Readings: Genesis 15.1-6, 21.1-3 / Responsorial Psalm 104.1-6, 8-9 (R/v 7a, 8a) / Hebrews 11.8, 11-12, 17-19/ Luke 2.22-40
It’s a Wonderful Life is my favourite Christmas film.
It's a story about George Bailey. He gives up his dreams to help others own affordable housing. His plans are sabotaged by an enemy; his housing project faces bankruptcy and he faces imprisonment. In desperation, George attempts suicide. But his guardian angel, Clarence, saves George by showing him how much good he has done for others, and how different his town would be had he not been born. Seeing this, George chooses life and returns home to family and friends. Clarence leaves him with this parting advice: "Remember no man is a failure who has friends.” And I will add, no one is a failure when she has family.
Today’s celebration of the Holy Family invites us to reflect on why we need to be part of a family.
Perhaps like me, you might have come to this feast in the past, heard the readings and the homilies, and said, “We can never be like the Holy Family; we’re such an unholy family.” I think we say this because we’ve all experienced the tensions of family life: those messy, difficult, painful and unChristian experiences.
The good news is that the Church does not expect our families to be as perfect as the Holy Family to celebrate today’s feast.
Our families are probably like George’s family in It’s a Wonderful Life. We might have some frustration, resentment, anger and depression towards our family, as George had towards his. Like him, we might sometimes feel trapped, manipulated and offended by what our immediate and extended family say and do. We might also be disappointed and ashamed that we have divorced, remarried and gay family members or family who have criminal records and skeletons in their closets; and we struggle as a Christian family to love them because we don’t know how to do this well enough.
But isn’t it true that our families also make a positive difference in our lives? Don’t our family interactions, responsibilities, relationships give us joy, comfort and hope? Don’t they save us from sadness, loneliness and despair? Don’t they redeem us from the sin of selfishness and greed by drawing us into the grace of selflessness and generosity? And yes, don’t our love in and for our families—no matter the amount we give and receive—always bless us into life?
I believe George achieves holiness at end of the film. It is his bonds and responsibilities as a family member that save him into holiness. They save him from self-centeredness by teaching him generosity towards others. They save him from death by helping him choose life. Yes, it is George’s family that schools him into holiness: they teach him to be more giving, more trusting, more thankful, more disposed towards life, even as he struggles with his daily duties as husband, father, family member and friend.
Don’t our families do the same for you and me? Don’t they school us to become more Christian in our attitudes and behaviors, in our words and deeds towards one another? Aren’t those disagreements, conflicts, discomforts with family really teachable moments for us to become more loving, more forgiving, more accepting, more caring, more family?
I’d like to suggest that family life is indeed the most important school to learn holiness and to grow up more Christian.
Learning to grow in holiness is in fact what the Holy Family models for us. They are not holy because of the presence of the historical Jesus. They are holy because they strove in their family life to find God’s grace and to grow in God’s ways. This is why we have the families we do: to help us to grow into holiness.
From the angel’s announcement to Mary and then to Joseph, this couple lived amidst the tensions of life to follow God more faithfully. A pregnant and unmarried Mary, a still faithful Joseph, Jewish laws that questioned their union, puzzled kinsfolk: these made up the tensions they faced initially. But Mary and Joseph kept on walking, journeying, fleeing and trusting God.
Indeed, from the finding of Jesus in the temple to the finding of Jesus at the foot of the cross, from the flight into Egypt to his leaving home, this family struggled with the tensions of mystery, uncertainty and letting go as they followed and fulfilled God’s plan faithfully.
For many of us, these tensions are evils to be resolved or overcome. But the Holy Family teaches us that these tensions are the very spaces for God’s grace to enter into our family lives, and to perfect us in holiness.
What we have to learn to do is to live in these tensions like the Holy Family did: by seeking God; by trusting God; by letting God lead.
I believe that Holy Family could live in the tensions of family life and still find God because they practiced obedience. We hear about obedience in today's readings, especially in our gospel story. Mary and Joseph obey the Law of Moses that Mary purifies herself after childbirth, that they present their first born to God, and that they thank God with sacrificial offerings. And Jesus’ obedience growing up found favor with God.
Obedience is what allows God to fulfill God’s great and wonderful mystery of salvation in our lives. And it is writ large in the life of the Holy Family. Joseph obeyed the angel no matter what, and so obeyed God; and he obeyed the wisdom of his wife. Mary emptied herself for God at the word of the angel, and she obeyed the protective initiatives of her husband.
This mutual obedience of husband and wife, first to God and then to one another, is an image of the obedience that Jesus would give, first to His Father and then to His parents in Nazareth. Indeed, obedience to God and one another as it is practice in family is how Jesus, Mary and Joseph grow into a family filled with holiness.
Perhaps, our present-day crisis in the family has to do with how we have forgotten, if not devalued, it as the graced place and source of our holiness in God. Society often thinks of the family as an economic shelter or a baby-making machine or a restriction upon our freedom, peace and pleasure. As Christians, we must value the family otherwise. The family is a communion of persons God brings together to help us grow in holiness, and by this life of holiness, for us to enter into our salvation.
Growing into holiness is indeed the Christian promise of God meeting and perfecting us in the tensions of family life. If this is what we celebrate in the life of the Holy Family, this morning, shouldn’t we learn to value our own families a lot more, not just today but always? After all, our family might just be the most wondrous life we’ll ever have with God and with one another.
(inspired by Kurt Engel)
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
Photo: from the Internet (www.tripology.com)
Add a comment