FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH (2024)

FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH (2024)

Readings:

Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14

Psalms 128:1-5

Colossians 3:12-21

Luke 2:41-52

The memories of our Christmas celebrations are still fresh, when the Church asks us to pause and reflect on the Holy Family.  While we cannot completely take the blood out of the story of the crucifixion, we tend to sanitize many of the gospel stories to a point of distortion.  We overlook the exhaustion of the young soon-to-be mother and her betrothed who have traveled to Bethlehem for the census.  We lessen the disappointment of not being able to find suitable housing, and we sanitize the odorous and uncomfortable stable, such a terrible place for the Savior of the World to be born.  In today’s gospel we underestimate the anxiety and upset of parents who cannot find their child after a Passover visit to what was then a bustling metropolis.  The anxiety has to be akin to parents, who, after a tragic school shooting, wait in a crowded gymnasium to see if their child will walk through the gym’s doors.

As was their custom, Joseph and Mary, to take Jesus to Jerusalem in celebration of Passover.  They no doubt traveled in a large caravan from their town of Nazareth, with relatives and friends often taking over the duties of watching over their younger travelers.  Expecting that Jesus must be with friends (yes, He no doubt had them), they searched for Him for a day, and not finding Him, they returned to Jerusalem.  For three agonizing days they frantically looked for Him, only to find Him in the Temple with the teachers, “listening to them and asking them questions.”  All who heard Jesus were “astounded at his understanding and his answers.”  In twenty years, there would be another trip to Jerusalem, and some of those same Temple teachers would be less than impressed.  Indeed, they would be among those calling for Jesus’ crucifixion.

Jesus’ answer to His parents might appear to be both glib and opaque, and while, given all of the events surrounding His birth, they understood that their child had a special relationship with God, “they did not understand what [Jesus] said to them.”  Jesus, as was recommended in our first reading, was “obedient to them,” and “He advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.”

The other aspect of Jesus’ life that should not be sanitized are His years growing up in the house of Joseph and Mary.  Jesus had the best of teachers, but He was also “fully man,” and no doubt had all of the tendencies that young children are prone to.  We tend to think of Jesus without a correction during His years of growing up in Nazareth, and yet that does a disservice to Jesus’ humanity.  It was certainly in the corrections of Joseph and Mary that Jesus put on and learned of “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Col 3:12ff).  Jesus learned from His parents how to put up with the faults and differences of others, “bearing with one another and forgiving one another if one has a grievance against another.”

St. Paul in our second reading perfectly sums up in what the holiness of any family (even non or untraditional families) consists: “and over [every virtue] put on love, that is the bond of perfection.  And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were called in one body.  And be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.  And Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to Goethe Father through Him.”  The Scriptures have much to teach us about making our families holy.  Be open to its message.