Homily for Sunday, 31 December 2017– The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Readings of the day: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:22-40

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

My sisters and brothers in Christ, we have just heard from Luke’s Gospel that, after the baby Jesus was presented to and blessed by Simeon and Anna in the Temple of Jerusalem, and then Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the Holy Family, had returned to their hometown of Nazareth, “the child [Jesus] became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.”

What, then, is wisdom, and what, or who is the source of wisdom? If you are thinking that, of course, God is the ultimate source of wisdom, you have the right answer to the question. You pass the pop quiz with flying colours! But, if God is the ultimate source of wisdom, then how, when, and where did Jesus receive this wisdom of God, and how might we receive this same wisdom, strength, and “favour of God” that Jesus once did?

Mary and Joseph, Luke says, took the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem “to present him to the Lord.” When they had done this because it was “required by the law of the Lord,” they returned to their home in Nazareth. There, in the temple and in the home or, we might say as Christians today, the Church and the home, are the “favoured” places where God gives us his wisdom that strengthens us. Would the Church not seem a more obvious place where we receive God’s wisdom, strength, and favour? Yet the home is also an extension of the Church as a favoured place to encounter God’s wisdom, strength, and favour. We may have heard the term, referring to the home, the “domestic Church.” Also, if we are attentive to God’s presence in our world and our lives, we encounter God’s wisdom, strength, and favour everywhere around and within us. We are able to recognize God in God’s creation: God’s earth, God’s universe and everything and everybody in it that God has made and makes holy. But the first places; the favoured places of God’s strengthening wisdom are the Church and the home.

Having said this, I would like to share a story that begins not in a Church or at home, but in an airport. This is not only because I have been traveling, as many of us may do during the Christmas season, to be here with family. No, eight years ago, in an airport, I held my then four-day-old niece, Molly Janice Perrin, for the first time. Four days earlier, Molly was born as I was taking my first vows with my religious order, the Basilians, in Windsor, Ontario. And so, in good Biblical tradition (think perhaps of the three wise men), I arrived a few days late, but with good reason, to greet a newborn child. I think of the scene in the airport that day as a kind of presentation. Of course, I, my brother and Molly’s Uncle Eric, and my mom and dad, then-first-time grandparents, were not arriving to hold the baby Jesus, although I would say Molly is a pretty holy child. And she is, after all, named after the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of few people besides Jesus whom Luke’s Gospel explicitly calls “favoured” by God.

From this moment of Molly’s “presentation,” not in a temple or church but in an airport, one of my constant prayers for her has been that, like Luke’s Gospel says to us about Jesus, she would grow in strength and wisdom, and that “the favour of God” would be upon her. My sisters and brothers, some eight years, four months, sixteen days, and many fond prayers later, Molly is here among us, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, to celebrate her first holy communion. She is here to celebrate with her parents, my sister Deanna and brother-in-law Tyler. She is here with her brother, my nephew Liam. She is here with many members (and generations) of her extended family and still more people who are here in spirit. Molly, you join with all of us, the Church, in this celebration of your presentation before and welcome to the Table of the Lord. We, your family and the Church, try and promise to keep trying to be the example to you of Christian faith in Jesus; of kindness; of love, just as the members of the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, were for one another.

In this family celebration; this Church celebration, you will move up to the only “big kids’ table” that really matters: The Table of the Eucharist. I think my prayers and the prayers of many other people have been and are being answered: You, Molly, continue to grow in wisdom and strength— no doubt with a healthy side of sass— and clearly “the favour of God is upon” you!

If we think about it this way, in a family; in a home, where is an especially privileged place where members of the family, of the household, can gather together and grow in wisdom and strength? This place is the table. Yet with the often busy, active schedules today’s families lead, it can become difficult for many of us to share in a regular meal together. Still, it has been shown that the strongest and most united households and families are those who do share this regular meal time together. This same difficulty is connected to the difficulty many of us experience and the sacrifice it is to gather here before the Lord’s Table, the Table of the Eucharist. And so please let me offer this word of encouragement and thanksgiving to all of us who have gathered together in this celebration of the Eucharist, at the invitation of our Lord Jesus to gather at his Table.

We are gathered here, in this privileged place where we become filled with wisdom and strength, just as our Lord himself was in the home of Mary and Joseph. As we go forth from this celebration today, we might think of one person, one family, who is busy; who is struggling for any of a variety of reasons; who needs the same gentle encouragement we find here to gather together at the Lord’s Table. We might think of one person; one family in need of a little extra encouragement to grow in wisdom and strength in the peace of the home together; to share a regular meal together. Pray for this person, this one family, today and every day.

May we pray for those families and households who have trouble making ends meet; who struggle to fill their table with enough food to sustain themselves. Pray for those people, families and households who are new to our country, its culture, and its customs; those who may be working multiple jobs to provide the necessities for a stable home, a place to build up wisdom and strength, peace and unity.

Building up wisdom and strength, peace and unity, faithful and holy families after the example of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph begins at table. It begins in a special way at this, our Table of the Eucharist. At table, in our Church as in our homes, we have a privileged place to learn and put into practice the virtues of our faith of which St. Paul speaks to us today in his letter to the Colossians: “Compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience,” forgiveness, prayerful praise to God.

In our homes and in our Church, children learn and put into practice the wisdom of the fourth commandment: “Honour your father and your mother.” We hear a beautiful reflection and extension on this commandment this morning from a book of the Old Testament called, in longer form, the Wisdom of Sirach. Faithfulness to the commandment to honour father and mother, Sirach says, will ensure that children will one day “have joy in their own children,” that their prayers “will be heard,” and that their sins will be forgiven.

Here before us we, like Sirach, like St. Paul, and like the elderly Simeon in our Gospel, our “eyes have seen God’s salvation… prepared in the sight of all peoples.” We will go forth from this Eucharistic celebration, this celebration of peace and communion, to return to our homes as Mary and Joseph returned with Jesus from the Temple of Jerusalem to their home in Nazareth.

May our Eucharist remain for us always our particular source of joy and of faithfulness; of “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience,” forgiveness, and prayerful praise to God. And may we, like the child Jesus in his home in Nazareth, in our homes and in our Church, be “filled with wisdom” and strength, and may “the favour of God be” upon us.