Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family (B)
December 26, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The text that guided the homily is:
- 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.
- On Friday we celebrated Christmas, which is first and fundamentally the celebration of how God so loved the world and every human being that he took on human nature himself so that he might fully restore us to the divine image and likeness. The priority of Christmas is always on God’s coming into our world and our following the Shepherds, the Wisemen, the angels and the animals to adore him. We make a spiritual pilgrimage to Bethlehem and, filled with awe, praise and thank God for the greatest of all gifts. This year, in the midst of the pandemic and all of its collateral hardships and losses, we recognize our need for God even more and we are filled with gratitude that God-with-us, Emmanuel, has not left us alone, but has entered our reality in order to fill our darkness with his light and even death with life.
- To celebrate the feast of Christmas well, however, we also need to look at how we receive the gift of God. That’s why the Church always has us celebrate the Solemnity of the Holy Family on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas, because we see in the Holy Family of Joseph and Mary how to respond to the gift of God, not just as individuals but in the communion of our own family, of the family of the Church, and, even more broadly, in the human 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 it in how Herod sent his henchmen to try to assassinate the baby Jesus, terrorizing not only the Holy Family but all the families of ancient Bethlehem.
- Surveys across the globe have shown that the devil has been rather effective in his attack on the family. During the pandemic, while some families have had the beautiful opportunity to spend far more time together, not just with each other but in prayer to God, many others have been attacked by the evil one, leading to much higher rates of divorce, domestic violence and other problems.
- We can spend many homilies focusing on the problems confronting the family today, but it’s more important to consider how God wants to strengthen the family. The feast of the Holy Family allows us to 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, Mary and Joseph were centered on Jesus, the living Son of God. Every family is called to center its life on Jesus the Lord. The family that does this grows in holiness. The family that doesn’t, doesn’t.
- Secondly, Mary and Joseph strived to do God’s will and sought to help each other 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, to go to Nazareth. 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 yours 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.
- The feast of the Holy Family, in the heart of the Christmas Octave, is an opportunity for each family to examine itself as to the extent to which it is imitating the Holy Family in making Jesus the center of their family life, in praying together, in encouraging and inspiring each other to be obedient to God’s will through their own example. It’s likewise a chance for us to look at our parishes and the Church to see if we, too, are living these familial virtues. Especially for those who are living alone, whose family members may have died, or become estranged, or living far away, living this familial reality of the Church — with our brothers and sisters in Christ, within the love of the Blessed Mother whom Jesus gave us as our Mother on Calvary and in prayerful reliance on St. Joseph in this Year of St. Joseph proclaimed by Pope Francis — becomes even more crucial.
- This Christmas, when because of the pandemic many of us have not been able to get together with our family members like we’re accustomed to, we have felt the need for the family even more. We have felt the need for our parish families and the familial nature of the Church even more. We have all felt — most of us with some pain of deprivation — the connection God always intends between the celebration of Christmas and the family. We thank God for making us even more aware. And we commit ourselves, as we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, to do all we can to respond to his help to fortify our families and our parishes to center our life of Jesus, God-with-us, on doing God’s will together, and on praying as a family.
- To the crisis of the family that the world and the Church face, God has given his solution. He has entered our family to redeem it. Let us come together as families, and the family Christ came to establish, to thank him this Sunday.
The Gospel on which the homily was based was:
When the days were completed for their purification
according to the law of Moses,
They took him up to Jerusalem
to present him to the Lord,
just as it is written in the law of the Lord,
Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,
and to offer the sacrifice of
a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,
in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.
Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.
This man was righteous and devout,
awaiting the consolation of Israel,
and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit
that he should not see death
before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.
He came in the Spirit into the temple;
and when the parents brought in the child Jesus
to perform the custom of the law in regard to him,
He took him into his arms and blessed God, saying:
“Now, Master, you may let your servant go
in peace, according to your word,
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you prepared in sight of all the peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and glory for your people Israel.”
The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him;
and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother,
“Behold, this child is destined
for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be contradicted
—and you yourself a sword will pierce—
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”
There was also a prophetess, Anna,
the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.
She was advanced in years,
having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage,
and then as a widow until she was eighty-four.
She never left the temple,
but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.
And coming forward at that very time,
she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child
to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.
When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions
of the law of the Lord,
they returned to Galilee,
to their own town of Nazareth.
The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom;
and the favor of God was upon him.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download