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.
