are you in the fight?

 

are you in the fight?

Homily

2nd Day in the Octave of Christmas

Solemnity of the Holy Family

26 December 2021

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG +mj

Are you in the fight?

What's the question I get most for Christmas?  Father, did you get to see you family?  I wonder why people care so much.  Is it anybody's business?

Actually, there can be no more important business than this question.  It's the second critical question of Christmas, asked on this Solemnity of the Holy Family.  Father, did you see your family.

I was having trouble recently naming both my desires and the desires God has for me.  My spiritual direction, knowing I have 4 brothers and 1 sister, suggested I ask my sister what she desires for me.  I said no thanks.  My family is all over the place.  I bet yours is too.  I am not in the habit of taking clues from my family.  Yet Fr. Paul had  made his point.  God reveals a lot of things through our families, whether we like it or not.

In today's Gospel, God reveals to the Holy Family how critical it is to be dedicated to prayer.   How critical it is that we show up at the temple together to pray.  Many things are revealed in this way. If I don't thank you all as much as I should for making the pilgrimage to Mass 58x a year in imitation of the Holy Family, forgive me!  It makes all the difference in the world.  Thank you for always being here.

Now back to my family.

I'm embarrassed by my family, and I bet I embarrass them plenty.  I was always nervous to bring girlfriends home to meet my family.  I didn't trust them to behave well.  My mom never liked my girlfriends.  She said I wasn't myself around them.  Now this isn't why I'm a priest, but it's a piece of the puzzle.  Mom knew plenty about me that I didn't know about myself.

This Christmas my sister played a nasty trick on us all.  My mom passed in 2001.  Shauna has been the only girl for quite a while in a family of boys.  She cares about all of us in her own way.  Naturally, when my mom's parents passed away from COVID in 2020, Shauna was the one to receive the box of memorabilia grandma had kept on our family.

For Christmas, Shauna copied and framed a letter grandma wrote to all of us after my mom passed.  The message was simple, but it wrecked us all.  Your mom was special.  We are so proud of her and your dad and all of you.  We hope that you will stay close to us and ask for anything you need, anything at all.  We love you so much.

Well, Norman started crying, and then everybody had to get up and get some fresh air before we could go on with Christmas.  Darn it anyway, Shauna. Why do you have to reveal God's desires for me in this way.  I hate it when my spiritual director is right.  Merry Christmas!

I'm embarrassed by my family, but I shouldn't be.  We're a motley crue.  We don't look good on social media.  I don't know that we resemble Jesus, Mary and Joseph that much.  But that's ok.  We're still in the fight.  That's what God really cares about.

Today's 2nd of the 4 great Christmas feasts is not about idealizing nor idolizing the Holy Family.  Yes, they are our great example and inspiration, and constant help. They are the icon of who God is.  He is a family, a communion of persons that share life and are for each other.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph will always and forever be the definition of what a Holy Family is.

Yet we do them a great disservice today if we adore them only from afar, if we put them on a shelf only to admire them.  The 2nd of the 4 great Christmas visits is from the Holy Family, who wish to appear this Christmas day not to be idealized but to be born right in the middle of our embarrassing families.  

For the Immaculate Conception, the only Begotten Son of God and the just man St. Joseph were refugees.  Jesus was born in the middle of it, and you know what I mean by IT.  He set off amber alerts.  What is more, this Holy Family fought!  Did you hear the sass in today's Gospel?  Holy sass, by the way.  Creative conflict on a divine plane!  Yet conflict nonetheless.  Son, what the heck were you thinking?  Mom, what were you thinking?

Oh yeah, and Jesus had ancestors and cousins just as sinful and dysfunctional as yours are.  I can only imagine the motley crue of characters in that infamous caravan. Those rascals who lost track of the Son of God.  Sounds alot like my family, and probably yours.

What makes a Holy Family, then?  It's not idealizing Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but relating to them, and sharing life with them.  It's inviting them into our mess, so that we might stay in the fight like they did.  Holy families don't give up on each other, hoping with absurd hope that the will of God can be accomplished in prayer.  That's all a Holy Family is.  

By all means if your family is toxic or abusive, or leading you away from God's will then set up the boundary you need to.  Yet insofar as your family is still in the fight, then keep fighting for each other.  Resist the urge to redefine family as tribalism, that my people are those who affirm me in every way.  That's not family.  Family is the people God gives to you to reveal His desires for you.  Is there anything more Christian than loving the people God gives to you, even when you don't like them?  That's what family is.  It is our best chance to learn how to live and love. That's why John Paul II said the future of the world must go through the family.

Let's fight for family.  That includes not giving up on the nuclear family of mom, dad and children, as that natural place where children learn and grow the best.  When this is not the norm we have to do the best we can.  What we can't do is cancel the nuclear family, and the great and unique good that can only come from the intimate communion of mom, dad and kids.  To cancel that is to give up on ourselves.  We can be for everybody and every family while still saying what's true. If this stance gets me canceled or makes me bigoted and hateful then so be it.  It's a good and truth worth fighting for.

Wherever you family is, to be a holy one is just to stay in the fight.  We celebrate the Holy Family today not as a idol but as helpers who want to appear right in the middle of your mess, if only you will continue to dare the risk of faith.

So let's end with the 2nd question of Christmas, regarding our families.

Will I stay in the fight?