December 31, 2023
Feast of the Holy Family, December 31, 2023 – Genesis 15:1-6, 21:1-3; Colossians 3:12-17; Luke 2:22-40
On many of the Christmas cards you received this year there were pictures of the Holy Family. Most of the pictures representing the birth, but some were pictures of Jesus older than an infant. But the one thing that was true of all of the pictures was that they were cozy. And that’s the way we like to think of the Holy Family, as cozy. But, like I said before Mass began, we have a three-year cycle of Gospel readings for Sunday Masses and the great Holy Days. And, for each of the three days on which we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, the gospel stories are anything but cozy.
That’s why I asked you to listen carefully for the repeated refrain in today’s Gospel. The repeated refrain was “according to the law of the Lord.” Mary and Joseph are constrained to do what they are doing. To bring the child to the temple to offer sacrifice. Because, when a male child ruptures the womb, there must be a sacrifice of redemption. And, when St. Luke began the series of episodes in what we call the Christmas story, the very first thing Luke told us was that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. And, therefore, Joseph left his town of Nazareth, and went, with his pregnant wife, to the village of Bethlehem, where his ancestors came from. Mary and Joseph are under a double constraint - the Law of the Empire and the Law of Torah.
Did you notice what they offered for the baby? They offered a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. That was an exception in Torah for poor people. For each newborn son, you were supposed to offer an unblemished lamb, which cost a lot of money. You went to Jerusalem, and you bought a lamb from people especially assigned to sell lambs for the sacrifice. And then you gave it to the temple priests, they took it into the Holy of Holies and sacrificed it for you. It was partly religion and partly a money-making scheme. And so, there was an exception in Torah for people who couldn’t afford to buy a lamb. Which tells us what? That Mary and Joseph did not have much money. They were poor people. And so, there’s a cloud that hangs over their story. And the cloud is emphasized by Simeon when he tells Mary, “Not only is your child destined for great things, but a sword is going to pierce your heart.”
In one of the other years when we read from Luke on The Feast of the Holy Family, we find out what that sword was. It’s that awkward story of Jesus going to the Temple with his parents when he’s twelve years old. And the story begins by saying that Mary and Joseph simply assumed that Jesus was in the caravan. Wait a second. This is a fundamental breach of parental responsibility. I don’t care who you are or how close you are to your relatives. If you are starting a 70-mile journey - a walking journey - you make sure where the kid is before you start out. So, Mary and Joseph are guilty of severely bad parenting. But it gets even worse. When they get back to Jerusalem and find him, Mary scolds him, and rightly so. She rounds on him and says, “How dare you do this to us! We sought you in sorrow, your father and I.” And Jesus flings it back in her face and says, “Did you not know that I must be about my father’s business? My father’s not Joseph. My father’s the Father in heaven.” [Gasp.] This will take so much forgiveness and reconciliation on the part of all three people. This is a fundamental breach of the family contract. And Luke just lets it hang in the air. He says, “Then Jesus went back to Nazareth and was subject to them.” It was a difficult time.
The third of the three gospels in the three-year series is Matthew’s story of the wicked King Herod. Jesus is a hunted fugitive, the victim of a madman. Where does Joseph take him? He takes him to Egypt. That’s not a good place to go. Ever since Moses engineered the escape of the Jewish slaves from Egypt, there’s been a love-hate relationship between these two countries. Sometimes they are mortal enemies. Sometimes they are anxious partners against a common enemy. But going to Egypt is a risky thing for Joseph to do. They are what? First of all, they are migrants in a strange land. Secondly, they are refugees. And Joseph does not know whether his skills in carpentry will allow him to a make a living in this strange land, and whether his wife and child will be accepted or will be treated with bigotry and hostility. This is also a difficult gospel. All three of the gospels do not present cozy. They present family in crisis.
When Jesus started out his public ministry, according to Luke, after a couple of months, he went home to Nazareth and, invited to read from the scroll at synagogue service, he read this from the scroll of Isaiah. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To let the oppressed go free.” Jesus is speaking out of his family’s own childhood experience. Jesus’ ministry is a ministry to those who are like he was when he was growing up. Like his family was when he was growing up.
And so, what does that mean to us? First of all, we need to recognize how privileged we are. In our country, the only time our government ever burdens us in any way, is when we fill out our form 1040’s once a year. Every now and then there is a little dust-up here and there between state and church. But no one stops us from speaking our mind on any subject. There are many countries in the world where, if you said the things people say all the time here in America, you would be disappeared. No one would ever see you again or know what happened to you. We are so very fortunate in this country to be able to be Catholics, in freedom, and to be respected for who we are.
The second thing has to do with that proclamation of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. You know, what are we supposed to do? Whip out our checkbooks every time we hear of some tragedy? Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, how much charity mail do you get each week? Right? You couldn’t possibly contribute to all those things. It’s ridiculous. I think what the gospel calls us to is to have the mind of Jesus. You know, we have a border crisis, a refugee crisis, a migrant crisis. It’s almost a half century in creation. We ought to take another half century to figure out how to fix it. But what we often don’t realize is that migrant crisis is dwarfed by migrant crises all over the world, about which we never hear. There are millions, millions, of people in refugee camps in Africa, in Asia, in South America. Millions of them not knowing where their next meal is coming from, whether they’ll ever find shelter again, whether their families will be able to stay together, whether they’ll be alive tomorrow.
What today’s Gospel, what The Feast of the Holy Family, calls us to is to be on their side like Jesus was on their side. Exactly what that means, you need to spell out for yourself. But, when we think about these things, we need to think about them with the mindset of Jesus, which grew out of his experience as part of a Holy Family, a family in danger, a family in crisis, a family of migrant refugees.