Feast of the Holy Family

I have to confess that today’s gospel is one of my favorites. It’s a text that’s full of high drama and family business, and more than many of the gospels stories, a scene we have experienced in one way or another. Maybe because it’s about a ‘tween, a kid who is almost an adult but not quite. We’ve been there, done that: tried new things, moved out of our family circle, tested ourselves against the big world of Jerusalem rather than the enclosed microcosm of Nazareth. Maybe it’s also because in one way or another, most of us have been through Mary and Joseph’s experience recounted here:  the anxiety of loss, the relief of finding, the thankless work of nurturing, and the hard, hard business of letting go. 

What today’s gospel reminds us is that even the son of God got scolded by his mother, that Joseph grounded him and probably took the keys to the donkey away for a month, and that, even as Jesus was finding himself, exploring for the first time his mission of teaching, he was, and remained a member of a very human family. He went back to Nazareth, worked hard. He advanced in age and wisdom. The pious legends tell us he held his foster father as Joseph breathed his last, and gave him back to God. He cared for his aging mother, until the hour of his calling came, when he discovered that he had other brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers he had to care for, to teach, to console.

       Mary, we are told, kept all these things in her heart, as mothers always do: the joy, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the loss, the hope she had for her son. She is the Eternal Mother, as surely as God is the Eternal Father: she was faithful to her son then, even in the hour of his death, a death she surely did not understand. She sat with the apostles at Pentecost as a new family of Grace was formed by the gift of the holy spirit. And there and then, she became the mother of the Church.

       As we celebrate this feast of the Holy Family today in this Jubilee Year of Mercy, let’s take a moment to look on our own families through the merciful eyes of God and of Our Virgin Mother.

Let’s look to our ancestors, our parents and grandparents with the eyes of mercy, and forgive them for not being, for not having been perfect. As you know, no parent gets a comprehensive instruction manual, and sometimes they got it wrong. Yet a lot of the time, they got it very right. Let’s try to care for them in their aging, respect them in their diminishment, and show them the tender care they once showed us. If they have already gone to God, let’s be grateful for them, as best we can.

Let’s look to spouses and partners, to our children and grandchildren, and to our friends, with the same eyes of Mercy, and let’s forgive them for not being perfect. We want them to be perfect images and likenesses of ourselves; they can’t be. They shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t change the fact that we want them to be. Like young Jesus, they will sometimes stray as they seek their own path, but seek their own path they must. We can provide them with maps of journeys we’ve made, but we cannot make the journey for them.

Finally, let’s forgive ourselves for not being perfect. I have not been a perfect son or brother; you have not been a perfect parent or partner. Most of the time, all we can do is to do the best we can:  we search for one another in the caravan, we rejoice in finding one another even when we do not fully understand why or wherefore; we try to forgive, and allow ourselves to be forgiven.

After all, that’s what it means to be part of a family.

Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.