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[Holy Family Sunday, December 29, 2024] ● Gospel: Luke 2:41-52 ●
[__01__] In the
Gospel this Sunday, we read from a relatively early episode in the chronology
of our Savior’s life: the boy Jesus is 12 years old.
This
takes place during a family journey and pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the
Passover.
I
would like to reflect on how Mary and Jesus interact with each other and what
this says not only about our profession of faith but also about our own
personal challenge to understand being called by God.
Each
is called by God as either man or woman, boy or girl, yet we also come to
understand ourselves as masculine and feminine precisely because of the
differences between men and women.
We
say that men and women “complement” each other.
Just to be clear, I don’t mean that they “compliment” by saying nice
things such as – that is really nice sweater you are wearing or I really liked
your Christmas card.
Rather,
men and women “complement” or “complete” each other as they connect to each
other.
[__02__] On this
Holy Family Sunday, I would like to reflect on this completeness of Jesus and
Mary and the male and female.
These
days, it can be legally and politically dangerous to speak of masculine and
feminine as distinct. I bring this up not to suggest – in any way – that men or
women are better at this or that.
In
some ways, the Gospel flips the script on some male and female stereotypes,
because Mary is the one doing the “pursuing” and Jesus allows himself to be
“caught”
In
any case, their relationship is a demonstration of the parent-child and
male-female unity. Each is a completion
of the other. Each needs the other to thrive and prosper.
[__03__] The Gospel
Good News is that this son needs his mother just as a daughter needs her
father. This is not just so that the parent can console the child after a
difficult game or test, but simply to be a role model for maturity.
A
mother is her son’s first true love. The same could be said of a father
relative to his daughter.
Of
course, some of us have not had ideal role models in 1 or both of our parents.
All the more reason that we need the Gospel Good News about how the God as
Father and the Virgin Mary as Blessed Mother help us to sort through life.
Father
Ronald Knox of England wrote this about fatherhood.
"You must not wait till you can
learn to understand your father before you learn to know God. It is by learning
to know God that you will learn to understand your father." (Father Ronald Knox sermon,
“The Fatherhood of God”, Pastoral and
Occasional Sermons)
[__04__] It is part
of our Catholic faith to recognize in our Blessed Mother, Mary, an ideal of
feminine and maternal identity which is not only for Jesus’ care and feeding
but our own development.
[__05__] What occurs in the Gospel of Luke is an
example of both complementarity and competition:
Jesus,
the 12 year old boy, also knows himself to be the Messiah and has decided –
rather prematurely – to strike out on his own without any money or credentials
or credit card or extra change of clothes. He is truly the juvenile Son of Man
who has nowhere to lay his head, but goes anyway.
He
separates himself from the family and goes back to the Jerusalem Temple.
[__06__] Have you ever been – in a public crowded place –
and been the child separated from your parents or the parent separated from
your child?
Terrifying
for the parent. Usually, it is also terrifying – or will be – terrifying for
the child once he or she figures out what’s going on.
This
situation is different.
Jesus,
rightly, does not fear being captured or falling into the wrong hands. Rather,
his actions at 12 years old predict that he will one day be captured and fall
into hands that want to harm him. But fear does not stop him as an adolescent
or as an adult from going to be “in his Father’s house”. (Luke 2:___)
Jesus
said to his parents, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my
Father’s house?” (Luke 2:___)
Here,
Jesus is predicting his own passion. He is also, we might say, all boy, all
male. They’re having trouble containing him.
Jesus
represents one side of the male-female complementarity. He is willing to go to
the ends of the earth. Jesus is also
willing to tear down the Temple of his own body.
[__07__] Then there is Mary, our Blessed Mother. She is
also willing to go to the ends of the earth but has a different “house” and
destination in mind which is her house, Nazareth, asking:
“Son,
why have you done this to us? Your
father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”
[__08__] Mary is the rescue worker who is focused on
receiving the person to whom she belongs.
To
answer the question in the popular song: yes, Mary did know that he came to
save her sons and daugthers.
Of
course, both fathers and mothers show us to whom we belong. But, isn’t it true
that the bond of motherhood is primary. It is the role a husband and father to
allow the mother to nurture and also to learn how to do so first from his own mother,
then from the mother of his child.
[__09__] The
Blessed Virgin Mary comes to Jesus at this moment and later at the Cross to
witness him being separated from her.
Right
now, Mary can assert her custody over her son, Jesus, at 12 years of age.
This
will not be the case at Calvary but she still unites herself to him.
[__10__] Father
John Cihak wrote an article that priests – and indeed all of us – may feel
lonely or abandoned in the way that Jesus was.
But
it isn’t simply the priest who might feel a tinge of loneliness, or the
individual believer who might do so.
The
Church as an institution is not simply meant to be a place of shelter from the
storms of life with community and charity.
Yes,
praise God, we strive for this at Lourdes parish.
Yet,
the Church as institution can be “separate” … “alone“ … “abandoned ” relative
to other institutions.
Mary
our Blessed Mother gives us a model to follow in times of distress and
difficulty to unite ourselves to Christ and apply His Word to the journey we
are on now
Bibliography:
“The Blessed Virgin Mary’s Role in the Celibate Priest’s
Spousal and Paternal Love”
Father John Cihak, S.T.D.
The Fatherhood of God, Father James Schall, S.J. January 4, 2011
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