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, 2 February 2014– Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

Readings of the day: Malachi 3:1-4; Psalm 24:7, 8, 9, 10; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40

Who among us has ever been to an important meeting? Such a meeting could have been through work, or with family, or some other social encounter.

Today, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, we have been invited to attend a very important meeting. Every time we come to Mass, we come to meet the Lord in the context of the celebration of the Eucharist. And who here can think of many times outside of the Mass when we have met the Lord, perhaps in prayer or through being with someone we know who stands out to us as holy and Christ-like?

On this Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, we remember and give thanks for the times we meet the Lord in the Eucharist and also in one another; especially the times when our meetings with the Lord have been through unexpected people or events. Let us remember also the meetings that have been upsetting, challenging, or even contentious. Many of us have been through these kinds of meetings!

We remember and give thanks for the Presentation of the Lord Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem; a meeting with the Lord that, although it happened almost two thousand years ago, may not be as distant as we think from our own experience.

In Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions, the Presentation of Jesus of which we hear in today’s Gospel reading from Luke is often simply called “the meeting.” Who are the main invitees to this meeting that occurred forty days after Jesus’ birth?

We hear of Mary and Joseph, of Simeon and Anna, and of the infant Jesus at “the meeting” in the Temple. Since the earliest centuries of the Christian Church, some of you may know, Mary has been called “God bearer” for having carried God’s Son in her womb. Even fewer of us may know, and I learned within this past week, that Simeon is called “God receiver” in many of these same Eastern Christian traditions because Jesus was presented to and blessed by him in the Temple.

When we think of bearers, or carriers, and receivers (especially those who are football fans) we might think of another significant meeting; the great celebration of sport happening this weekend: the Super Bowl. You have my blessing and my prayers for a safe, fun celebration tomorrow/tonight should you be about to partake in… this much less important celebration than the Mass, of course… Go Broncos!

More significantly, though, let us return to the first meeting between “God bearer,” Mary, and “God receiver,” Simeon. Mary, along with Joseph, arrives for the meeting to present Jesus in the Temple. Mary and Joseph also present “two turtledoves or… young pigeons.” Although, as Luke says, this would have been an acceptable offering under the Law of Moses for a poor family upon presenting their newborn child, it would have been an unexpectedly simple offering for a couple presenting, say the Son of God. Wealthier families would usually offer a lamb at the presentation of a child.

Imagine this as though someone wealthy were to arrive at a formal business meeting unkempt and in shabby clothes. This might be expected attire for a poor person. And yet this is how Mary and Joseph have, to this point, shown up for important meetings of which we hear in our Gospels: First in a stable in Bethlehem, when they met the Magi at the Epiphany, and now at the Temple of Jerusalem with Simeon and Anna. Many people, not realizing that they were in the presence of God in the flesh, would probably have dismissed Mary, Joseph, and Jesus as just another poor family.

Fortunately, Mary the “God bearer,” Joseph, and Jesus meet Simeon the “God receiver,” an old man disarming in his simplicity, and Anna. How many would have recognized Simeon, a man whom Luke says was “righteous and devout”; a man in whom “the Holy Spirit” dwelt, as any more than a poor, elderly man? How many would recognize Anna as a “prophetess”; as more than an elderly woman who spent her time in the Temple? How many Simeons and Annas; Marys and Josephs do we recognize among us today?

How are we also called to be “God bearers” and “God receivers”; devout and yet humble; recognizing holy events and people who bring the presence of God into our midst?

The “God bearer” meets the “God receiver,” and then something even more remarkable happens: Simeon recognizes that this child Jesus is God in human flesh. He has the once-in-a lifetime chance to meet his God; our God; to cradle the Savior of the world in his arms!

To be sure, the beauty of this moment does not overcome the unsettling turn that this meeting in the Temple then takes. This child is to bring contradiction. Jesus will bring “the fall and rise of many in Israel,” Simeon prophesies. His greatest disciple, Mary, will suffer most deeply as her Son is rejected; mocked; humiliated; put to death on a cross!

And yet how many of us have ever avoided confrontation? How many of us have resisted doing or saying what is most true or most just, for fear of being “a sign of contradiction” as our Lord was; for fear of standing up for our faith; for fear of ridicule? I am not saying that we should be counter-cultural and divisive for the sake of being counter-cultural and divisive. There is much to celebrate in our culture, for example Americans’ industriousness and generosity that is admired here and abroad, which partisan squabbling too often prevents from shining forth.

Mary, importantly, does not avoid the confrontation and contradiction that her Son will cause, nor does she go looking for it. She does not storm out of this meeting upset, as I wonder if she were tempted to do, but she remains and ponders Simeon’s words. Years later, she will be there at the foot of the cross, “God bearer” to the end: “And you yourself a sword shall pierce.”

For now, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus will go back to everyday life in Nazareth as the child grows. Simeon sends the Holy Family and himself on their way with a prayer that I would recommend for any meeting. Indeed, since the ordained and religious and many laypeople pray Simeon’s prayer at night before going to sleep, I would recommend this for all Christians as a prayer to end our day.

Last week, my father asked me if I knew of a suitable prayer for an upcoming meeting in the parish where I grew up near Edmonton, Canada. Dad is a captain of ushers in our parish and prayer leader for his next meeting. I did not immediately think of this when Dad asked me for a prayer for his meeting. But imagine this prayer at a parish meeting; and even more if it were prayed every day, as we recognize that every day and at all times we are “God bearers” after Mary and “God receivers” after Simeon.

And so let us make Simeon’s last prayer our own, as we recognize that every day for us is a meeting; an invitation to encounter our God:

Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.