Homily for Holy Family Year B 2020-21
SIR 3:2-6, 12-14, COL 3:12-21, LK 2:22-40
Introduction
Today we remember THE Holy Family of Jesus,
Mary and Joseph. And as the opening
prayer of today’s Mass prayed, we hope to imitate them in the various ways of
being a Holy Family.
But what is a holy family? Is my family holy? Is your family holy? Is the
family of your neighbours from hell also holy?
We can try to answer this question by
looking at its two parts: What is a
family? What is a HOLY family?
Scripture and Theology
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
describes the family as “the original cell of social life” (CCC 2207). In other words, the smallest natural group of
people in society is in a family. “You
can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family" we are
reminded by the novel, To Kill a
Mockingbird. Going on it says:
"an' they're still kin to you no
matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly
when you don't.”
God himself made this small unit of the
family when he created Adam and Eve and joined them together as husband and wife. That is why the Catechism goes on to say that
“A man and a woman united in marriage, together with their children, form a
family” (CCC 2202). Family and marriage
go hand in hand.
All families therefore, must base
themselves on this basic unit of father, mother and children, just like the
Holy Family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. But
just like here in the South, in Uganda where I grew up, family often means far
more than this nuclear family of father, mother and children. The African
family is the extended family that includes cousins, uncles and aunts, several
steps removed. That is why when looking
for a husband or wife, you have to be careful that you are not related. And if you think your Christmas dinner was a
large one, or that your Christmas gift list was too long, spare a thought for the
African mother or grandmother who has to prepare a meal for what seems like a
football team. Even the gospels often
speak of the brothers and sisters of Jesus, that is, probably his cousins and
other relatives. And in Matthew’s gospel,
when his mother and brothers come looking for him, Jesus instead points to his disciples
and says: “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly
Father is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mt. 12: 49-50). Even Jesus expands the idea of family to
include his disciples. And so, while the
basic unit of family is father, mother and children, by extension it can be stretched
to include others who have ties of blood or marriage.
But if family can be extended to include
distant relatives, can family also include situations which have fewer members,
lacking a father or a mother or children?
From the age of seven, I grew up in a
single-parent family. No, I was not an
orphan; both my parents were alive, but they separated and so my siblings and I
were raised by our mother – and I think she did a good job, playing both mom
and dad. Would I have loved to grow with
a father teaching me manly things? Certainly! So would orphaned children who miss the love
of a father or mother. So are widows and
widowers, who miss the love of their spouse.
So are parents who lost or never had children. But these two are families.
While the ideal is a two-parent family with
children, as Pope Francis has continually reminded us, even those families lack
an element or two, often through no fault of all the members, must not be cast
aside. We must not make the perfect the
enemy of the good. Instead, we must keep
striving to build on the good already there and bring it to perfection and holiness.
Christian Life
So, what is a holy family? I would like to look at three words used to
translate the word holy and what those translations tell us about the meaning
of holiness.
The word for holy in Spanish, Italian and
Portuguese is santo, very similar to our English word “saint.” Santo or saint come from the Latin
word sanctus, which means to set part for God; to consecrate. That is what Joseph and Mary come to do in
the Temple as we heard in the gospel.
Jewish law required that "Every
male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord." In other
words, every first-born male, human or animal, had to be given to the
Lord. Mary and Joseph were not exempt
from setting apart their child for God, presenting him in the Temple, as if to
say, “God you have given us a child; in gratitude, we give him back to you, to
be all yours, to serve you.” Of course,
in the case of Jesus what they did more than a formality, more than a ritual. For Jesus was indeed set apart for God in a
special way. Simeon and Anna confirmed
this when they revealed to all that this baby, was going to be something great;
he was going to be the Saviour of Israel.
And so, these prophets revealed the principal reason of why the family
of Mary and Joseph was holy, because their son, Jesus, is also the Son of God,
truly set apart for God. A holy family sets
itself apart for God.
Leaving the Latin languages, we turn to the
Germanic languages whose word for holy is heilige, a word which means “whole”.
Something holy is therefore complete and pure. And what makes our families complete and
therefore holy is if they have God in them, God who completes them. In many homes you will see a plaque that
says: “Christ is the Head of this House, the Unseen Guest at every meal, the
Silent Listener to every conversation.”
If our families are to be holy, these words must not remain on the wall,
but must be lived out. In today’s reading from Colossians St. Paul asks families
to have “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another.” He concludes by saying: "And over all these put on love, that is, the
bond of perfection." Our
families are holy, if they have God and if they have these values God teaches
us to have.
Besides the ideas of consecration and
completeness that we learn from the Spanish santo and the German heilige,
let us turn to Africa for a third word for holiness. When the missionaries brought the faith to East
Africa, they translated holy into Kiswahili by creating a new word mtakatifu,
from two words, kutaka which means “to desire” and utifu
which means “obedience.” They
wanted to communicate that holiness is the desire for and living out obedience. Our first reading from Sirach told us that “God
sets a father in honor over his children; a mother’s authority he confirms over
her sons.” That is because the fourth commandment asks children to obey their
fathers and mothers. The reading also
asked children to care for their parents, especially in their old age; this
makes sense since the parents took care of their children when these were
young. St. Paul also spoke about the
mutual relationship of love and obedience between spouses. Jesus too at Nazareth was
"obedient" to his parents and there he "increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man." In a holy family, therefore, obedience must
exist, not just to each other, but also to God.
Conclusion
There is a lot of good advice today on how
to be family on promoting the family.
And that is good. But for
Catholics, we must go beyond just being family and becoming a holy family. Being a holy family is not a sprint, but a
marathon. It is not a permanent state,
but a work in progress. We must not sit
back and relax, perhaps because we have some of the trappings of holiness. Like Jesus, Mary and Joseph did we must work
every day to live out those three elements of holiness: to set ourselves apart
for God for example by regular prayer; to be complete and whole, for example,
by eliminating sin and living out the virtues; to be obedient, not just to each
other, but especially to God. We must
holy just as God is holy, not only in good times, but even in times of trial.
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