Feast of the Holy Family 9 Jan 2011 Sermon

Feast of the Holy Family 9.1.11 Lessons in love

Jesus, Mary and Joseph are the model family. They are the ideal in terms of doing the will of God and loving one another.

Most other families don't get these things right; especially the point about doing the will of God.

On the loving-one-another front some families do better than others.

It was God Himself who established the family, from the time of Adam and Eve. And by choosing to live in a family (as Jesus), He further reinforced its importance.

He had certain intentions for us: One was that through experiencing human love in the family setting we would then have a key to understanding divine love. So if our parents loved us as children, that would be an image of God’s own love for us.

Further again, that we would learn in the give-and-take of family life to be less selfish and able to fit in with other people. Learning to love under pressure.

Then there is marriage, which has its own special place. In Christian understanding the marriage between man and woman symbolises the marriage between Christ and the Church.

Within marriage comes procreation, a privileged sharing in the creative power of God.

All these things God intends us to learn and observe in marriage and family life.

It is easy to be cynical about these things as the practice so often fails to reach the ideal. We see that families and marriage are so often torn apart.

We must not allow cynicism to deflect us from belief in the ideal nor from attempts to draw closer to it.

We see that the evil one has power to make disturbance in the most important areas. Family life and its related aspects form a huge battleground between good and evil.

As we do not allow the presence of evil in general to stop us believing in good, nor must we stop believing in the proper working of marriage and family life. In the presence of failure we become even more determined to get things right.

There are two ways we can make things run better:

One, we reaffirm our belief in all the Church teachings regarding family life: no adultery, no contraception, no abortion, no IVF etc. We obey these teachings and we work to influence the political machinery and general public opinion to defend these things, so much under attack.

Two, we work harder at living family life along the lines of the Holy Family. This takes a certain amount of pulling one’s head in: just being humble, giving way to others, washing their feet (metaphorically). Being the least rather than the greatest, and so on.

This will do wonders, especially if it spreads.

Just doing the little things right is so important . We see that Our Lord spent thirty years just living at home. How important this makes the domestic scene.

The little things are more important insofar as they are more common. Only a few times in our lives we are called on for big things, but thousands of times for the little things. They add up to a lot in the end.

Our challenge is to return to our homes or communities and be more like Jesus, Mary and Joseph in these little things. Not working miracles but just being patient, kind, courteous; not seeking one’s own way all the time etc.

Again we are drawn to contemplate the Crib scene. It is a humble scene and perhaps an unlikely-looking one to solve the world’s problems, but ‘humble’ is just the thing when it comes to obtaining and exercising spiritual power.

As we honour the Holy Family may we share in their humility and the power that comes from that.