HOLY FAMILY

 1.      A young boy decided he was going to be a saint. So he went to the library, read up the lives of saints and decided which one would work for him. He chose St. Simon Stylites, a saint who built a pillar in the market place and lived his entire life on top of the pillar - presumably in prayer.  Today, St. Simon  would be taken down from the pillar and put in an asylum. So the boy went home, he could not build a pillar in the house, so he took a chair and stood on it. However, his mother told him to move somewhere else because he was in her way between the stove and the kitchen sink. Then his sister told him to move, because his chair was in front of the fridge. So he moved the chair to the doorway, and he was promptly knocked down by another sister. He put the chair back in its place and wrote in his journal, “It is impossible to be a saint in this family.”

2.       Today as we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family, we ask ourselves what exactly makes a family today - and can we be holy within it . Our definitions seem to change by the decade - and we are shocked by each new description of a family because of the one in which we are brought up in, and by the emotional ties we have with that family. Today, it is same sex marriages, a decade ago it was single parent families. Before that a boy and girl fell in love and formed a single unit family by buying a house and living by themselves. Before that, the parents decided on a suitable spouse for the child. The boy and girl got married and lived with their parents and brought up their new family. Our ideas of a family seem to change - and the new ideas shock us, until we get used to the reality. The idea of the All Ideal family - a rugged handsome man getting married to a blue eyed blonde and rearing up two children: one boy and one girl - was never seriously considered.

3.       Both Jesus Ben Sirach and Paul propose to us qualities that will make up our family - and how to make a success out of it, how to even be saints without living on a Pillar like St. Simon Stylites. The book of Ben Sirach gives us what the British would call “DIY” - a do it yourself kit. They are like the stop signs, speed limits, and noise controlling speed bumps on the road to a peaceful and loving family.

          relationship of children to parents: one of respect

          relationship of parents to children - discipline without nagging.

One would expect that this is common sense. But I hear of so many stories where children have just abandoned their parents or even become estranged from them when they have grown old or senile.

4.       This brings us to Paul’s letter to the Colossians where he advises us on personal qualities which will help us to put our selfishness and miserliness aside and attend to those who have sacrificed so much to make our lives successful. But even when our parents have been a total loss - children can raise themselves up above the lowest common level of being human. I have just finished Frank McCourt’s book: Angela’s Ashes. A Brooklyn born Irishman during the depression, his family returned to Limerick because of utter poverty and misery. The father could not get out of his alcoholism, and the mother never got out of the depression of loosing two young children due to malnutrition. Yet Frank and his brother Malachy got out of their pigsty by sheer grit and determination. And so the qualities mentioned by St. Paul is not only possible but also a challenge.

5.       This brings us to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The fact that they were following the Plan of God, - “Let it be done unto me according to Your will” - did not make things any easier.

          They had to leave Nazareth to register in Bethlehem

          There was no room for them in the Inn

          The Child is born in a manger amidst the animals - which might look cute in our modern day cribs - but which was probably smelly, and not to clean in reality

          The constant road signs to Joseph came mainly in dreams

But they made a go of it. In fact the three of them, have been proposed to us as a model on which we can shape our own families - whether it is a family like the one in which I grew up: Mum, Dad and brothers+ Grandmother, aunts and uncles, or whether it is the single parent family - or perhaps even the same sex marriage family that may become a large part of our future society. In each one of these units, these community of persons, we can make God - Emmanuel, God with us a vital part of our dealings with each other.

6.       The other grim reality is that bringing Jesus into our lives - today means the shepherds and angels and Wise men. But down the road, it is suffering and the Cross - but also the Resurrection.  At first sight it even seems that because Jesus entered their lives, all the problems started.

If Mary had said No to the Angel Gabriel, she and Joseph could have lived a quiet and uneventful life. But the moment Jesus entered her life: she had to face the questioning glances of her girl friends and the village.

The moment Jesus entered the lives of Mary and Joseph: Herod tried to kill Jesus

The moment Jesus entered their lives, Mary and Joseph had to flee to Egypt.

But because they went through all this, there is no family here of whatever description that can say – “we do not know what to do”. Jesus, Mary and Joseph have been through it all: poverty, misunderstanding, threat of death, homelessness, living at the mercy of the laws of unreasonable rulers and governors, living in situations beyond their control. The Gospels merely record these events. They do not describe to us the fears, the anxieties, the doubts, the feelings of helplessness that Mary and Joseph felt. They were like us in all things but sin. They lived through it all - and so can we. They had no more training or education that we have. The Gospels do give us a clue as to how they managed. We are told that Mary pondered these things in her heart. We too, through prayer, reflection and using the God given talents can face reality and use it to our advantage.

We can use the advice of Ben Sirach about relationships between parents and children, and children and parents.  We can use the advice of Paul to be compassionate, kind and caring – and then as the British would say - we too CAN make a half decent job of our family. We too can live in peace - and grow in holiness.  God bless you all.