in which things were anything but idyllic and where they had to ponder and think about the meaning of what had happened to them. We all struggle to figure out where God is in the good and the bad that happen to us in life. So it was the same with the Holy Family. Even Jesus did not have all the answers to this struggle of finding God in the tragedies of life. We hear Jesus questioning up to his last breath, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
For me the ultimate reality of the Feast of the Holy Family is revealed in the first chapter of Genesis, in which it is stated that all of humanity is made in the image and the likeness of God. Within each and every human being, male and female, of every race, of every religious or non-religious tradition, heterosexual, homosexual, bi-sexual or transgender is the DNA of God. Each and every one of us, are daughters and sons of God. And as Christians we believe that Jesus is the Word Incarnate, the Son of God, we are sisters and brothers of Jesus. It matters not whether we are Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist, Christian or whatever, we are sisters and brothers of Jesus. In short, we ALL share the DNA of God and are members of the Holy Family of God.
The greatest heresy that humanity has perpetuated and continues to perpetuate is that there are some of humanity who are NOT sons and daughters of God. That some are NOT members of the Holy Family of God. As we examine the religious wars, tribal wars, nation against nation throughout world history, and the history of our own nation, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Indian Wars, the enslavement of African, Asian, Latino, and indigenous peoples of the United States, we find this insidious heresy that people not made in our skin color or espousing our religion or culture are NOT sons and daughters of God. Racial and religious genocide thrives on this heresy.
We presently have an administration and many in the Congress who believe wholeheartedly that only some people, generally defined as white, wealthy, heterosexual, and Christian, are made in the image and likeness of God. It is evident in the immigration policies, the religious prejudice, the tax law that was just passed, the attempt to take away healthcare from the poor, the elderly, and the middle class of our nation. Is it any wonder that I may rant about the injustice of the present administration, especially the one who occupies the Oval Office, and the political party that dominates Congress? They perpetuate the sin of Cain! They are spreading a heresy that attacks the Holy Family of God. Is it any wonder that Pope Francis 1 is quoted as saying that there will be many Atheists who will experience Heaven and many Christians who will not?
The Feast of the Holy Family of God is not just about the nuclear family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This is a Feast about the entire human Holy Family of God created in the image and the likeness of God. The Gospel message of Jesus was God’s love and compassion extends to the entire Human Family, not just certain groups, nationalities, races, or cultures. Imagine for a moment what the world would be like if, when we see another person, we see the image and likeness of our God. We must not only see the initials of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but the initials of every human being on the top of our handwritten, or, in this case, typed page.
