HOLY FAMILY

              FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

                 Cycle “A”: Mathew’s Gospel

Christmas is not necessarily a time of perfect harmony and happy families. It is a time when probably some of us spend too much, drink too much, and eat too much. More families than we care to imagine are torn apart by violence, alcoholism and abuse at Christmas. The lonely feel lonelier than ever, the bereaved experience their bereavement more acutely than at any other time. All this is true; and yet it is here in the family and nowhere else that we experience God’s gift of life. God comes within the chaos, within the discord, the failures, and he sits with us in all the lumpy, wrinkly, pimply, sweaty bodies that we feast with and fight with.

To strive for a better world, for a better family where every child finds welcome and shelter - that is our gift to the world. Of course, we will fail. Even Mary, perfect in her love and faithfulness, was a “failure” in the eyes of the world. From the moment Mary said “Yes” to God, her life was plunged into the kind of traumas that only the most vulnerable and marginalized people experience  -  the traumas of homelessness, of persecution, of becoming a refugee, and finally of watching her son being tortured to death. Mary belongs among those who have nothing to give this Christmas but themselves. Some years ago the bishops of south Asia had their conference in India. At the Offertory of the Mass each bishop brought a gift characteristic of his region: a flower or fruit or some cultural artefact. One of the bishops of Indonesia, whose region had been ravaged by cyclones and floods, came forward with upraised hands. He prayed aloud, “O God, my diocese has been devastated and I come empty handed with nothing to offer but my loss and sadness.” I’m sure God accepted his gift with compassion. When I have tasted my own nothingness, then I am more ready to help someone who has nothing.

The true gift holds nothing back. Because Mary gave herself, the Son of God became truly man and a member of a family. And because Mary gave of her best, she could keep the Holy Family together. Are parents and children giving of their best to keep the families together? The pressures on families today are pretty much the same since the time of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

I was watching a programme on TV one evening. At precisely 9.30 p.m. there was a break, and it wasn’t a commercial. But a message was flashed on the screen. It read: “It’s 9.30 p.m. Where are your children?” Where are the children after 9.30 p.m.? Where are they at other times? Times for meals, for prayers, for evening study? Can the whole family sit together for the principal meals, and pray together for its own stability and happiness? Or is the home a cheap hotel where people come and go as they please, without permission or information?  Have obedience, discipline and punctuality become unmentionable words?  Shall we insist that our children be educated into integral and competent human beings or turn out to be half-baked specimens of humanity, unable to face a highly competitive world? Again, shall our children learn from us our prayers and refined vocabulary or monosyllabic expletives and words of destructive criticism? People, especially children, do not become good by being told to; they must be charmed into goodness, which, like love, is caught, not taught.

The environment in which we have been raised and in which we raise our children is essential to our formation and development. A family is a very human environment; in fact, the first to which a child is introduced: the happiness, the pain, the drama and the day-to-day events of our lives are lived within the confines of the family. God chose to mould and form his Son within the environment and culture of a particular family. He hasn’t broken the mould, since, and thrown it away, because in his mind the family continues to be the place of goodness, love and emotional sustenance.

The Holy Family of Nazareth tells us that in God the Christian family is not extinct.

PRAYER by Thomas Ken (1637 – 1711):

O God, make the door of this house wide enough to receive all who need human love and friendship, but narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride, and malice. Make its threshold smooth enough to be no stumbling block to children, nor to straying feet; but strong enough to turn away the power of evil. God, make the door of this house a gateway to your eternal kingdom. Grant this through Christ, Our Lord.