Feast of the Holy Family

The Feast of the Holy Family

"And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and in favor before God and man." 

Today is the Feast of the Holy Family.  In just a few hours we've miraculously jumped from Jesus' birth to his twelfth year.  And when you think about it, this single line is about all we really know for sure about His growing up.  He got older.  He got smarter.  And God and the people loved Him.

So why don't we have any detail about His growing up years?  Apparently he lost His earthly step father during that time because we never hear anything about Joseph after this.  We know Jesus worked in the carpenter shop because in those days the kids always worked in the family business..  But that's about it.

He might have been a studious kid since he was able to amaze the teachers in the temple with His questions and His answers.  On the other hand, He was the Son of God.  He's been here since the beginning.  Remember, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be."  Young Jesus may not have been studious at all.  When the teachers were talking about God, they were talking about Him. 

We know that when Jesus began His ministry at the age of thirty, He walked all over the Holy Land, so He must have been in pretty good shape.  Maybe He was a child athlete.  Maybe He played soccer or whatever games they played 2,000 years ago.  He could walk on water.  That would have made Him a pretty good golfer. Or, maybe the greatest joy in his life was to be in the carpenter shop with Joseph, helping him to make furniture.  We just don't know.

We heard this morning from the book of Sirach, and from Paul's letter to the Collosians how families are supposed to act.  But those are general things.  Sirach speaks to us about children honoring their fathers and mother's authority over them.  Sons are to take care of their fathers when they're old.  I especially like the part that says, "Grieve him not as long as he lives.  Even if his mind fail, be considerate of him."  In other words, don't make fun of Dad when he can't find the car keys.

Paul's letter contains a passage that still causes controversy today.  "Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord.  Husbands, love your wives and avoid any bitterness toward them.  Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord.  Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged."

Some members of the female persuasion really get their dander up whenever they hear this one, but you have to take the whole passage in context.  Before the wives be subordinate part Paul tells the Collosians to "let the peace of Christ control their hearts."  He tells them to be thankful.  He tells them to "let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly, as in all wisdom they teach and admonish one another"   He says "Over all these put on love, that is the bond of perfection."

In other words, we should be like Christ.  Every single one of us, male or female, is subordinate to Christ.  But that doesn't mean that Christ is some kind of dictator, telling us what to do, making our decisions for us, or making us feel small.  If that were the case, then Paul's advise would be pretty bad.  Nobody wants to be treated that way and none of us has the right to treat someone else that way.  But, as the passage ends, Paul admonishes husbands to "love their wives and avoid any bitterness toward them."  Again, husbands, we should try to be like Christ.  He's the Son of God, the only God/man to ever walk the earth, but there's no record of His ever treating anyone with anything but love, even those who would finally end his earthly life.

Paul's telling the Collosians, and us, that life is a two-way street.  In a society where women and children were treated as possessions, Paul's words were controversial but not in the way that some people might think today.  The husband may be the head of the house, but he's not a king or a dictator.  He is to act with love and without bitterness.  Wives aren't slaves.  Men follow the Golden Rule.  Treat them with care.

Kids, be obedient to your parents because that makes God happy.  But fathers shouldn't provoke their children.  Again, practice the Golden rule.  This was radical thought in the days of the Roman Emporers.

So, knowing all this, we have to assume that life around Jesus' house must have been pretty nice.  But we still don't know what a day in the life of the young Jesus was like.  Maybe we're not supposed to.  We have plenty of guidelines in the scriptures.  We heard two of them today.  But for the basic, day-to-day things that go on in our homes, we're pretty much on our own. 

Let's think about that for a second.  Every human being is unique and different.  Every family, made up of these individual creatures is even more different.  Remember the old Armour Hot Dog commercial, "Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks.  Tough kids, sissy kids, even kids with chicken pox?  God made us that way and He values our differences.  If we knew that Jesus was a straight A student, or that Joseph came home from work every day and read the Torah for three hours, or that Mary was the best cook in Nazareth, would that set a standard for us that we might not be able to meet?  

 If Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are the Holy Family, does that make the Simpsons the "unholy family"?  Or are they just different.  As dysfunctional as they might be, Homer and Marge are doing the best that they can.  Bart isn't much of a student, but he has a good heart and tries to be better, but he is who he is.  Homer loves Marge.  There's no doubt about that.  He may do a lot of things wrong, but there's never any bitterness toward her.

The Flanders next door may seem like the holier family, the more perfect family, but are they really?  There does seem to be some hypocrisy in the Flanders' holier-than-thou attitude and Homer and Bart usually see through it.  Only God knows what's in our hearts, even if we happen to be cartoon characters.  [By the way, did you know that, by actual count, the Simpsons have had more episodes involving God, church, and morality than any show in the history of television?  It's true.  You can look it up.] 

So, maybe God has chosen not to reveal the details of Jesus growing up years so that we don't try to be something that we're not, so we don't become discouraged because we don't measure up.  Maybe Joseph was like Homer.  It couldn't have been easy to be  the only person in the family who could sin.  Or, maybe he was like Ned.  Or maybe, probably,  he was somewhere in between.  We don't know.  And since we don't know, each of us can imagine that we're the best dad, or mom, or son, or daughter that we can possibly be.  And you know what.  If we can practice what our readings tell us today, we will be.

So, as we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we can also celebrate our own families.  God made each of us and He put us together in families.  Families are the basic unit of our society.  Without them, everything would come to a screeching halt.  Our secular society may make fun of families or try to convince us that a family is something that it's not.  Movies and TV may try to tell us that traditional families are a thing of the past.  But they aren't.  God made the world.  He made Adam.  The very next thing He did was to make Eve; not so Adam would have some one to play cards with.  He made her so that the human race would grow.  He didn't make five or ten Eves so Adam could have a harem.  He made one woman for one man and told them to "be fruitful and multiply."

That's how families came to be and that hasn't changed in all this time.  Whether it's  Adam and Eve, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Homer and Marge Simpson, or Mike and Jan Buckley, we're all holy families, each in our own way.  Thanks be to God.

The Third Sunday of Advent-Gaudete!

Personally, I have a policy of not taking a man seriously when he's wearing a pink dress.  But in this case, I guess I have to make an exception. 
Today is the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday.  The word gaudete is Latin for Pepto Bismol.  It reminds us not to eat too much fruitcake or we'll be sick for Christmas.

Seriously, gaudete means rejoice.  We wear the pink vestments to emphasize our joy, the same reason we light the pink candle.  As Paul wrote to the Phillipians, "Brothers and sisters: Rejoice in the Lord always.  I shall say it again:  rejoice!"  It's just eleven days until we celebrate the birth of the Son of God.

So, what are we supposed to do?  That's the question that the people ask John the Baptist in today's Gospel.  And he gives them some pretty good advice.  If you have two cloaks, give one to a person who has none.  Do the same with your food.  He tells the tax collectors not to take more than is prescribed and he tells the soldiers not to practice extortion, not to falsely accuse anyone, and to be satisfied with their wages.

Luke tells us that the people were "filled with expectation."  That's where we're supposed to be.  We're waiting for Jesus to come and we know it's just a few days away.  Gaudete!  Rejoice!  "In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet in the way of peace."

So here we are; faithful Catholics.  We want to do the right thing.  We really do.  We want to uphold the traditions of the faith.  We want to spend the Advent season getting ready for Jesus' birth.  We call this season Advent.  For us, the Christmas season BEGINS on December 25.  For the secular world the Christmas season begins sometime right after Halloween and ENDS on December 25. The season we call Christmas, they call the end of the year clearance. 

 We try to keep one foot in each world.  And sometimes it's a real challenge.  We want to spend some time each day in quiet prayer but between work and shopping and baking and Christmas parties and visiting with family and friends, sometimes there just doesn't seem to be enough time.  We want to share our extra cloak with someone who doesn't have one, but by the time we get around to it, it's Christmas Eve and we've missed our chance.  With all the expense of the season, it's hard to be satisfied with our wages.  Heck, in this economy we may not even have any wages to be satisfied with.

Movies like a Christmas Story or It's A Wonderful Life remind us of how Christmas used to be.  The story of Ralphie and his beloved Red Ryder BB Gun reminds us of our own childhoods when things were so much simpler.  The movie doesn't say where Ralphie's old man worked, but we know he had a job because the Bumpus hounds attacked him every evening when he came home from work.   Everybody had a job.  That's just the way it was.  George Bailey's struggles with Mr. Potter and the Clarence the angel's reminder of all the people he's helped in his life is more of a morality tale, but the message holds true today, maybe even more so than in the 1930s.

Of course, the best Christmas story of all is the one that we'll tell here on December 24 and 25.  It's a story of peace and love, of hope and joy.  We'll have to get out extra chairs on Christmas Eve.  That's how powerful the story is.  It plays to standing room only crowds in churches all over the world.  Even though we know it well, we still long to witness it again, year after year.  Even in the midst of all the commercialism, even in the depths of an economic recession, the real Christmas story reminds us of what we're really about and what a great gift God gave us when He sent us His Son.

No matter how much we struggle to balance the anticipation of Advent with the secular world's craziness, we know that He's coming to save those who believe in him, and that includes you and me.  With less than two weeks to go, I hope we can all get our heads on straight and focus on that wonderful gift.  That doesn't mean we can't also focus on gifts for our loved ones.  After all, we can't actually give Jesus a gift.  He's God.  He has everything He needs.  But I know it pleases Him to see us giving gifts to the ones we love in His name. 

It doesn't have to be the biggest, most expensive gift in the world.  If you have the money and you want to give your deacon a flat-screen TV, that's great and it would be much appreciated.  But a simple "Merry Christmas" would be more than enough.

Speaking of "Merry Christmas", maybe Advent isn't time to talk about pet peeves, maybe deacons shouldn't even have peeves, pet or otherwise.  But I do have one or two and one of them involves the words "Merry Christmas."  We've gotten so politically correct that people are actually afraid to use that magic phrase, especially in the world of business.  I think the pendulum may be swinging back our way, but you still see and hear "happy holidays" and "season's greetings" taking the place of the "MC" words. 

I was at the South County mall the other day and I happened to walk past Santa's outpost.  I noticed a sign near his chair that asked parents not to take personal photos from the area where the professional photographer works.  That's OK.  They're there to sell pictures and that's what pays for Santa's visit.  But at the end of the sign it says "happy holidays!"  You're there to get your kid's picture taken with Santa Claus.  If you're reading the sign he or she is probably sitting on Santa's lap!  I don't think you're going to be offended by the mention of Christmas.  Give me a break!

Today (yesterday) is (was) the first day of Hanukkah.  As a Christian I'm not offended if someone wishes me a Happy Hanukkah.  In fact, I would consider it quite an honor of someone of the Jewish faith offered me that kind of greeting.  After all, my boss is a Jewish carpenter.  In the same spirit, I don't think most non-Christians are offended by our wishing them a Merry Christmas. 

Here's what I suggest you do.  When someone in a store wishes you "Happy Holidays" smile and answer "Merry Christmas", with the emphasis on the word Christmas.  Being something of an agitator about this, I've been doing it for years.  It never fails that the person will answer back, "Merry Christmas."  Isn't it a shame that a Christian person working in a store has been instructed not to share a Christmas wish with a Christian customer at this time of year?

Maybe if enough of us take this outlandish step, retail employees and their bosses will take the hint and end the hypocrisy.   Wouldn't that make this a more wonderful life?  It's a little thing, but it reminds us what the season is really about.  Sharing our joy of the coming of the Savior with a stranger is a kind of prayer that enriches our lives and the lives of those we meet.  We can be modern-day John the Baptists.  And isn't that what Advent is all about?

Gaudete!  Rejoice!

PS.  Check out this video on YouTube.  It's great!