Feast of Holy Family

See Commentary on Luke 2:22-40

Homily 1 - 2008 

The Pope has come under fire in some sectors of the media over these past few days.  He has been criticised by certain loud voices in the Western world because he criticised what he calls the blurring of the important reality of gender difference.  He has been accused of homophobia.

It is a sad fact that today it is so difficult to carry on an intelligent conversation, given the nature of the modern media.  If you can’t state your position in ten seconds flat, even on quite complex issues, no one is prepared to listen to you.  Nuance and dialogue are replaced by slogans and sound-bites.  People don’t search together to understand and perhaps discover “common ground”.  It’s argument, contradiction and fighting that maintain interest and ensure the ratings.

Even the priest’s homily at Mass is not a good medium for nuanced discussion and adult education.  It is better geared for the three-quarter time pep talk than the pre-game strategy planning – for motivation and reminder, perhaps for personal witness, than for the making of clear distinctions and in-depth exploring of the truth.

All this is à propos of today’s Feast of the Holy Family.  I think there is a real need for us to think clearly about family – its strengths and weaknesses, its opportunities, its difficulties and its complexities in today’s world.  We need to think clearly about sexuality.  Is it a good thing? or isn’t it?  or must answers be more nuanced than plain Yes or No?  What about gender difference? gender equality? homosexuality? And what defines family? and who says so? and how do you carry on when the voting public don’t agree? What light do the Gospels, and the Scriptures generally, throw on these questions? Slogans and sound-bites won’t do.  It’s not a case of what side we barrack for, or who can shout the loudest.

So I am not going to say anything today in my homily about these issues.  What then? It’s easy for me, seeing that I’ll be gone in four weeks time.  But … might it be a good idea, for those of you who are  interested, to seek some way of pursuing the issues together at some real depth? It would take time.  It would call for real thought.  And a guide would be helpful.  But in our present world, these will be issues that won’t go away, certainly not in the short term.

Homily 2 - 2017

Probably the sort of activity that Jesus’ parents were engaged in in today’s Gospel episode was the same sort of activity that led Jesus in his later adult public life to clear the temple area of people buying and selling animals for sacrifice and to overturn the tables of the money-changers and the chairs of those selling doves.

Mary and Joseph were simple folk simply unquestioningly obeying the Jewish Law. That Law required firstly that women at great inconvenience travel long distances to the temple in Jerusalem to be ritually cleansed by the Jewish priests through the offering of doves in sacrifice to God after they had shed blood in the process of giving birth. Secondly, it required that similar sacrifice be made to God to ransom from God, as it were, the first male child to be born from their union and who was considered to belong by rights to God.

Whatever about their origins, what did those commandments have to say about the dignity of motherhood or about the bountiful, life-giving generosity of God? In the adult Jesus’ view, his God was not interested in taking lives, even of animals. There was no violence in the heart of his God. And Jesus was certainly responsive to the wonderful dignity of women and appreciative of their equal status in society. Neither he nor his Father had any time for patriarchy and male singularity, and all they assumed. It is fascinating how those attitudes fairly quickly crept back into the Church founded by Jesus [as the Royal Commission has reminded us].

Though it was not stated explicitly, there are a couple of clues that Simeon was an old man approaching a not-too-distant death. I like his openness to the continuing role of senior citizens. Luke comments that the Holy Spirit rested on him [a lovely phrase], and that the two had been obviously in dialogue. Simeon rejoiced that the salvation to be brought by the baby child in his arms would extend to all the nations, enlightening the pagans, as well as bringing glory to the faithful Jewish remnant. He was an ecumenist; and rejoiced that God was likewise.

It is interesting, too, that Luke also has Simeon stating that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart, and seemed to see that somehow associated with Israel’s corporate rejection of Jesus and his revelation of God. He seems to associate Mary with Jesus in his saving passion in some way special to her.

Luke then mentions Anna, the prophetess, and states that she was well on in years, eighty-four years old in fact [I am not sure if I agree with that comment!]. She also publicly proclaimed the specialness of the child. For Luke, as will be consistently noticed later in his Gospel narrative, men had no monopoly on God nor privileged insight into the mind of God.

In light of these comments, what do we make of Paul’s directive, Wives, give way to your husbands, as you should – in the Lord? Is it saying anything much different from what he enjoins on the husbands, Love your wives – given that he expects everyone in the community, wives and husbands, to be practised hands when it comes to compassion, kindness and humility, gentleness and patience. Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t. It may even be what he has in his mind when he says, Bear with one another; forgive each other as soon as a quarrel begins. Obviously, he expects quarrels sometimes, even within good families.

Homily 3 - 2020

Had we read the Gospel scheduled for the last Mass on Christmas Day, we would have heard how St John wrote of the Mystery that is Jesus. He referred to him as the Word of God, in much the same way that Paul wrote of Jesus as the Christ — and both authors wrote of how the Word, how the Christ, had existed from the very beginning. John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word … and the Word was God… Through him all things came to be”. Paul wrote, “… in [Christ] were created all things in heaven and on earth. Before anything was created, he existed.”

The Word, the Christ, was responsible for the first moment that the created universe exploded into being.

John wrote of the Word as God revealed. For Paul, Christ “…is the image of the unseen God” — or God revealed. And the Word, the Christ, revealed the Mystery of God "from the beginning” through the created things of the world.The world we live in speaks so eloquently of God.

The Hebrew Psalms, written well before Jesus, regularly spoke of how the created world reveals the beauty of God. Psalm 19 says precisely that, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God.”

Astronomers estimate that the universe has been around for just under fourteen billion years — proclaiming to those with eyes to see the glory of God. We only need eyes, and words, to proclaim that God ourselves.

But things did not stop there. Just two thousand years ago [hardly a blink of the eye in comparison], “the Word became flesh” in Jesus and as Jesus. As flesh, Jesus was made from the dust of exploded, burnt out stars, of which our flesh also is composed. God became visible in the flesh of the human Jesus, who revealed the face of God more perfectly than the universe ever could. And that is what we celebrated on Friday — Christmas Day.

But there is more. The human flesh of the crucified Jesus was raised from death by the power of the Father and, as the Scriptures proclaim so graphically, shares freely in the power of God. And because Jesus told us while living among us, we know that the power of God is precisely the power of love. Love, ultimately, is the only real power that gives life and, with us humans, the freedom to live it.

Today we are celebrating the Feast of Jesus’ Family — of Mary and Joseph and Jesus. Together, Mary and Joseph formed, nurtured and educated Jesus. As most parents do, they instilled their values into him, mirrored to him how people live together in community, gave him the security that flows from knowing what it is like to be loved, and did all the other things that parents do that they may not even realise, forgiving each other, saying sorry, deeply caring for each other.

And they did it simply by being as responsibly human as they could be.

Homily 4 - 2023

I would love to know more about Simeon and Anna. They were both getting on in years. They were both people who tuned in to God; they both prayed; they were both in touch with the Spirit of God. Luke mentioned that it was the Spirit that had somehow communicated to Simeon that he would live to see God’s long and patient formation of God’s Chosen People, over centuries of turbulent history, come at last to its conclusion; and that same Spirit let him know that it would be this infant child who would be the one destined by God to make it happen. He would “bring glory at last to Israel” and, in the process, he would “enlighten” the whole world.

Simeon conveyed the Spirit’s message to Mary and Joseph, but added more. Though God’s design would eventually be accomplished, it would not be without contestation, rejection by many, and acceptance, too, by others; and with it would inevitably come suffering — for Mary as well as for her son. But, no magic, no silver bullet.

I would love to know what Anna had to say of the child. Luke labelled her a prophetess. Female prophetesses were not professional. This probably says something about her: she was her own person. Genuine prophets generally were well grounded in the tradition, and had a deep love for their contemporaries; but they were also truly in tune with God, and had a keen feel for God’s will regarding the future. Is that what she began talking about as “she spoke of the child to all who looked forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem”? Might she have filled in some of what Simeon didn’t or couldn’t specify?

There is so much that attracts me about Simeon and Anna. It wasn’t just that they were both older-than-usual characters. They were obviously alive; both drawn to the future, not frightened of it; both personally in touch with God; both individuals; and they related easily to the child. I wonder if either or both of them knew Elizabeth, Mary’s delightful old cousin, mother of John the Baptist, and wife of Zechariah, a priest.

And finally, there is the last sentence of today’s Gospel passage that so richly draws together and crisply fills in the thirty-or-so precious years between the time of the infant Christ and the two or three years during which the mature Christ exercised his ministry of teaching by word, by deed, simply by his life — prophet per excellence himself and “light to enlighten the pagans and the glory of God’s people Israel”.

Totally ignoring details of the daily life together of the Holy Family in Nazareth, about which we consequently know nothing, Luke comments: “the child grew to maturity, and he was filled with wisdom; and God’s favour was with him.”

That summary bears sitting with quietly and trustfully, allowing each statement to raise its own questions, perhaps even unsettling questions, but potentially illuminating ones, as we come to know him ever better.

I shall read it again slowly:

“the child grew to maturity…
and he was filled with wisdom…
and God’s favour was with him.”

Something similar could be said of him and all of us — though the difference between him and us is ultimately infinite.