The Feast of the Holy Family
(On the first  Sunday following  Christmas)

 Rev. Julius Leloczky, O.Cist

Let’s imagine a good Catholic family in today’s world. Suppose that Mom and Dad have six children. Having a large family, it’s not easy to provide food and clothing and everything else needed for a decent daily life. Don’t you think that, once in a while, in the middle of all the whirlwind of daily family lie, the question would enter the minds of this Mom and Dad whether it’s fair to set the family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as the model of all Christian families? After all, Joseph and Mary had only one child to raise, daily life at their time was much simpler and much less expensive than today, so how could be their family life and ours compared, how could today’s families follow their example in our complicated age. To answer such a question I’d say, that the Holy Family is our model neither for the size of the family, nor for their cultural or ethnic background, nor for their social status or financial means. The family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph is our model not for any of its visible features but for the soul, the spirit, the heart that animated that family.

Now, to find a good example, we’re going back to the second half of the 19^th century. Charles de Foucauld was an officer of the French Foreign Legion but he was dismissed because of his dissolute life. In 1886, at the age of 28, he converted to Christianity, and, since he wanted to be a Cistercian monk,  entered a Trappist monastery in France. Some time later, feeling the call and desire to follow Jesus’ way of life more closely, he left the monastery, moved to the Holy Land, to Nazareth, the town where Jesus lived for thirty years, and became a servant in a convent of Poor Claire nuns. He thought that to imitate Jesus’ life he had to live on the very spot where Jesus lived. A few years later he realized that this was not necessary. He himself wrote down this thought in moving words: “This life of Nazareth,” he wrote, “was to be led elsewhere than in the Holy Land. This divine banquet whose minister I was to become [as a priest], had to be offered to the lame, blind, and poor, to people, that is, without priests. In Morocco, with ten million inhabitants, there was not a single priest…” He spent the rest of his life in the Sahara desert in a small village among the Tuareg tribe and his life was ended at the age of 58 when robbers attacked the village and he was shot dead.

Charles de Faucould demonstrated by his very life the truth that to follow the life of the Holy Family, we have to imitate not the external circumstances of Jesus and his parents’ life but rather, we have to make our own the inner attitude that motivated and moved them. I’d sum up this inner attitude in three points that are closely connected with each other: 

1.   Obedience to God’s will, obedience to God’s personal call. This obedience manifests itself in big decisions that change one’s whole life like choosing a way of life, or choosing a profession, or choosing a spouse, or choosing priestly and/or religious life; but this obedience shows itself in following God’s will in our daily life’s smallest details that means a constant search: “What is God’s will for me NOW, for this given hour or situation?” This search is implicitly present in our minds all the time whenever we try to do “the right thing.” We can discover this search in the twelve years’ old Jesus’ life in his staying in the Temple even after His family left Jerusalem: in His heart the Father’s call sounded so loud that He instinctively thought that His job is to remain the religious center of His country.  -  This fundamental obedience should be the basic drive also in our lives, just as it was for Jesus for whom His “daily bread” was to do His Father’s will. This obedience includes our sincere, deep-seated, whole-hearted (which means non-rebellious) acceptance of our life situation whatever that may be, and, as a consequence, the whole-hearted, dedicated doing of everything that we are supposed to do. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary knew what was their part in Salvation History, knew their parts in God’s plans, said their “Yes” to it and carried it out faithfully, day after day.

2.    The Holy Family lived a simple life in a simple home in a simple town. There was nothing glamorous about it. As a respected craftsman of the local community, Joseph ensured for Mary and Jesus a decent life which means that they did not live in misery or destitution. Certainly, there was nothing fancy about their daily living. They lived the simple life of Jewish village-dwellers. What was special was their inner way of thinking toward earthly possessions. It was the attitude what we call spiritual poverty. Spiritual poverty means that, independently of how much or how little wealth one has, the person is not attached to material goods, material possessions are not the highest value in his life, life’s emphasis or main interest is not placed in money or simply in “things”. The person knows that material goods are necessary for daily life but he knows also that they are not so important; they are just means or tools in our lives toward higher goals, and they are not the goal itself. The ultimate purpose of our daily work should be simply helping people and praising God by our various activities, not just to make by them as much money as possible.

3.    The life of the Holy Family was a life of acceptance of crosses and preparation for crosses. This spirit of readiness to accept suffering is shown in the text of today’s gospel reading, in the story of Jesus’ presentation in the Temple. It was a Jewish religious custom to present the first-born son and to offer him to God’s service. As a sign of this presentation the parents offered an animal sacrifice. Now, while in the case of every other first-born boy this offering was symbolic, in the case of Jesus it became real: the Father accepted the offering and this acceptance was fulfilled in Christ’s death on the Cross. This is why old Simeon prophesied that Jesus will be “contradicted”, his words will be opposed, he’ll fight against resistance, and, at the same time, he predicted that Mary’s heart will be pierced by a sword. Jesus’ whole education, his whole hidden life and public ministry were preparation for his death on the Cross, for a suffering of which Mary will also have a share.  

The other day I heard this saying on the radio: “We don’t know what the future holds but we know Who holds the future.” We don’t know what the year 2003 will bring but we know that whatever it will bring, will come from God’s loving hands and so, even the minor or major crosses and sufferings serve His purpose, they will be a share in Christ’s suffering. Let’s be generous and ready to accept these tests and trials, because we know that for those who love God everything serves for their good, even sufferings; one day we’ll discover that our crosses were blessings in disguise. Just remember the vision of Emperor Constantine: on the eve of his decisive battle, he saw the Cross on the sky with these words under it: “In hoc signo vinces,” “In this sign you’ll be victorious.” The Cross is our sign of triumph not because it defeated Christ but because by it Christ defeated death and sin and all the evil powers. 

This is our message for today: Let’s follow the Holy Family by acquiring the same spirit that lived in them, the spirit of obedience, the spirit of spiritual poverty, and the spirit of the readiness to accept our crosses. 

Amen.