Holy Family Sunday 27 December 2015
[__01__] We read in the Gospel, this Gospel of Holy
Family Sunday, that Jesus returned – that he traveled / journeyed / went –with
Joseph and Mary to Nazareth.
He returned, he traveled
with them
[__02__] His obedience, his service to his parents,
Mary his mother, and Joseph, his adoptive father, continued with this journey.
[__03__] One of the ways in which we can say YES, in
which we can SERVE, our parents, grandparents, our families, is in our
journeys, our travels
That is, not only do we
serve our parents and families at a particular destination or location, but
also by being with them along the way, on the journey.
[__04__] The journey – the pilgrimage was an important
aspect of Jewish spiritual life as it is important in our own lives.
To receive Jesus, however,
we can be enriched by a journey to Lourdes or to the Basilica of the Sacred
Heart in Newark …or even a journey here for Sunday Mass.
Spiritual life means a
journey. And, the Holy Eucharist – the reception of our Lord in Holy Communion
– is part of this journey. Pope John
Paul II wrote that, in 2004 – the Year of the Eucharist – that we can regard
our reception of Christ in the Eucharist as the “high-point of a journey in
progress.”[1]
In this letter, John Paul
II also reflected on the journey of the 2 travelers to Emmaus to whom Jesus
appeared at first, unbeknownst. His
appearance to them was, both in the walking on the road ..and in the eating at
the table … food for an ongoing journey.
This helped them to
recognize Christ and to say YES. (cf.
Luke 24, Luke 24:29).
[* * * P A U
S E * * *]
[__05__] The journey is also important to our YES, to
our discipleship.
We see the example of the affirmative
YES and the affirmative service and obedience in our young Messiah and Savior,
Jesus of Nazareth.
He had come from Nazareth,
he was supposed to be on the way back to Nazareth. Has anyone seen Jesus of
Nazareth?
[__06__] As parents and as grown-ups, we would know the
importance of sight and proximity, and the nearness of children, in a downtown
center, at a market or mall or train station.
As children – as youths –
we also know it can be dreadfully boring to stay with the group following the
agenda and itinerary of the grown-ups during such encounters.
We may want to get away,
to escape. We don’t want to serve the group, we want to serve ourselves.
Our little subversive
plots and rebellions and strategies may start early in life.
Can we not recall
conversations we had in elementary school or high school in which friends would
gather to discuss what the rules really meant, to whom they applied, and how
far we could go before being “caught”?
I can recall – at least in
general - certain conversations like this in which we discussed the optimal
level of enjoyment we could have at maximum distance from the grown ups.
In one instance, this
resulted in a missed bus ..in defiance of the scheduled time for us to gather
and return as a group. Some of us did not go on the next trip.
This was, however, only
physical distance…
In a sense, even if we
were to be physically distant from others – in a crowd – we could still be
connected, in touch.
[__07__] For example, we take breaks from our family to
be at work or on holiday, from our jobs to be on vacation, from our spouses ….
Only to return ..hours or days later
with greater ….
[ • vigor •
energy • attention to detail • charity • compassion]
This is true when we speak
of our relationship with God …and our relationship with others through God …
In Psalm 139, we read,
“O Lord you search me an you know me,
you known when I sit and when I stand.
You understand my thoughts from afar.
My journeys and my rest you scrutinize.
Where
can I go from your spirit, from your presence, where can I flee? If I go up to the heavens, you are there …”
St. Paul in Romans,
chapter 8, affirmed that neither height nor depth could separate us from the
love of Christ.
[__08__] The family bond is also sacred, God-given,
created and nurtured by by God’s grace and also nurtured by our voluntary
cooperation.
Do we say YES to the
journey required?
[__09__] And, are we not always, in a spiritual sense,
present to our family responsibility, this commitment to our family?
This is true even if we
were lost in the urban center, in downtown Jerusalem or Jersey City.
We would remain a son, a
daughter, a spouse, a parent.
Jesus was son to Mary and
Joseph, even outside their visual proximity and without a GPS electronic
tracking device in his pocket.
In a way, we could say
that Jesus was obedient to his parents even his departure from the group. Did
they not know that he must be about this father’s business, in his father’s
house?
Jesus goes to the Temple
not in spite of what they taught him but because of what they taught him.
And, his obedience to Mary
and Joseph reminds us that our commitments are achieved not only by the
destination we reach but by the journeys we take.
In fact, reading the
Gospel now – centuries later – we can have insights that even Joseph and Mary
did not possess at the time.
We know why he went to the
Temple, that this foreshadows his future visits to the Temple, his future
debates and a future trial with Pontius Pilate.
He had to be about his
father’s business.
However, Jesus also
recognizes that he has to say YES to the journey to Nazareth and to give us an
example of this YES, this service and obedience to our own families, on the
way. [__fin__]
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