Homily for the Solemnity of the Holy Family

It is something of a cliche to talk about Man’s search for God. We are constantly seeking for Him everywhere. We look for truth in science, we look for new frontiers, new freedoms, and new ways of understanding the world.

The Incarnation of Christ shows us, however, that the truth is completely inverted, and has always been about God’s search for us. This search began in a garden and can be seen throughout the entirety of the scriptures. God has been seeking his people, testing them, refining them, and preparing them for the most improbable thing ever. He would cross the infinite space between Him and His creation, entering into the world in a way we could know Him and this most extraordinary thing would happen in the most ordinary place: in a family.

We’ve read the genealogy of Jesus several times in the past week - once at the vigil, and beforehand during daily Mass. Our Lord’s family tree is no boastful list of kings and might heroes, though there are a few of those in there. Most of the names in there are pretty ordinary, relatively speaking. And as anyone who’s worked on their family tree knows, there are a couple of questionable names in there too. If you’ve worked on your own tree and haven’t found the colorful or questionable names yet, I have some bad news for you, because it just might be you.

But names and lines and boxes on a family tree hardly do justice to the enormity of what we see: entire lives, lived in ordinary times, suffering and celebrating the same way we do.

Families are a central part of God’s plan, and reflect the way he wants us to know Him, for this is how He came to us. Families are the places that we learn to love, to pray, and to serve. They are perfect little communities and the basic cell of any human society.

Families begin in faith, starting with the promises and consent of marriage, each person trusting in God to deliver on the promises of grace to live out the vocation of Marriage.

Families grow in hope! Hope by its very nature is oriented to the future, to what’s ahead, not what’s past. And just as we are here because of the hopes of those who’ve come before us, so we pay it forward, and pass it to those who will come after us.

Families abide in love, in the relations between their members. Families are the first places we learn who we are as we learn about others. Babies only know three people in the world: themselves, Mom, and Not-Mom. As we mature, though, we come to a greater understanding of our selves. Once we know our self, we can learn what it is to love selflessly, in agape.

Now I say all that to say this: families can also screw things up pretty badly. This crucible that forms us can also be a place of pain, of hurt. He knows about this too. But little by little, we can - with His grace - begin to inch things back into their proper place. It may take years; we might not ever finish. This is fine. We might think about forgiving a hurt or a sleight. If not for the other person, than as a gift we can dare to give to ourselves, letting go of a weight we no longer need to carry.

So let’s take a look at the Holy Family as a model and guide, and I realize that sounds like something of a tall order. After all, we have the Son of God, the Immaculate Conception, and saintly Joseph. That’s a pretty tough act to follow. A closer look at the Holy Family reveals some beautiful catechesis:

They are obedient to God’s will. Joseph got up in the middle of night to move his family to safety. Any of us would do the same of course. But what about in the many small things of life? Are we as ready to obey God in small moments as well?

They are attentive to God in prayer. The most remarkable thing about the infancy narratives - the stories of our Lord’s childhood - is their silence. We don’t hear much from them at all. This silence invites us to create spaces of silence in our own lives, a place to share in the silence of Bethlehem and Nazareth. Silence is necessary for prayer and prayer is a non-negotiable part of our interior lives. Let’s look for some of their silence and sit in it for awhile this season.

Finally, the Holy Family moved quickly and decisively. If you’ve been discerning God’s call to your something, whatever it is, it may be time to step off the boat and trust in Him for the next steps. In formation, they called this ‘setting your hand to the plow’ and moving ahead. Let us all pray for the grace to act.

G.K. Chesterton wrote:

When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into a family, we step into a fairy-tale.

Our Lord stepped into a fairy-tale by entering into a family, only He was the author and he came to show us how the story will end.

All of our greatest stories begin in families and find their frameworks, their contexts, in families. The story of our redemption is no different. Neither is yours or mine.

Let us then follow the Holy Family, learning from them the silence of prayer, obedience to God’s will, and willingness to follow wherever it leads. Let us follow them from Bethlehem to Egypt, and from Egypt to Nazareth, and from Nazareth to Jerusalem.

Amen.