Homily for Sunday, 31 December 2023– Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Year B

Readings of the day: Genesis 15:1-6, 21:1-3; Psalm 105:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19; Luke 2:22-40

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Yet our readings today invite us to a broader understanding of three related realities: Family, holiness, and blessing. The word of God invites us to see the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as the culmination in human history of family, holiness, and blessing.

For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the faithful of the three great Abrahamic religions, that history begins with Abraham. It is difficult, I think, for us not to feel badly for Abraham at the beginning of the reading we hear this evening from the Book of Genesis. God promises Abraham a son with Sarah, an ancestor to many nations, several times within a few chapters of Genesis. By the time Genesis introduces us to Abram, he is seventy-five years old. He is one hundred years old when Sarah gives birth to Isaac. So Abraham has had to wait a long time for God’s promise of descendants to become reality. Abram begins to feel like God has abandoned him and Sarai. His slave “Eliezer of Damascus” is, so far, his only heir. At this point, Abram has no family, no descendants of his own blood. “Maybe,” Abram could have thought, “I or Sarai have done something wrong. Maybe we have been less than steadfast in holiness.” God certainly seems, so far, to be denying Abram and Sarai the blessing of a child, of descendants.

So, what does God do with Abram? God does not ask Abram to look upon Sarai with love and imagine her expecting a child with him. And Genesis is clear that Abram has been nothing but faithful and patient with God. Abram’s faith and trust in God’s promise of descendants is “reckoned… to him as righteousness.” God does not ask of Abram any greater sign of his faith toward God. So, why does God continue to delay (or deny) Abram the only blessing he really longs for, a child, a family, descendants to populate all nations?

God asks only one thing of Abraham in the reading from Genesis we have just heard: Go outside; “look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them… So shall your descendants be.”

So, what does this encounter between God and Abram—God’s renewed promise (again) to Abraham of a great number of descendants—say to us about family, holiness, blessing? Sisters and brothers, family, holiness, and blessing are not things to be counted in the biblical imagination. In the Bible—the epics of Abraham and Sarah, of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and all the people and generations in between them—family is not limited to blood relationships. Holiness and blessing, too, are from God. So these are uncountable, infinite gifts to us of God’s grace.

God asks of us that we live according to the holiness and blessing that has been ours since the first moments of our creation. God saw that we were—humanity was—“very good”; God had created us in God’s image and likeness, blessed us, and given to us the care of everything God had created.

For Abraham and Sarah, to live according to this original state of holiness and blessing meant to trust in God’s promise of descendants, a family of nations in faith. It meant to go outside and look up with awe into the limitlessness, uncountable as the stars are uncountable, of God’s blessing to them and all people, all creation for all time. For this, Sarah’s and Abraham’s trust in God, Genesis says today twice, God blesses Sarah, places her and Abraham at the head of God’s historical family in faith.

For the people who hear the Letter to the Hebrews—for us today, hearing this proclamation anew—to live in good faith according to our original state of holiness and blessing is to recognize in God’s faithfulness to his promise to Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob the prefigurement of God’s restoration of us to that original state of holiness and blessing in and through Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ we have the human manifestation of “God [who] is able even to raise someone from the dead.” God has raised Jesus from the dead, giving us a share in the blessing of eternal life.

For the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Luke’s Gospel today, to live according to our original state of holiness and blessing is not so much to look up in awe at the limitlessness of the stars as Abram did, but to look and travel toward the temple of Jerusalem. In the time of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the temple was the centre of the Jewish faith, the dwelling place of God on earth, centred on the Holy of Holies.

Mary and Joseph set out, obedient to God’s call and their faith, to present Jesus in the temple. There is some ambiguity here: The Holy of Holies of the temple is the Holy Family’s destination, the dwelling place of God on earth. Yet Mary and Joseph hold God in human flesh, the infant Jesus, in their arms as they set out on their pilgrimage to the temple. Once the Holy Family arrives at the temple, the Holy of Holies, the baby Jesus, meets the Holy of Holies. But then the focus of this encounter of the Holies becomes the arms of the “righteous and devout” Simeon.

At that point, Simeon has nothing more on earth to live for. God’s Holy Spirit had “revealed to him… that he would not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord.” God’s promise, God’s blessing to the holy Simeon has been fulfilled. So Simeon is able to praise God, Luke’s Gospel says, with one of the most beautiful prayers in all of Scripture. For those of us who pray the Breviary or Liturgy of the Hours, at Night Prayer (Compline) the Church still prays Simeon’s prayer: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

This moment of prayer is a moment of encounter: Blessing, holiness, family all meet in this moment. Now, Simeon may depart this life for eternal life in heaven. He who has looked upon the presence of God, who has held God in the Christ Child in his arms, is an heir to God’s promise to Abraham, who looked up at the limitlessness of God’s promise, God’s holiness, God’s blessing of family: “Look toward heaven and count the stars… So shall your descendants be.”

There is only one thing on earth left for Simeon to do as he returns the baby Jesus to Mary and Joseph: Simeon blesses the Holy Family as he sends them on their way back to Nazareth, their hometown. It is a strange sort of blessing, I imagine unnerving if we had been Mary or Joseph in that situation. “This child,” Simeon says, “is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

What is Simeon talking about? And how are his words to Mary there a blessing? Simeon’s words are a blessing, but with a dose of reality. God has given us every blessing possible under heaven. God has created us with holiness, in God’s own image and likeness. And God has given us the gift of a Saviour, who has restored us to the dignity of being called members of God’s holy family, the People of God.

Yet our mission is to accept these gifts from God. Our mission is to hand on these gifts to still other people, so that all people for all time become heirs to God’s blessing, God’s holiness; all become members of God’s family of peoples and nations. The Christ Child, the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph stand as “a sign that will be [and to this day continue to be] opposed” by many who want to exclude from God’s blessing, God’s people on the grounds that these are somehow not “worthy” of God’s grace, God’s blessing, being called God’s people: The poor, refugees and migrants, people whose relationships are irregular by Church law, and so on. This is the cruel reality present in our world. Yet the encounter between Simeon and Anna and the Holy Family in the temple, prefigured by the encounter of Abraham and Sarah with God, shows us that God’s grace, God’s blessing, God’s holiness, God’s call to us to be universal family of God’s chosen people, will not be so easily limited.

The leaders of Jesus’ own people, of his own time, would try to limit God’s grace, God’s blessing by crucifying the Lord of all grace and all blessing: “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” But life, grace, blessing overcame even that violent attempt to limit it, to limit God. So God continues to call us forth, now from this place of encounter with God to be heralds of God’s blessing, God’s holiness with which we have been created and that is our original state of being, in God’s image and likeness. In the name of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, God invites us to bless the world, to exclude nobody from God’s blessing, so that we become ever more perfectly and universally the holy family of the People of God.

Homily for Sunday, 27 December 2020– Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Readings of the day: Genesis 15:1-6, 21:1-3; Psalm 105:1-2, 3-4, 5-6; Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19; Luke 2:22-40

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

If we were to take a little survey, what would we say is the most important part of the Mass? Would most of us say that the most important element of the Mass is the words of institution or consecration pronounced by the priest over the bread and wine, such that they become the body and blood of Jesus Christ: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body… Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood”? We could not go wrong by presuming that these words of institution are the most important part of the Mass, right? After all, they are Jesus’ own words from the Last Supper before he died for us. And the Church considers these words the sacramental form of the Eucharist, the essential words for the validity of this entire celebration.

Then again, our Eastern Rite Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters, I think, tend to become nervous when we speak of the most important part of Eucharistic liturgy. They tend, more than we Roman Catholics do, to emphasize the unity of the entire celebration. I think the unity of the Eucharistic celebration is good to keep in mind. Then again, I remember when now-Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto was Archbishop of Edmonton, used to call to mind the importance of still another part of the Mass, the dismissal: “Go, the Mass is ended.”

If we know our Mass especially well, we know that the Latin of this last line spoken by the priest (or deacon, if one is present) at Mass is Ite, missa est. This literally translates into English as, “Go, it (meaning the assembly) is dismissed.” Our word for the whole celebration, Mass, comes from the Latin missa here. Archbishop Collins would often paraphrase this dismissal rather humorously in his preaching, as in something like, “Get out of here; we have work to do.”

Now, I do not want us to get up and leave this celebration just yet; we have the entire Liturgy of the Eucharist still to go. But why, then, this emphasis on the very end of Mass; on the dismissal: “Go, the Mass is ended”; “Go in peace”?... Our readings today focus on dismissals; on people being sent forth from beautiful events, beautiful graced encounters with God, to accomplish some important and holy work, or simply to prepare, as the righteous Simeon did in our Gospel today, for the end of his life and beginning of eternal life in heaven.

Simeon’s prayer in Luke’s Gospel after receiving the infant Jesus in his arms and the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in his presence in the Temple of Jerusalem is one of the three great prayers or canticles (songs) of the Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Divine Office. These canticles are all drawn from Luke’s account of the infancies of John the Baptist and Jesus. The Liturgy of the Hours is an ancient tradition that began in monasteries, by which monks would mark the passage of each day by praying at particular times of day or “hours” in community. Religious orders, including mine, diocesan clergy, and even many laypeople continue this tradition today.

At Morning Prayer, or Lauds, we pray the prayer of Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, when John is born. This prayer begins with, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,” so is known as the Benedictus (“Blessed be”). At Evening Prayer, or Vespers, we pray the hymn of Mary from her visit with Elizabeth, the Magnificat, named for this prayer’s first word in Latin, Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord”… And the last “hour” of the Liturgy of the Hours each day is Compline, or Night Prayer. During Compline we pray those words of Simeon from today’s Gospel: “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples; a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” Because the Latin of this prayer begins with Nunc dimittis (“Now you dismiss”), this prayer is often called the Nunc dimittis.

This prayer is about a dismissal, an Ite, missa est moment. But Simeon is not the only person in our readings today to be “dismissed”; to be asked at some point to set out somewhere. At the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, we hear that Mary and Joseph are “dismissed”—they set out at God’s command and that of their Jewish faith—to Jerusalem, to dedicate their newborn Son, Jesus, “to the Lord.” This dismissal, if we will, is the focus of our celebration today of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. This holiest of families is the model for our families, our households, to become holy families; holy households ourselves.

Our holiness as individuals; as families; as households depends on our faithfulness to God when we recognize that God is calling us to set out: “Get out of here; we have work to do,” as Cardinal Collins would say. From the beginning, Mary, Joseph and Jesus are faithful to God in the big and small “dismissals”: To go from Nazareth to Bethlehem to register for a Roman census and to give birth to the Son of God in a humble stable or cave; to go to Jerusalem to dedicate the Child Jesus to the Lord according to the Law of Moses. And, if we listen attentively to our Gospel today, at the end of it, we hear of another “dismissal” moment related to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: “When Mary and Joseph had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favour of God was upon him.”

During their time in the Temple of Jerusalem, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus experience other “dismissal” moments: Simeon follows his Nunc dimittis prayer with a prophecy to Mary, a disconcerting one about how Jesus will ultimately be dismissed from this world, as “a sign that will be opposed.” And Simeon adds, to Mary, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.” This, sisters and brothers, is a foreshadowing of the Cross, the Holy Family’s ultimate act of fidelity to God’s mission for them and for our whole world. The Cross is God’s ultimate Ite, missa est or Nunc dimittis moment. Jesus would have to suffer a horrific death, be “dismissed” in such a way from this world, but in a way he chose faithfully and freely, in order to save us.

Of course, Luke the Gospel writer fairly deliberately connects this event of the Dedication of Jesus in the Temple, with its “dismissal” moments, to the great “dismissal” moments that mark our entire history as a People of God, all the way back to the first moments of creation. Today, the Book of Genesis centers on Abraham and Sarah, whom God invited to “be dismissed”: To set out boldly and faithfully toward a new way of life, which would eventually bring them descendants numbering as the stars of heaven, beginning with Isaac. The Letter to the Hebrews today picks up on the dismissal-setting out of Abraham and Sarah theme. Hebrews says of Abraham and Sarah: They “set out, not knowing where [they were] going.”

When have we been called to set out, sisters and brothers, to be dismissed, into the unknown or even fearful, either as individuals or as families? I think this year of 2020 has given us a lot of practice with “dismissal” moments. It has been a difficult year, to say the least, with COVID-19, loss of health, loss of lives, loss of work for many of us, loss of the ability to gather to worship and receive communion in person… Yet still we gather to pray together here. Many of us gather as whole families, in front of a computer screen, to participate in Mass by Zoom, Sunday after Sunday, together as this St. Joseph’s College community.

Still this is a graced opportunity, an Ite, missa est moment to show our faithfulness as individuals; a College community; households; families. And this will continue after the formal Ite, missa est of this celebration. We will “go in peace” from here, because we have “work to do”: The intentional works of loving kindness, big and small, that make us, our households, and our families holy. We have already had much practice, and shown ourselves faithful to such work. May we be “dismissed” and so be blessed, to continue to act after the example of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, every moment of our lives.

Homily for Sunday, 29 December 2019– 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; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

This homily was given at St. Clare Church and St. Joseph’s College, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Did we miss something? Our Gospel reading today begins as “the wise men” have already left the place of the Lord’s Nativity in Bethlehem. At least I thought we did not celebrate the Epiphany, the “making known” of the Lord through these wise men to the world, until the first Sunday after the New Year. At this point in our Christmas season, we would not yet have the wise men at the Nativity Scene in our house. When I was a child, my sister, brother, and I would simulate the journey and belated arrival of the wise men to Bethlehem by inching the wise men figurines, day by day, a little closer to the Nativity scene at home until they finally arrived there on the Epiphany. By this point in the Christmas season, the magi would still have most of the living room to cover before arriving at the Nativity scene!

Yet today, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Matthew’s Gospel says that the wise men had already arrived and left. Maybe they simply decided to arrive early this year, right? Maybe they braved those Boxing Day sales on gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Well, not really. We will still celebrate the Epiphany, when we will hear of the arrival of the magi at Bethlehem from the same Gospel of Matthew. So what is going on here?

First, let us be clear that our Church’s celebration of Advent and Christmastime is not play-acting, and it does not follow an orderly timeline of historical events. If our Church’s celebrations this time of year do not follow a precise order of historical events, then what is their purpose? What was Matthew’s purpose in giving us the Gospel we hear today and, more importantly, what might it mean for us today?

This part of the infancy narrative, as it is called, of Matthew’s Gospel, from Matthew’s telling of how Jesus came to be born of Mary and Joseph, to the arrival and parting of the wise men, to the Holy Family’s flight to and return from Egypt to escape the massacre by Herod, is particular to Matthew in many ways. Compared to the other Gospels in our Bible, Matthew devotes much more detail especially to Joseph, husband of Mary. Even then, though, we know little about this Joseph of Nazareth from our Gospels; of the man Matthew first introduces to us as “a righteous man,” concerned not to put Mary in danger after she conceives Jesus “by the Holy Spirit” before she and Joseph live together. Joseph never speaks a word in Matthew’s or any of the other Gospels. But those three words of Matthew’s to describe Joseph, “a righteous man,” speak volumes about the saintliness of Joseph; about his care for his family—the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—about his care for us, the Church, and about how we might be called to model our lives after that of St. Joseph and the Holy Family.

Joseph may not speak a word in our Gospels, but he is a master communicator, especially with God but with us, too. Joseph communicates with God through an angel in three dreams in Matthew’s infancy narrative, the last two of them in today’s Gospel reading: First, when the angel says to Joseph not to fear and to take the pregnant Mary into his home as his wife; second, before the Holy Family’s escape to Egypt; and, third, when Joseph hears from the angel that Herod is dead and it is safe to return with Mary and Jesus from Egypt home to Israel.

In many ways Matthew’s presentation of Joseph of Nazareth parallels, deliberately or not on Matthew’s part, how another Joseph famous for dreaming and interpreting dreams is presented in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. God reveals his favour toward the Joseph of Genesis through dreams; God favours Joseph over his brothers in a way that angers Joseph’s brothers and leads them to leave Joseph in a cistern in Egypt to die. The Joseph of Genesis, of course, survives and goes on to be a prominent figure (and dream interpreter) in prison and then in Pharaoh’s court.

The parallels between Joseph of the Book of Genesis and Joseph of our Gospels are not perfect: The New Testament Joseph does not speak a word recorded in our Bible, whereas the Old Testament Joseph speaks plenty, interprets his dreams vocally, and would go on to have the story of his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (loosely) told in a famous Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera. Joseph of Nazareth is more of a humble behind-the-scenes dreamer, although he, like his Old Testament name counterpart, is a prophetic figure. Joseph of Nazareth plays a critical role in the fulfillment of “the law and the prophets” in Jesus Christ according to Matthew’s Gospel.

Joseph of Nazareth is a master communicator; an obedient communicator with God, not so much in the sense of blindly following what God’s angel tells him to do in his dreams as in the sense of attentive listening to what God reveals to him through these dreams. Joseph is, first and foremost, “a righteous man”; these are Matthew’s first words to describe Joseph.

Joseph of Nazareth is a model and a prophet from God to us; a master communicator to us in his faithfulness to and his care for Mary and Jesus. Joseph of Nazareth is a model and a prophet to us of solidarity with the most vulnerable among us. Without hesitation, Joseph the Righteous welcomes Mary into his home as his wife. Without hesitation, Joseph flees Herod’s tyranny, placing himself along with Mary and Jesus in solidarity with everybody through the ages who are unwelcome or subject to violence, even in their own homelands; people who continue to encounter not welcome but walls, literal and figurative, in the lands to which they flee desperately for safety; all people who, as Pope Francis reminded us on Christmas Day, continue to be subject to injustices that make them “cross seas and deserts that become cemeteries.”

Today, on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we remember and we celebrate St. Joseph of Nazareth, who never hesitates to place himself within our human realities, from the joyful to the tragic. The obedience, faithfulness, and attentiveness of Joseph of Nazareth to God shows us the immaculate purity of Mary, Mother of God; mother of the Church; our mother. This, in turn, shows us the way to God and to God’s Son, Jesus Christ; the way to our salvation.

The Holy Family of Jesus our Lord and Saviour, Mary our Mother, and the righteous dreamer, Joseph, exemplifies a truth expressed so beautifully nearer to our time, in the opening lines of Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the followers of Christ… United in Christ, [we] are led by the Holy Spirit in [our] journey to the Kingdom of [our] Father and [we welcome] the news of salvation that is meant for every person. That is why this community [the Church] realizes that it is truly linked with humankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.”

Our “joys and hopes,” and if I dare say dreams, were the “joys and hopes” of the Holy Family. They were central to the dreams of Joseph the Righteous of Nazareth, Joseph’s silent yet prophetic communication and intercession between God and us. They are the “joys and hopes”; the dreams of our Church, of one another, for one another here at a most essential level. These are “the joys and the hopes”; the most essential dream of God for us: That, through Jesus Christ, through the intercession of the Holy Family and all the saints, our journeys; our lives, our experiences from the joyful to the tragic, will lead us home to God himself, to eternal life.

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.