Sunday, December 28, 2008

The Holy Family

Feast of the Holy Family

Just last week, a lady walked into the Oakville post office.  She wanted to buy 100 stamps for her Christmas cards.  The man behind the counter asked her, "What denomination?"

She thought for a minute and said, "I know you guys print a lot of different stamps nowadays, but that's a new one.  OK, give me 50 Catholic, 10 Baptist, 20 Lutheran, and 20 Presbyterian."

I realized the other day that I hadn't started a homily with a joke in a while so I went out and bought "The Book of Catholic Jokes--Confirmed Funny".  It would figure that it would be written by a deacon, Deacon Tom Sheridan.  So I'm all set, at least for a while.

Of course, the lady in the post office has very little to do with the feast we celebrate today, the Feast of the Holy Family.  Except maybe that families buy stamps.  But that's kind of a stretch, even for me.
[pause]

This particular feast gives us several choices.  There are two possible first readings and two possible second readings.  There is only one Gospel.  All five readings have to do with families.  Two of the readings focus on Abraham and Sarah and their son Isaac.  Their story has a a lot of similarities to the story of the Holy Family, with a heavenly visitor, an unlikely pregnancy, and with the Lord's asking Abraham to sacrifice his only son. 

The other two readings, one from the Old Testament and one from the New are instructions to families on how to live a proper life.  The Old Testament reading from the book of Sirach speaks of the honor due to a father and the authority that God confirms for mothers over their sons.  In the New Testament reading Paul advises the Collosians in terms of the larger family, the human family.  He writes of bearing with and forgiving one another, doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.  He finishes with instructions that deal with the nuclear family,  including the not-so-politically-correct instruction that wives be subordinate to their husbands and that husbands love their wives.  He also warns children that they must obey their parents because it's pleasing to God.  To be fair, he also warns fathers not to provoke their children.

Even though our families are very important to us today, in Biblical times the family was everything.  Where today society seems to be doing everything it can to break up and diminish families, in those days everything revolved around the family.  Jesus working in Joseph's carpenter shop was a foregone conclusion.  Sons and daughters didn't go away to school.  They didn't take jobs in distant cities.  They stayed close to their families.   Friends and neighbors may have socialized, especially around the temple, but when push came to shove, the family was it.

So it made perfect sense that when God decided to send His only Son to redeem his wayward human creatures, that He must be part of a human family.  He had to be totally God and totally man, which meant he had to be born of a woman and experience every human situation.  On Christmas we celebrated His birth.  Today we celebrate His membership in His human family.

Luke's telling of the story of the family in the temple is one of the most beautiful stories in all the Gospels.  Mary and Joseph are following Jewish custom and taking Jesus to the temple to be consecrated, just like any good Jewish family would do.  When they arrive they meet Simian.  Simeon's been told by God that he wouldn't die until he saw the savior.  As soon as he saw the Child he knew that the prophesy had been fulfilled.  This was the baby he'd been waiting his whole life to see!  This tiny baby was the one who would save us all!  Simeon's faith and patience had been rewarded and now he was ready to die.  What a powerful and dramatic moment!

He also warned Mary that her own heart would be pierced.  Remember that not even a year ago Mary had told the Angel Gabriel, "let it be done to me according to your word."  As shocking as the revelation that she was going to give birth to the Son of God must have been, this was something new for her to accept.  But she and Joseph were in it for the long haul.  They would experience a lot of things that they hadn't necessarily thought about when they each agreed to accept the Father's will.

Then they met Anna, another faithful Jew, one who never left the temple.  She spent all of her days and nights in prayer and fasting.  She also recognized who this infant really was.  While Simeon was ready to die in peace, Luke tells us that Anna gave thanks and spread the news of the baby Jesus "to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem."

But what did Mary and Joseph do?  They returned to Nazareth, to raise Jesus as a typical Jewish boy in a typical Jewish village.  He would prepare for His destiny by studying and learning, by playing with other kids, and by helping his earthly dad in the carpenter shop.  In other words, He would grow up just like everyone else.

We don't know anything about Jesus' childhood, and I think that's a good thing.  We're left to imagine what it must have been like to grow up as the Son of God.  Did Jesus play sports?  If He played soccer, did He ever commit a foul?  Did He break things?  Did Mary or Joseph ever have to yell at Him?  Was he ever spanked?  What was it like for Joseph living with a wife and child who never sinned?  I think God chose not to tell us these things because every family is different and it's up to us to work out the day-to-day stuff. 

As we look at the Nativity scene, at this little human family, we should be reminded of our own place in God's plan.  Most of us will never be asked to do anything extraordinary.  Our sacred duty is to lead others to Christ, especially within our own families.  We do that by living good lives, by attending mass, and by doing all the other ordinary things that every family does.  We do it by contributing to the Church and other charities.  We do it by bringing food to Church to help those in need and by donating money and stuff to St. Vincent de Paul and other organizations. 

Some of us may do great things like going on missionary trips to third world countries, or working with the poor in our inner cities.  Over the centuries thousands of Christian martyrs have emulated Christ by dying for the faith.  Millions of us have signed up to serve our country in the military and many thousand of them have been laid to rest right behind our church at Jefferson Barracks.  But most of us do our thing by just being the best mothers and fathers, or the best aunts and uncles, or the best kids we can be.  That's what Mary and Joseph did and that's what we celebrate today.  We celebrate their "familiness", their closeness as mother and father and Son.  But we also celebrate our own families and every other so-called ordinary family.

We celebrate husbands and wives who work through their differences and honor their promise to God and one another to stay together until death do they part.  We honor the families who honor God's will by being open to His gift of children, another thing they promised each other and God in their marriage vows.  We honor families who teach their children the faith by word and by example.  We recall Mary and Joseph's sacrifices and thank God for their example to the rest of us.

Jesus could have shown up as the Jewish people thought He would, riding into town dressed as a king would dress, on a golden chariot pulled by magnificant white horses,  escorted by angels with trumpets blaring.  But that would be a human plan.  God's plan was different.  God's plan included you and me and He chose the Holy Family to show us what we're supposed to do.

It turns out that it was a pretty good plan.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Christmas Midnight Mass

Christmas Eve

Some years ago, quite a few years ago, in fact, when we still had the elementary school across the street, my  little girl came home one day with a catalog.  Parents, you know the deal.  You order stuff from the catalog and the school gets part of the money.  How can a parent refuse?

So, I looked through the book and couldn't really find anything I wanted but little Megan was waiting for dad to buy something so she might win a prize  So I found an eleven piece nativity set that wasn't too outrageously expensive, so I ordered it.  A few weeks later the orders were delivered.  Imagine my surprise when Megan handed me this.  They didn't lie.  There are eleven pieces in the box.  They just didn't tell me that the picture in the catalog was actual size!

Here's Mary........and Joseph.......and the Baby Jesus.  There are also three wise men, an angel, a shepherd and a sheep, a donkey and a camel. 

So I took my new Christmas display to work and every year since, on the day after Thanksgiving I poured salt on my desk to look like sand and set up my little Nativity.  I even built a house for it.  I love my little Nativity set.

I've seen living Nativities with real people and animals, bigger than life Nativities and beautiful Nativities like the one we have here in Church.  I've seen expensive sets by Fontanini and we even have a Veggie Tales nativity at home.  But I still like MY Nativity the best and I'll tell you why.  First, because it reminds me of my little girl.  That makes it special even though my little girl is almost twenty-three years old, a beautiful adult.  That's easy.  The second reason I love it so much is a little more complicated.

For weeks now we've been reading and hearing about the problems with the economy.  Some of us have even felt it personally, losing jobs or seeing our nest eggs shrink.  According to the news media Christmas has been ruined by the struggling economy.    But they're wrong.  Christmas isn't ruined because Christmas was never about the gifts and the parties.  Christmas is about this little family giving birth to the Savior of the World in that little manger in Bethlehem.  My tiny manger scene is a wonderful representation of what happened that night.  It was a tiny event that would change the world forever!

Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary had to go to Bethlehem to register for the census.  They had no room to stay in.  There was no doctor.  They had no clothes for the baby.  The magi wouldn't come for several days, so on that first Christmas night all they had was some borrowed straw to sleep on and the clothes on their backs.  All they had were smelly shepherds, the dregs of society, to keep them company.  And our Christmas is ruined because we can't afford an X-Box???  I sincerely hope not.

This past Sunday some of us got together to decorate the church.  You may recall it was bitterly cold that day.  But there was a warmth in this building that didn't come from electricity or natural gas.  We hung banners and decorated trees and did all the other things necessary to get ready for this Holy Night.  We ate home made chili in Fecter Hall and in general just had a good time getting Jesus' house ready for his arrival.  That's what Christmas is about.  Not computers and iPods.

Don't get me wrong.  I've spent my entire life selling "stuff" and I always made the most money at this time of year.  Giving gifts to one another is part of the spirit of Christmas.  But it's just part of it.  And it's definitely not the most important part.  You can't measure love by the pricetag on a gift.  Somehow we've gotten away from the simple idea of exchanging gifts we can afford with one another and gotten caught up in this gigantic spending spree, buying extravagant gifts that we can't afford and then taking until next Christmas to get them paid for.  Maybe we need a little economic shake-up to bring us back down to earth.

Look around you.  This is Christmas.  The baby Jesus lying in the manger.  The poinsettas and the candles and the retelling of that familiar story.  In a few minutes we'll pray for those who are in need on this Christmas Eve.  We're Catholics.  That's what we do.  We'll take up a collection for the young men studying to be priests at the seminary.  We're Catholics.  We do that too.  We've brought gifts and put them under the giving tree so that people who might not have anything this Christmas will get a gift.  We're Catholics.  That's what we do.  We've donated dozens of bags of food for the poor during this Advent season.  You guessed it:  We're Catholics.  That's what we do.

Some of you may have already had your family celebration.  Some of you may have yours tomorrow.  Many of you probably do both.  Hopefully your financial situation has no bearing on the quality of your celebration.  The Almighty, all-powerful ruler and creator of the universe spent His first night on earth in a feeding trough for farm animals wrapped in borrowed rags.  How can we think that we deserve more?  How can we judge Christmas by the pile of loot we collect?

Yet that cold winter night was the most joyous, the most wonderful, the most widely-celebrated night in all the history of the world, before or since.  It was so joyous that a multitude of the heavenly host praised God saying "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests."

We got a Christmas letter this week.  In fact we get lots of Christmas letters.  I hope I don't offend anyone, but I never read them.  Sometimes I think they're just a little over the top.  But Jan told me I had to read this one.  It's from a young couple who had an experience that seems to happen a lot.  Told that they couldn't have more children, they decided to adopt.  Guess what?  She got pregnant.  The adoption went through and now they have two infants, both less than a year old, PLUS a three-year-old.

Did I mention that they're a remarkably religious young couple?  They're Catholic and proud of it.  I want to leave you tonight with the last paragraph of their Christmas letter:

"We thank you for all your wonderful thoughts and prayers over this past year, as I have no doubt that they have halped us immensely through our daily struggles with three under three.  As I look back over this year which has been filled with so much love, I am deeply humbled by the words of Pope Benedict XVI in his address to the Bishops of our great nation.  'People today need to be reminded of the ultimate purpose of their lives.  They need to recognize that implanted within them is a deep thirst for God.  They need to be given opportunities to drink from the wells of his infinite love.'  May God continue to bless you and your family with His infinite love this Christmas season.