An Ordinary Family, A Holy Family

St. Joseph Church (Cottleville)
Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
December 28, 2008 - 12:15 p.m.

Gen 15:1-6; 21:1-3
Heb 11:8, 11-12, 17-19
Lk 2:22-40

I haven’t really spent any time shopping these past few days, but I’m guessing most of the stores have taken down their Christmas decorations and are returning quickly to business as usual. The Christmas music has disappeared from the radio stations that started playing it the day after Halloween, and many will soon be taking down the Christmas lights they spent long hours putting up not too long ago. But the beautiful thing for us as Catholics is that for us the celebration has just begun. The Church gives us an entire liturgical season to reflect upon the mystery of the Incarnation. She gives us a whole series of feasts that get at the meaning of this one event. And so today we come to the Feast of the Holy Family. We reflect upon the mystery of Christmas, of the birth of God as a man, from the context in which it all took place – a human family.

God became part of an ordinary human family. Today’s Gospel tells us that their life was not one of luxury and comfort. The Jewish law demanded that a woman offer a lamb and a turtledove as a sacrifice for her purification after childbirth. A lamb was a very costly sacrifice, and so the law allowed for an “Offering of the Poor.” Those who could not afford a lamb were given permission to bring another turtledove in its place. This is what Mary and Joseph brought to the Temple.

Mary, Joseph, and their child lived as any other Jewish family would have in their day. Jesus was raised as any Jewish boy would have been. His parents taught Him the history of their people. We can imagine St. Joseph taking his son outside their home in Nazareth and telling Jesus to look up at the stars. He would have told Him that when Abraham looked upon those same stars, he saw one lit for Jesus, for He was one of those innumerable children of Abraham, a child of the covenant. Jesus would have learned the trade of carpentry from St. Joseph. Our Lady certainly cared tenderly for her Son and also cared for the home, tireless spending herself out of love for her husband and her son. This family knew the great joys of life together, and it knew many trials and sufferings.

Today we look upon this ordinary human family, and we call it the Holy Family. It was holy not because of any amazing deeds performed but because God Himself dwelt in their home in the flesh. It was holy because a man and woman welcomed the Son of God into their home and spent the entirety of their lives with Him as their primary love. Because Jesus Christ dwelt in that Nazareth home with Mary and Joseph, their seemingly ordinary life became extraordinary. It became holy.

And so it is for us. Whether we live in a home of mother, father, and 12 children, alone as a widow, or anything in between, Jesus Christ wants to dwell in our homes. He wants to make our seemingly ordinary lives into something extraordinary. He wants to make our humble lives into something beautiful for His Father. This is yet another wondrous truth of the Christmas mystery. Every little thing we do, if we do it out of love for God and neighbor, becomes a source of sanctification for us. It is from our participation in Holy Mass that we gain the grace we need to live in God’s presence throughout the week. But holiness doesn’t merely mean coming to Mass every Sunday. What we do here at Mass on Sunday should extend into our homes throughout the week. Just as we begin Mass by recognizing our sinfulness, so in our families we should always be ready to forgive. Just as we listen to stories of salvation history in the Mass readings, so in our families we share our own experiences and listen to the other members of our family as they share theirs. At Mass we offer bread and wine to God the Father to be consecrated into the flesh and blood of His Son. In our homes, we should offer all of our joys and our sufferings to Him. Just as Christ gives Himself to us in Holy Communion, so should we be willing to give of ourselves totally out of love to the other members of our family.

Our homes, then, should be domestic churches. Christ should be welcome in our homes. All it takes is simple, ordinary things – praying together as a family before meals or praying the Rosary together. It means doing basic household chores – sweeping, dusting, dishes, trash – with great love for God and for the other members of our family. Every part of our home, every part of family life can be holy. The kitchen counter, the computer desk, the dining room table – all of these can become the altars of our homes, places where we offer our lives to God.

St. Therese of Lisieux knew this lesson well. The history of our Church has given us many heroic saints, saints like Thomas Aquinas, who wrote volumes of brilliant theology, saints like Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life in a concentration camp so another could live. The list could go on. Therese desired to do something heroic. She wanted to be a missionary, an apostle, a martyr, but she died at the age of 24 after an obscure life in the convent. Almost immediately after her death, however, her fame spread as people began entrusting their prayers to her. It was because of her “Little Way.” Her life has taught us that holiness isn’t achieved from great, heroic deeds but from offering simple, ordinary things to the Lord with great love. Just this past year her parents were beatified, as the Church came to recognize her holiness of life as the fruit of her parents’ holiness. They are a modern example of a holy family, of the special grace of family life alive still in our world.

May we pour out our hearts to our Lord today around this holy altar. Then, when we return home, may we offer Him our home as His dwelling. It is only when we ask Him to sanctify our families and our homes that we will begin to see a transformation of all of society, because society is built on the family. As the family goes, so goes the world. Let us welcome Christ into our families and homes anew this Christmas and so do our part to transform the culture of death into the civilization of life and of love.