What's a Holy Family?

Homily

Solemnity of the Holy Family

31 December 2023

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

What's a Holy Family?

As far as I can tell, it's a family that stays fights for the will of God, and makes the risk of faith.

To live our faith is to take great risks.  Our faith is a passion for the impossible, and a trust in what lies beyond what I can control or understand.  Abraham is our father in faith, as is well attested in today's readings.  He travels to an unknown place by faith.  He receives a miraculous son by faith, along with the promise of countless descendants.  He is willing to sacrifice that same son Isaac, IN FAITH, trusting that God creates even from the dead.

That's crazy faith.  Abraham takes the risk, and is thus the father of a holy family.

The Holy Family of Mary, Jesus and Joseph also took great risks!  It does us not good today to idolize or idealize them, placing them on a shelf only to admire them, knowing deep down that my family will never be like that.  Quite the opposite, we invite this family in our Christmas experience, asking them to help us stay in the fight to love God's will, and to show us how God can bring holiness from the mess of our family life.

Yes, we have an idyllic scene of Jesus's consecration in the temple today, and we do well to remember that a family that worships together, stays together.  Yet we shouldn't for a second forget that this same family was once homeless refugees, setting off amber alerts as they went.  Jesus' ancestors and cousins were every bit as sinful and dysfunctional as my family is.  His family was destined to have their hearts ripped open by a sword, as they risked living vertically so that we could relate our human experience to theirs.

Yes, there was great care, silence, prayer and learning in the Holy Family, no doubt.  There was also great risk from a family that by faith dared to fight for the will of God.

If your family is toxic or abusive, by all means set the boundaries that you need to.  Yet to quit on family altogether is to quit on ourselves, for the risk of faith is meant to run through the family, as does the salvation of the world.  To trade family for tribalism, loving only those that affirm us, is a betrayal of Jesus' family example and the path of holiness He set for us.

What's a Holy Family?

It's a lot of things, but most of all, it's a family that fights for the will of God, and makes the risk of faith.

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