Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Lectionary: 17



Whoever honors his father atones for sins,
and preserves himself from them.
When he prays, he is heard;
he stores up riches who reveres his mother.
Whoever honors his father is gladdened by children,
and, when he prays, is heard.
Whoever reveres his father will live a long life;
he who obeys his father brings comfort to his mother.


Most priests, I venture to say, come from two parent families. Their parents were married only once and remained married until one of them died. In many cases the priests are members of a large family and, very often, they are first-born sons. 

That is certainly my story. We bring a certain bias to our notions of family. Eventually we have come to understand that, though our "family of origin" was not ideal, it was better than that -- it was real. Grace flowed into those real situations. It revealed itself by many healings, reconciliations and human satisfaction.

Catholic speak of the "real presence" of Jesus in the Eucharist. We should understand that our ideals become real in all the sacraments, including the Sacrament of Marriage. Outside of that covenant our expectations of commitment and promises of mutual sacrifice, are only notions, unbinding, agreements without substance. 

I have to confess, also, that I am impatient with other definitions of family. I don't believe an unmarried couple should call themselves a family. I think they do a severe disservice to their children. A child has a right to live in the home of his biological parents, who love one another and have made a public commitment to one another and their children. 

There is so much in life that is unreliable; every child learns that soon enough. He should be able to take his parents' love for granted. 

Couples who adopt children and love them as their own do heroic service. We should give them constant support. With God's grace they heal the child's abandonment; their reassuring love witnesses marriage which is founded not on human desire or human choice but on the Word of God. 

On Father's Day we honor all the men who are fathers of children. I do not want to be congratulated as one of them. I am not a father; I have no children. Let's not be silly when we honor those who have been given the vocation of parents. Mothers Day and Fathers Day belong to those who have earned the title. 

This Sunday between Christmas and New Years celebrates the web of human family in which God enmeshed himself. He would have a father and mother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. They would treat him as one of their own and if he ever forgot his human nature they were quick to remind him of it. 

He learned to respect his elders and to watch out for his juniors. He was probably told whom to trust and whom not to trust; as an adult he would make his own decisions about those people but as a child he believed what he was told. Human beings are naturally suspicious of strangers and some people give us the creeps. His family encouraged those instincts. 

God wanted to see human beings with the eyes of a child, of a boy, of a teenager and of an adult. He wanted to love us with bonds of human affection as a son, grandson, nephew, neighbor and friend. He was not satisfied with the security of a lofty throne and the fond attention of angels. He had to know the rough and tumble of human life, with its innumerable misunderstandings and its habitual betrayals. He had to feel hunger and thirst, loneliness and fear -- torture and death. How could he love us without deep knowledge of such things? 

From his heavenly throne he might have given us advice, he might have enacted laws. They would be useless to us. God had to learn there is nothing ideal about human except its potential. 

We celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family in gratitude that God came to hide himself among us, to know what it is to be human, and to give himself totally to us in love without reserve. 

Jesus is the marriage of human and divine nature, uncompromising, sure, and beautiful. 


Gwendolyn Brooks has a wonderful poem reflecting on this mystery.