The Feast of the Holy Family was added to the Church’s calendar to highlight the importance of the Christian Family and to point to the Holy Family as a model for all families to follow. Even though Joseph and Mary were poor and had external forces against them, they provided a loving home for Jesus to grow up in. With that said, don’t you love it that this model family has its share of familial difficulty. When we look at the story of the finding of Jesus in the temple we recognize some of the same behaviors that characterize our families. There is a breakdown in communication, worry and anxiety about safety, a lack of understanding of the other, a generational divide, and a little maternal guilt thrown in for good measure. Isn’t that consoling – that our model family experienced many of the same things that we go through.
In addition, this model family was what we could call today a blended family. Joseph was the foster father of Jesus, not the biological father. Even the Holy Family did not live up to some sort of ideal picture of what a family should look like with mother, father and their own biological children making up the household. That sort of family, the demographers call them Norman Rockwell families, make up only a small percentage of the families in the United States. In fact, the Census Bureau distinguishes about fifty different types of families in its accounting. So however your family is shaped it looks the way it should look. For every family living in their own heavily mortgaged home with a white picket fence around it there is another family that uses the services of the food pantry to make ends meet. For every family with 2.2 children going to a good school there is another family that is walking from Honduras to the United States in the hopes of a better life. And you only have to watch TV sitcoms to see the various combinations of married, single-parent, grandparent, step-parent, divorced, gay and blended relationships that can make up a household. There is no ideal family.
However, the Holy Family is a model family not because it embodied some impossible ideal, but because Jesus, Mary and Joseph modeled how with all of our human faults and failings we can live in mutual love and support. The gospel provides some suggestions on how that looks. First of all, did you notice the respectful style of communicating that Mary adopted when speaking to her son? He is still a boy – twelve years old was not considered old enough to make mature decisions in that culture just as in our own. You know she must have been a basket case full of worry after three days of searching. Instead of lighting into him with accusations and condemnations she asks for explanations. “Why have you done this? Can’t you see how worried we have been?” All too often we tend to jump right into the judgment, insisting that our way of seeing things and what we are experiencing is the proper one. Mary demonstrated how important it is to listen to the other, to hear the other point of view. If the starting point is respectful listening, the kind of communication that builds trust will exist in the family system.
Even in the model family there is the giving and taking of wounds. Mary and Joseph were obviously hurt by Jesus’ behavior. Often as in this case, hurting another is unintentional. Like Jesus we can be surprised when we find that something we did or didn’t do caused another’s feelings to be hurt. That is why forgiveness is at the heart of what it means to be family. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer the doctor told us that she had about eighteen months to live. It gave her children ample time to beg her forgiveness for ways we had hurt her and it gave her the opportunity to ask for forgiveness from us. But don’t wait until the end. The message of Jesus includes forgiving and being forgiven every day, woven right into the prayer he taught us. Once we understand how easily we can bruise one another without really meaning to, then we have to forgive.
Finally, in a model family and in our families we must “grow in wisdom and age and grace before God and others.” It’s not hard to advance in age – that comes kind of willy-nilly. But to advance, to grow, in wisdom and in grace is the responsibility of every child of God. We’re not done yet. We have to grow in God. We have to make progress. We have to become more. We have to achieve the divine potential God has built into each one of us. Growing is important to God – so important that the Son of God shared it with us. We can never say, “I’ve got it all together now.” There is always room for growth no matter how old or how experienced we are. “Been there, done that” can never be the motto for the Christian life. That also implies that the way we relate to each other has to grow in wisdom and grace. Parents have to learn to treat children differently as they mature, trusting their judgments. Children must be attentive to the changes in the adults as they advance in years, sensitive to their shifting needs. Family relations are always dynamic, never static.
This reflection of families is important but remember St. John in the epistle today says, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. And so we are.” Since we are the children of God, we are members of God’s family. After all, on judgment day we’re not going to be able to hide behind our families. Once I was urging my brother back to church and he said to me, “Well, you’re taking care of the religion in the family.” It doesn’t work like that. God isn’t going to say to us, “Your grandmother was a good person so why don’t you come on up into heaven.” God isn’t going to say, “Your wife certainly was a faithful church-goer so why don’t you enter into glory.” No, God looks at us as individuals. We should be grateful for the family God gave us. But more than that, we should live as members of the family of God bringing divine love to everyone we meet since we share with them a family resemblance to Jesus.
