The Family and Realizing the Hope Jesus Came To Give, Holy Family (C), December 29, 2024

Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Basilica of Saint Stephen, New Orleans, Louisiana
Feast of the Holy Family, Year C
December 29, 2024
1 Sam 2:20-22.24-28, Ps 84, 1 John 3:1-2.21-24, Lk 2:41-52

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• We celebrate today the Feast of the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph and the child Jesus. We mark the fundamental fact that when the Son of God became man, when the Word became flesh, he became flesh as a little child within a family. That was a divine choice, for Jesus did not have to come into our world in that way. He could have come as a 33-year-old adult and immediately begun his public ministry of preaching, teaching, healing and saving. He could have come as an 80-year-old sage or at least at the age of 12 dazzling the scribes and priests in the Temple like we see in today’s Gospel. But he was conceived and began his existence as a one-celled human zygote in Mary’s womb, progressed to a blastocyst, then an embryo, then a fetus until finally he was born as a baby in a family, where he was nourished according to his human nature and grew, as we see in today’s Gospel, in “wisdom and favor before God and man.” Why did he do this? He didn’t tell us the reason, but you don’t need to be a great theologian to see why it made sense: He wanted to redeem all of human life in its totality, from its very beginning, which meant redeeming the family from its very beginning.
• All of existence is meant to be familial. Saint John Paul II used to call the Blessed Trinity a family, because it is a structured communion of persons in love, with a Father, a Son and the love between them. The human person was made in the image and likeness of God as a communion of persons, “male and female he made them” (Gen 1:27-28), and hence the image of God is familial: a husband and a wife can love each so much that, like the Trinity, their love can generate a third person. They can literally “make love” and then name, raise and live in joyful communion with the love they make.
• But man, woman and children didn’t live up to their being in the image of God. Right from the beginning, sin invaded the family. It began with Adam and Eve and the first sin, in which Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent, with neither taking responsibility and with both hiding the most vulnerable aspects of their humanity from each other and God. The sinfulness quickly harmed their children. Cain killed his brother Abel. There was jealousy between Abraham’s sons Isaac and Ishmael, enmity between Isaac’s sons Jacob and Esau, envy between Jacob’s 12 sons, ten of whom ganged up to try to kill their brother Joseph. There was deadly jealousy in King David’s family. Jesus’ family tree is a chronicle of generations of infidelity to each other and to God. Polygamy and concubinage became rampant. Divorce was introduced because of the hardness of people’s hearts to keeping their promises of life. God would sum up the relationship with his people through the Prophet Hosea under the idea of adultery, because adultery, rather than fidelity, had almost become the rule in the relationships between spouses and family members and between individual families and the family of Israel with God. Simply put, the family had become a mess. As the human family “increased and multiplied,” so did sin.
• Jesus was born of a family in order to redeem the family, to reconcile all of family life to God, because the family has a crucial role in the world God created. The family based on marriage is the primordial sacrament because it is meant to be an efficacious sign of the love of God in the world, of the loving communion of persons who God is. When the family is thriving as God intended, everything else can find its proper order. But when the family becomes a den of sin instead of a school of sanctification, the wounds cut the deepest. That’s why the devil always goes after the family, from Adam’s and Eve’s, to the families we grew up in, to religious families and to the family Jesus himself founded with his Bride and Body the Church.
• Jesus’ whole work can be looked at as restoring the family to its proper place “in the beginning” by helping it to become a crucial part of redemption and a house of holiness. We see that restoration in the Holy Family of Nazareth, where their life was centered on God in prayer, where they sacrificed for each other out of love, where they helped and strengthened each other to fulfill the vocations God had given them, even at great personal cost. When Jesus inaugurated his public ministry, he continued to give great witness to the importance of the family in God’s plan of redemption. He began the public manifestation of his work with the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana, changing the “water” of the good of marriage from the beginning with Adam and Eve to the “wine” of a Sacrament that communicates his own divine life. Jesus taught about marriage in God’s original plan and sought to purify people’s hardened hearts to accept that God would make fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love, modeled on divine love, possible. He shared in the moments of familial life with Lazarus, Martha and Mary, and even in the family of Peter with his mother-in-law. He responded with haste to the cries of parents for their children, as he did with the Centurion whose son was dying, the Synagogue official whose little girl was moribund, the widow in Nain whose only Son had breathed his last, and Martha and Mary after the brother Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. Throughout his public ministry he also tried to reconcile people to God’s plans for marital and familial love. He tenderly told the adulterous woman that she wasn’t condemned but called her to go and sin no more. He compassionately exposed for the Samaritan woman that the man she was with was not her husband. He praised St. John the Baptist, who was in prison because he had reminded Herod that it was not right for him to marry his brother Philip’s wife.
• This year’s celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family is particularly special because it is taking place as part of the long-awaited Jubilee of Hope, which Pope Francis inaugurated on Christmas Eve at St. Peter’s in the Vatican. In a wheelchair, the Holy Father movingly opened the Jubilee Door and invited the whole Church to make a pilgrimage through that door, leaving behind a world in which there are so many signs of desperation and entering through the door who is Christ our hope. But that was just the start of the Jubilee. Today, on the Feast of the Holy Family, two things are happening. First, in Rome, Pope Francis will open the Holy Door at his Cathedral, the Archbasilica of Saint John in the Lateran. Second, he decreed that in every cathedral and co-cathedral of the world, bishops are to celebrate Holy Mass as the solemn opening of the Jubilee year. So in the mother church of every diocese in the world, including Saint Louis Cathedral here in New Orleans, there will be a special Mass with particular prayers for the occasion. And the Jubilee will continue in each diocese of the world until the Feast of the Holy Family next year. This shows us that the Jubilee is meant to be marked not just in Rome, and not just in every Diocese, but in every family, seeking to help every family model itself on the Holy Family and become a beacon of hope for the world, as Christian families individually and collectively give a reason for the hope we bear within us (1 Pet 3:15).
• If we’re going to live out this Jubilee Year well, it’s essential for us to grasp the true meaning of Christian hope. If you look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it says that hope is the “theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). Hope is, therefore, a gift of God by which we ground our life trustingly in Christ’s words and promises and avail ourselves of God’s aid to seek to live in his kingdom, in but not of the world, with our hearts set on God and the great hope of eternal loving communion with him. That’s a very beautiful, rich definition. And at Christmas time we can think about all of the promises God made that were fulfilled with the birth of Jesus the Messiah of a virgin in Bethlehem of Ephrathah, and all of the other promises that would be fulfilled in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. But I’ve always loved the definition suggested to us by Pope Benedict in his 2007 encyclical on Christian hope called Spe Salvi, or “Saved by Hope.” Relying on St. Paul’s words to the Ephesians, the Holy Father said that to live “without hope” is to live “without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). That’s kind of like a photographic negative through which we can shine light to discover the true meaning of hope: that hope is to live with God in the world. We know this to be true. No matter what challenges we’re facing, what mountains we need to climb, if we try to tackle them on our own, they can often prove overwhelming. If we face the problems, however, conscious that God is with us, helping us and sustaining us, we see that nothing is impossible. That’s the hope Christ sought to bring into the world. Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be “Emmanuel,” literally God-is-with-us. Jesus, the God-man, is indeed with us in the world. He is with us in the dark valleys and on the beautiful summits. He is with us on rainy and sunny days. He is with us always, as he promised at his Ascension, until the end of the world. And because he is with us, we are never without hope, because we know that he is not just “there,” but he’s with us loving us. As we heard in today’s second reading from St. John’s first letter, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. And so we are.” God has loved us that he didn’t even spare his own Son but sent him into our world to take on our humanity so that we would not perish but have eternal life. And that Son is still at our side in the Eucharist. That Son even enters into us. If God loves us so much that he would go to such lengths to save us, how can we not be filled with hope to overflowing?
• But we have to remain with the God with grounds our hope. In today’s Gospel, we discover what happens when we’re not with the God who has come to be God-with-us. We see it in the lives of the two greatest saints of all time, Mary and Joseph, when they lose the third member of the Holy Family, Jesus. The scene of losing Jesus for three days and then finding him in the Temple constitutes both one of the seven sorrows of Mary as well as the fifth Joyful Mystery. It’s an episode in the life of the Holy Family that, unless we regularly meditate on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, we may not ponder enough, since it comes up at Mass only every third year on today’s feast and on the optional Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It’s a scene, however, from which we can learn so much. Within the context of the Jubilee, we can focus on what it teaches us about hope and hopelessness.
• The Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth was holy first and foremost because it was centered on God, who literally dwelled among them, whom they held in their arms, nursed, clothed, taught, and helped grow according to his humanity. But we see in today’s Gospel that there was a time in which Mary and Joseph took their eyes off Jesus. After one of their three annual 60-mile pilgrimages from Nazareth to Jerusalem, as they were heading home, Mary thought Jesus was with Joseph and Joseph thought he was with Mary, but neither of them had Jesus in the forefront of their attention. After a day’s journey, they saw they were both wrong when they discovered that Jesus was with neither of them nor any of the others traveling back with them in the caravan toward Galilee. Both were distracted. Both had taken their eyes off Jesus. This wasn’t a sin, but it clearly was an imperfection; they just presumed the other was taking care of him. So they began to look for him, with ever greater anxiety, in the camp, but didn’t find him. It is every parent’s nightmare to lose a child, and they had not just lost a 12-year-old, but also the Son of God who had been entrusted to them. So they journeyed all the way back straight up the hill to Jerusalem and began to look for him there, at the places where they had stayed, eaten, visited, and so on. They searched a whole second day without finding him, either, as doubtless their dread began to grow. Finally, on the third day, they found Jesus in the precincts of the Temple area, sitting in the midst of the teachers, astounding them with his understanding, questions and answers. When they confessed that they had been looking for him for three days with great anxiety, the not-even-yet-teenage Jesus asked why they hadn’t realized that he would have had to have been in God his Father’s house, busy about his Father’s work. He wasn’t anxious for them because he probably anticipated they would have known where to find him, that he was in the temple much like Samuel in today’s first reading had been left as a boy in the temple by his parents. While Mary and Joseph had taken their eyes off him, Jesus had not taken his eyes off his Father. Losing Jesus for three days is not just something that points to his eventual three days in the tomb, when the whole human race would, in some sense, lose his presence for that period. It also points to the anxiety, the hopelessness, even the despair that comes when we really lose the presence of Jesus in our life. We can become like Mary Magdalene the morning of resurrection asking everyone where they have taken the body of the Lord. The remedy is to keep our eyes focused on Jesus, to be with him in seeking the will of the Father, to stay with him even for a while in the Father’s house, the Church, so that we, like him, can be about God the Father’s business, seeking to accomplish the Father’s will just like we see Jesus doing. To be with Jesus in this way is something that will always ground our hope. This scene of the anxiety of Mary and Joseph puts into relief that the Holy Family otherwise was totally focused on Jesus, on helping him and each other to do the will of God. Our families, as well as the Church as the family of God, is meant to help us to center our life on Jesus in a similar way.
• And so, as we celebrate today the Feast of the Holy Family and the inauguration of the Jubilee of Hope in the Archdiocese of New Orleans and beyond, let us ask God-with-us to convince us in a particular way of his holy presence so that we can be filled with hope. The Eucharist is the greatest familial Sacrament of all and the greatest source of hope. It’s here that Emmanuel comes to be with us. The Jesus we receive in Holy Communion is the same Jesus who dwelled in Mary’s womb for nine months, the same Jesus whom St. Joseph held in his strong, manly arms, the same Jesus who gave his life for us on Calvary, rose from the dead, and ascended to the Father’s right side. It’s the same Jesus, he just looks differently, so humbly dwelling for us under the appearances of simple human food. But he is hear for us, our Good Shepherd, our Savior, our Way, Truth, Resurrection and Life. He wants to bring us into communion with him and with each other, in our families and in his family the Church. He wants us always to live conscious of his presence, keeping our eyes on him, knowing that he can’t take his loving eyes off us. When we live this way, conscious of God’s abiding Eucharistic presence, then we will become ambassadors of hope in a world that so much needs hope. When we live this way, we will fulfill Pope Francis’ prayer for the Church as we begin this special holy year. “Through our witness,” he wrote at the end of the letter inaugurating the Jubilee, “may hope spread to all those who anxiously seek it. May the way we live our lives say to them in so many words: ‘Hope in the Lord! Hold firm, take heart and hope in the Lord! (Ps27:14).” This is what the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph are praying that others will be able to find in us, just as we find so much hope in them!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Alleluia ACTS 16:14B

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Open our hearts, O Lord,
to listen to the words of your Son.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel LK 2:41-52

Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast
of Passover,
and when he was twelve years old,
they went up according to festival custom.
After they had completed its days, as they were returning,
the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem,
but his parents did not know it.
Thinking that he was in the caravan,
they journeyed for a day
and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances,
but not finding him,
they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.
After three days they found him in the temple,
sitting in the midst of the teachers,
listening to them and asking them questions,
and all who heard him were astounded
at his understanding and his answers.
When his parents saw him,
they were astonished,
and his mother said to him,
“Son, why have you done this to us?
Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”
And he said to them,
“Why were you looking for me?
Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
But they did not understand what he said to them.
He went down with them and came to Nazareth,
and was obedient to them;
and his mother kept all these things in her heart.
And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor
before God and man.

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