Scripture Reflection, December 27, 2009: The Feast of the Holy Family

Scripture Readings:
Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 or 1Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28
Psalm 128 or 84
Colossians 3:12-21 or 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24
Luke 2:41-52

There’s no place like home for the holidays.
I never really knew the meaning of those words until I was on my flight from Chicago home to Pittsburgh last week. This was the first year I had lived away from home, and it didn’t really feel like Christmas until I was back in Pittsburgh with my family. I was so excited to see my parents, and yes, I admit, even my big brother. I had changed my flight to come home a few days earlier so I could attend his graduation ceremony for his Masters degree. The whole family was back together under one roof and happy as could be. My family is one of those beautiful rare gems where we all love and support one another unconditionally - I am forever grateful for their guidance in my life. But we also know just how to push one another’s buttons. Within 3 days, my mom was already telling me to go back to Chicago and stay there. Family is hard, take it from Jesus.

In the gospel, we find the Holy Family traveling home from celebrating Passover in Jerusalem. Jesus, a “tween” at the time, gets left behind and Mary and Joseph don’t realize for over a day! Perhaps there was some miscommunication? When they finally return to Jerusalem and find Jesus, they have some heated words with one another. I can just imagine what my own mother would say, “You had us worried sick! Then I finally find you and you give me a smart answer like that?! I should have left you here!” But I know that my mother, and Mary, would never leave her child behind; that the joy of finding her child safe and sound overshadows any anger. My mother’s joy of having me home overshadows any argument we could have that makes her wish I was still in Chicago. The point is that Mary was without sin, Joseph was a saint, and Jesus was God incarnate, and they still faced tense moments and miscommunication as a family. When Jesus became human, he embraced the human situation with all that it had to offer - even the beautiful yet challenging, life-giving yet frustrating phenomenon that is the family.

I have a friend who is just beginning her journey to become a Sister of the Holy Family of Nazareth. The website of their community describes their charism in the following way: “The Holy Family of Nazareth, three persons in communion with God and each other; obedient and faithful to the will of God, reveals to us the profound reality that God is present in the most simple and ordinary experiences of human life.” Yes, our families are a reflection of God’s presence in ordinary human life, especially in the messy give and take of mutual relationships as we live out our daily lives together. So when the readings today describe that fathers should honor their wives and children, mothers should honor their husbands and children, and children should honor their fathers and mothers, they are describing mutuality. The family does not become holy despite its challenges, but through them.

On this Feast of the Holy Family, let us pray for our own families, as many of us gather with family over the Christmas season, that we may grow in our mutual love for one another, through our arguments and frustrations.

Let us also pray for those who are separated from their families and whose families have caused them great pain, that they may find the loving support of the Holy Family in their brothers and sisters in the Church, as we are all children of God.

Darcy Hidek

Darcy is a graduate from Carlow University in Pittsburgh, PA with a major in Theology and Elementary Education. She is currently a graduate student at CTU, Chicago.