Holy Family (A)
It is not easy to come up with a homily for the feast of the Holy Family! One challenge is that, as a Catholic priest, I do not have a wife or children of my own. Nevertheless, I grew up in a family and still have lots of relatives here and there. Moreover, in my ministry over the years, I have encountered members of many families, and many kinds of families, and have heard many family-related stories. Besides, I have the teaching of the Church on family life to draw from as a resource. Being celibate, then, is not an insurmountable problem when it comes to preaching about this feast.
There is another problem, though – a problem which affects primarily those who listen to homilies about the Holy Family. In my experience growing up, priests tended to hold up the Holy Family as a model for all families to imitate. It sounds good in theory, but it has some challenges in practice. First of all, in the Holy Family, we have a sinless mother and a son who is not only sinless but also God. Try meeting that standard! Moreover, the Gospels simply do not give us details of the daily life of the Holy Family. We are not told how Joseph and Mary handled disagreements between them. (Two people can be holy and still disagree; their holiness is seen in how they deal with the disagreement.) We are told nothing of toxic relatives, difficult neighbors, health issues, or financial struggles. The Holy Family had no battles between siblings or a child in trouble with the law. I could go on, but you get my drift, I am sure!
Put this all together, and what do we get? Because we do not have details of how the Holy Family actually lived their daily life, homilists will project their own thoughts of what the ideal family should be onto the Holy Family, and expect all families to live up to those thoughts. People in the pews, on the other hand, hearing little they can relate to, will see the Holy Family as an impossible, unattainable ideal, with little relevance to their daily struggles or their daily joys. This is exactly the opposite of how it should be. How can we remedy the situation?
In order to get the right answer, we need to find the right question. How, then, can the Holy Family offer us – as families and as individuals – an example to follow? How can the Holy Family guide and inspire us?
When Joseph and Mary were betrothed to each other, thus making their commitment to marry each other in a year or so, they could not have known what their future would be like. They did not yet know that the Messiah would be born of Mary. They could not foresee the Annunciation, the trip to Bethlehem, the manger, the coming of the Magi, the wrath of Herod, or the flight into Egypt. Their life together would have many surprising twists and turns, twists that would test their faith and love.
When a man and a woman decide to marry, they are in the same position. They know that they love each other and wish to seal that love in a great, permanent commitment to one another, and proclaim it to the world. Still, they cannot know where that commitment will take them. They do not foresee the twists and turns in the road ahead, some of which will test their faith and love. They do not know what joys and what sorrows will be theirs as the years unfold.
They do know what Joseph and Mary knew. They know that, by virtue of the sacramental gift they received in marriage, the Lord will be with them. They can trust Him. He is leading them on and giving them the grace to discover and become faithful to His purposes for them, especially in moments when love and joy and hope seem far off. They can turn to Joseph and Mary as an example here. Not an example to be followed in great detail, because we do not have that kind of detail. Rather, married couples, all families, and all people can follow the example of faith that Mary and Joseph have left us. They gave themselves to the Lord as His servants so that all could happen according to His word. Every Christian family, and every Christian individual, is empowered and graced to do the same.