Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family (A), Vigil
December 28, 2019
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, as the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family.
- It’s highly significant that when the Son of God became man, when the Word became flesh, he chose to be conceived and born within a family of an already committed husband and wife. He didn’t choose to come as a 30-year-old adult, or a teenager, or an 80 year old. He didn’t choose to be born of a single mom, or raised by two men or two women, or some other arrangement. He chose to be born within a family … precisely in order to redeem the family. The family is always in need of redemption. We see with the first family of Adam and Eve how the devil succeeded in separating husband and wife from God and from each other, and we see the immediate consequences of the devil’s work in the next generation when Cain slew his brother Abel. Because the family is meant to be the world’s greatest image of God as a communion of persons in love, the devil never ceases to go after the family. We see how he did through Herod in this Sunday’s Gospel, terrorizing not only the Holy Family but all the families of ancient Bethlehem.
- And as surveys across the globe have shown, the devil has been rather effective in his attack on the family. Many think that marriage is simply a piece of paper and don’t even bother getting married any more. There’s the attempt to redefine marriage and make it a husband-less or wife-less institution. There’s the challenge in many parts of the world by polygamy, where men fail to make a commitment to one woman. There’s the struggle of so many single-parent families whether by accident or by abandonment but choice. There’s the widespread notion that marriage lasts for as long as two shall love, rather than for as long as they shall live, and the problems that come from the no-fault divorce culture. There’s the problem of the separation of families, like that is happening in the desperate situation at the border, but also happens voluntarily through the mobility of family members.
- We can spend many homilies focusing on the problems confronting the family today, but it’s more important to consider how to strengthen the family one by one. It’s a great blessing that we have the feast of the Holy Family, so that we can reflect together on the purpose of the family, what it means to be a husband and father, a wife and mother, a child and brother or sister. The family has a purpose in God’s plan; it’s meant to be a school of love, a domestic Church, a gift of God to help all of the members of the family grow into the realization of who God created each of them to be.
- In the Opening Prayer of Sunday’s Mass, we’ll pray, “O God, who were pleased to give us the shining example of the Holy Family, graciously grant that we may imitate them in practicing the virtues of family life and the bonds of charity.” All of us can learn so much from their virtues and love about how to make our families schools of love. Their family is called the “Holy Family” because holiness is the perfection of love. For a family to be a school of love, it needs to model itself on the loving choices and priorities we see in them.
- When we look at the Holy Family, we easily see several crucial elements about what made it holy:
- First and foremost, they were centered around Jesus, the living Son of God. Every family is called to center its life around Jesus the Lord. The family that does this grows in holiness. The family that doesn’t, doesn’t.
- Secondly, all the members of the family strived to do God’s will and sought to help others to do God’s will. Mary said, in becoming God’s mother, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” Joseph was constantly obeying God through the Angel, to take Mary as his wife, to flee with Mary and Jesus into Egypt, to return from Egypt after Herod’s death. Jesus’ whole life is a lesson in obedience. St. Luke tells us that Jesus was obedient to Mary and Joseph, growing in wisdom and understanding. He was obedient to His Heavenly Father even unto death on the Cross, saying amidst beads of bloody perspiration in the Garden, “Not my will, but thine be done.” The Holy Family was holy because it always sought to do God’s will. Every family that wants to be holy is called to do the same.
- Thirdly, and related to both of these, the Holy Family was holy because it prayed. We read in the Gospels that the three of them would go regularly up to the Temple on the major feasts to pray. They would go to the synagogue at least every Sabbath. It was obvious that they also prayed a great deal at home, because when Jesus was caught among the teachers in the Temple at 12, he was already capable of amazing them with his questions. Jesus became familiar with the Sacred Scriptures according to his humanity because both Mary and Joseph taught him Hebrew, like all Jews, by reading Sacred Scripture and meditating upon it with him. Likewise any family that wants to be holy, that wants to be what God calls it to be, has to pray, both going up to the temple as a family and then at home, from the earliest days.
- God calls every family to examine itself as to the extent to which it is imitating the Holy Family in making Jesus the center of family life, in praying together, in encouraging and inspiring each other to be obedient to God’s will through their own example.
- There’s a particular way all three of these points about the Holy Family — centering on Jesus, doing God’s will, and praying together — align. It’s at the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Husband and wife are married in the context of the Mass in front of the altar, which is highly significant, because their marriage is called to be a symbol of that marriage between Christ and the Church, which is consummated, we could say, on the altar, when the Church takes within the body of Jesus the Bridegroom and becomes one flesh with her. For any marriage to thrive, for any family to thrive, spouses and children need together to come often to this marriage bed, where they’ll receive the Lord of love inside them and be able to share his complete and total love with each other.
- To the crisis of the family that the world and the Church face, God has given his solution — Himself united with us and with our families. Let us come as families to unite ourselves to him this Sunday.
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