Solemnity of the Holy Family (B), Conservations with Consequences Podcast, December 30, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Solemnity of the Holy Family, B, Vigil
December 30, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of the brief 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 and Monday, as the Church celebrates back to back the Solemnities of the Holy Family and of Mary, Mother of God.
• We are still very much in the Octave of Christmas, which is first and fundamentally the celebration of how God so loved the world and took on our human nature himself so that he might fully restore us to the divine image and likeness. He entered into conversation with the human race, taking on our humanity so that ultimately, through his saving work, we might take on his divinity. The priority of Christmas is always on that gift of God’s coming into our world to save and sanctify us and show us the way to live forever with God-with us. The second part of that conversation is how we respond to God’s opening, grace-filled outreach. And so we’re beckoned to respond to him like the Shepherds, the Wisemen, the angels and the animals, to make a spiritual pilgrimage to Bethlehem and, filled with awe, adore, praise and thank God for the greatest of all gifts.
• To help us learn how to receive the gift of Christmas and how to respond, the Church always has us celebrate on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas the Solemnity of the Holy Family, because we see in the Holy Family of Joseph and Mary how to react to the gift of Jesus, God with us, not just as individuals but in the communion of our own family, with the family of the Church, and, even more broadly, in the human family.
• It’s an amazing truth that when the Son of God became man, when the Word became flesh, he chose to be conceived and be 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 sage. 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 nuclear family … precisely in order to redeem the family. The family is always in need of redemption. We know that with the first family of Adam and Eve, 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 loving communion of persons, 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. The feast of the Holy Family is an annual opportunity 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 virtues and love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph about how to make our families schools of love. Their family is called the “Holy Family” because holiness is the perfection of love. For our families to become holy families, the family has to be a school of love, which means learning to model itself on the loving choices and priorities we see in Bethlehem and beyond.
• Let’s look at three of the elements that made the Holy Family holy.
  • First and foremost, Mary and Joseph were holy because they were totally centered on Jesus, the living Son of God. Every family is called to center its life on God in the various aspects of its co-existence, recognizing that God-with-us is with them. Just as the baby Jesus totally changed the life of Joseph and Mary such that he became the focus of all they did, so Jesus is meant to change the priorities of every family, that he become part of every aspect of their life. This is where the holiness of the family begins.
  • Secondly, Mary and Joseph became holy by striving to do God’s will and seeking 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, and to go to Nazareth. We see the two of them, in this Sunday’s Gospel, scrupulously obeying the law of Moses in taking Jesus to the temple 40 days after his birth for the mystery of the presentation. Jesus’ whole life, too, is a lesson in obedience. St. Luke tells us that Jesus was obedient to Mary and Joseph, growing in wisdom and understanding; this was part of his loving obedience to God the Father, which he continued the whole of his life even to death on the Cross. The Holy Family was holy because it always sought to do God’s will and help each other to fulfill what God was asking. 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. But prayer is more than merely saying our prayers. Mary and Joseph were both contemplatives. Mary’s whole life is a lesson of prayer, from the Archangel Gabriel’s encountering her there, to her Magnificat, to her standing at the foot of the cross, to her treasuring everything in her heart. St. Joseph was a man of silent prayer and the grace-filled action flowing from that prayer. That’s the school in which Jesus himself was raised. Likewise any family that seeks holiness, that wants to be what God calls it to be, has to pray, going up to the temple — the Church — as a family and then at home, from the earliest days, saying prayers together so that children can learn how to speak and listen to God, but then likewise teaching them how to ponder within one’s heart not only what God says but what God has done and continuing to do.
• 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. The Church has us build on those lessons as we finish the Christmas octave and begin a new civil year, by focusing even more deeply on Mary and focusing on her motherhood. She was the woman God the Father chose to be the mother of his Son and that Son from the Cross called to be our mother. If we’re going to live 2024 in a holy way, each of our families and the family of the Church needs to learn from Mary as mother. Mary does this by helping us contemplatively to review the previous year and prepare for the new so that our life, like hers, can become what St. John the Evangelist calls “grace upon grace.” In Monday’s Gospel, which features the visit of the shepherds to Bethlehem, St. Luke tells us, “Mary kept all of these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” Pope Benedict XVI, who died one year ago on December 31 and for whom we devoutly pray, talked about Mary’s contemplative heart in his apostolic exhortation on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church. He said that Mary was “ever attentive to God’s word” and lived “completely attuned to that word, treasur[ing] in her heart the events of her Son, piecing them together as if in a single mosaic.” She put everything together like the pieces of a masterpiece mosaic and treasured not just the pieces but the whole.Mary shows us all in the Church how to piece together all of the events of our life to the events of Jesus’ life and to understand our ups and downs in connection with God-with-us. This means that the events of the past year and the events of the new aren’t random or disconnected. Every year is like a new chapter in a book, but it’s not a new book. It’s building on what God has been trying to do in our life up until now, what he’s done for the world in Christ, what he did all the way back to Creation. Everything that happens this year — including the crosses we’ll be asked to carry — is building upon so many gifts that God has already given. But we need a contemplative heart, a heart that connects the dots and treasures everything God gives, in order to perceive it. That’s what Mary, our Mother, wants to help us to learn.
• The culmination of the Solemnities of the Holy Family and of Mary, Mother of God, happens at the altar, where we come together as a family to center ourselves on Jesus, to enter into the prayer of the Church both in heaven and on earth, and to help each other to obey him, beginning with his words, “Do this in memory of me.” Just as Mary the Mother of God held her Son and pondered the miracle of his incarnation and birth, so we’re called, with her, to ponder the meaning of his continued incarnation on the altar as we prepare to hold him in our hands or receive him on our tongues. Mary’s prayerful adoration of Jesus in Bethlehem is a model for our own at Mass, just as her Fiat or “Let it be done to me according to your word” is an example for our own “Amen,” or our public commitment to build our life on the reality of God-with-us in the Eucharist. Jesus has come to redeem the family, our family, the family of the Church, and the whole human family. The Eucharist is the means. And Mary and Joseph show us how to receive the gift of Jesus in the Eucharist with the same wonder and consequence as they received the gift of Jesus in Bethlehem. God bless you all!

The Gospels on which this homily was based were: 

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