* Holy Family (A), December 30, 2007
* Theme:   Family Life Today

* Today we celebrate the Holy Family – Joseph, Mary and Jesus
* We have visions of tenderness and tranquility
* Yet, a different vision is planted for us by today’s Gospel
* The Holy Family is forced to leave their homeland and flee to Egypt.
* They had to become illegal immigrants in a foreign country
* The life of Mary and Joseph was taken up in protecting the child Jesus from harm.
* The story of the Holy Family is the human story.

* (Some thought adapted from Fr. John Kavanagh, S. J. of SLU)
* There is a tendency found in many religions to escape, sometimes even negate, the ordinary.
* The Buddha finds enlightenment after leaving home, friends, and attachments.
* The yoga path of Hinduism is an ascending detachment from family, business, and relationships
* The Greek ideal of truth is the world of forms, while the life of time and senses is illusion.
* Christianity itself has had its tradition of flight - from marriage, from the city, from the “world,” even if it meant being a hermit sitting in a cave, detached from everyone else.
* But actually the heart of Christianity is a transformation of the ordinary, not a flight from it.
* After all, the Incarnation, a central mystery we embrace, affirms that the eternal Word becomes flesh, not flees it.

* In this respect,
* We are children of Judaism, whose God of Moses and the prophets enters space and time, and is deeply concerned about and profoundly moved by the human condition.
* As Christians, our Sacred Scriptures are a story of God’s involvement with human situations:
* Shepherds and travelers are messengers of God
* Zachariah and Elizabeth find the Messiah with their Cousin Mary
* The Widow Anna – in the temple - recognizes the baby Messiah
* Mary - who is mother of one child, yet mother of us all
* Joseph - a husband, a worker, a father of a child somehow not fully his own
* These are people like us who find the inspiration to look for the special among the ordinary.

* Let’s come back to Hollywood
* Immediately after Christmas, the shopping season ends and stores are shifting their attention to sales for the New Year and spring fashions.
* Unfortunately real family concerns are masked by the promotion of merchandise.
* In reality, the family unit is in peril, chased down and slain by the Herods of modern culture.
* Television has almost no shows that depict successful families.
* Advertising pushes us to buy products that supposedly make life more meaningful, but do they?
* Many movies portray unrestrained violence or inconsequential sex as a societal norm.
* We all know that 50% of marriages today end in divorce.
* Latchkey children, two job families, and a commercially created world sometimes stand in direct opposition to values and family.
* In the United States is seems that all families are in trouble, and we wonder what is to become of future generations
* (cf. John Foley, S. J. – SLU)

* So where is the Divine?
* We discover first and foremost it is in our human relationships, within our families, with our friends,
* That God is encountered,
* That faith is given flesh,
* That our theories of justice are tested out,
* That our prayer is made real,
* That dreams are actualized.
* Even the great mystic teacher St. Teresa of Avila insisted on this truth:
* When people came inquiring about the heights of holy prayer, she would ask how their relationships were going.

* Our most profound sufferings,
* Our greatest heroics,
* Our most significant encounters with God are found in the ordinary actions of our lives,
* With these people that we know and love,
* In both their goodness,
* And in their weakness
* It is where we most intimately encounter what Paul values in today’s second reading
* That we put on Christ; that is, “Put on … heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.”
* It is an easy thing to love humanity.
* It is quite another thing to love this one or that one, who is so close to me, so like me.
* But when it happens, there is glory, even if the sword pierces the heart.
* (Adapted from John Kavanaugh, S. J. of Saint Louis University)

* On this feast of the Holy Family,
* We rejoice that God has taken up his lot with us, God’s people.
* We can now put aside the “holy card” that depicts the simple and majestic nativity scene
* And replace it today with a “holy card” that shows a young couple and their infant fleeing with anxiety written all over their faces.
* (Cf. Jude Siciliano)
* Jesus has entered our world.
* To save us and to show us the way
* To save us from our self-absorbed selves
* To show us the way to a more loving and just life for ourselves and for all our families

* Praise God.  Amen.

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