The Solemnity of
the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph
27 December 2015
The Cathedral
Basilica of Our Lady of Peace
Honolulu, Hawaii
Dear
brothers and sisters,
As
we collected our prayers together at the beginning of this Holy Mass and
presented them to God, we asked for the grace to “imitate” the Holy Family of
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph “in practicing the virtues of family life and in the
bonds of charity.” But if we are to imitate them, we have to understand what we
call them; we have to know what it means to be holy.
To
be holy is to be set apart from everyday items, to be dedicated for the service
of God. This altar, for example, is holy because it has been consecrated for
the exclusive service of God and is not used as we might use any other table. In
this sense, each of us was made holy - each of us was set apart for the service
of God - when we were baptized into the Death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus.
It was at this moment that we became “the children of God” (I John 3:1). This
initial holiness, though, must be fostered, strengthened, and deepened by
keeping the commandments and remaining in him (cf. I John 3:24).
We
often speak of the saints – the holy ones – as the blessed. So it is that when
the Church uses the word “holy,” she sometimes has another meaning in mind, a
secondary meaning, which we see expressed in the Psalm we sang a few moments
ago. For this reason, we sang to God with the Psalmist, “Blessed are those who
dwell in your house, O Lord,” and “Happy are they who dwell in your house”
(Psalm 84:5). How can the same verse begin in two different ways? The Latin
word beatus contains both meanings,
because those who are blessed are also happy. We might then say that the Holy
Family is the Happy Family.
We
see this by looking at each of the members of the Holy Family. Certainly Mary
knew herself to have been set apart for the service of God and she set herself
apart when she said to the Archangel Gabriel, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the
Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Joseph, too, set
himself apart for the service of God when, as the angel of the Lord told him,
he took Mary into his home and raised Jesus as his son (cf. Matthew 1:24).
Jesus, too, of course, knew himself to be set apart for the service of God and
for this reason he remained behind in the Temple in Jerusalem (cf. Luke 2:43).
The Holy Family was blessed because they sought their happiness in God.
If
we take a moment to think deeply, each of us will recognize a yearning for
happiness present within our hearts, a yearning that motivates, in one way or
another, everything we do. We go in so many different directions looking for
happiness and we spend great amounts of time, energy, and even money trying to
find it, yet we continually fail. Why? It is, I daresay, because we keep
looking for happiness within ourselves, within our own desires. This is very
foolish, because we are not always very good about knowing our own desires.
Each
of us has, at one point or another, called a group of friends and said, “Hey,
let’s go do this; it’ll be great!” We get together, done whatever it is we
thought would be a fun time, only to find it incredibly boring.
Each
of us has surely become bored on a Saturday afternoon. What do we do when this
happens? Because we get hungry when we are bored, we go into the kitchen. We
open the refrigerator, peer around inside, pushing things from one side to the
other, and, finding nothing to eat, we close the door and search the cabinets.
Still finding nothing to eat, we return to the refrigerator in the hopes that
something will have magically appeared (we’ve all done it). The problem, of
course, is not that there is really no food in the house, but that though we
know we are hungry, we do not know what we are hungry for. If we so often do
not know what will bring us happiness in so mundane and ordinary a situation,
we how can we possibly hope to find a lasting happiness on our own?
If
we think about this more deeply yet, we will recognize that our desire for
happiness, the fact that we go about looking for it, means that something
within us is missing, that we lack something. We keep looking for happiness in
the things of this world, in the things that pass away and fade; so it is that
the happiness we find passes away and fades. However, we do not want a fading
happiness; we want a happiness that never diminishes. Such a happiness can only
be found in him who is eternal; it can only be found in God. This is why the
Psalmist sings, “My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the Lord. My heart
and my flesh cry out for the living God” (Psalm 84:3).
The
family, then, must be a School of Happiness and, therefore, also a School of
Holiness. Contrary to our usual way of thinking, holiness is not something
beyond our grasp or something reserved for a few. No, holiness – true and
lasting happiness – is possible for each one of us and our families are meant
to help us find the way, but how can they do so?
A
few years ago, Benedict XVI gave us three simple steps to holiness, what he
called three essential aspects of holiness. The first essential, he said, “means
never leaving a Sunday without an encounter with the Risen Christ in the
Eucharist; this is not an additional burden but is light for the whole week.”
Too often we think of Sunday as the last day of the weekend, rather than – as
it is for Christians – the first day of the week that prepares us for the week
ahead.
The
second essential is “never beginning and never ending a day without at least a
brief contact with God.” We cannot hope to “remain in him” if we do not follow
his will for us and we cannot know his will for us without speaking with him
each day and – more importantly – listening to him each day.
The
third essential “means following the ‘signposts’ that God has communicated to
us in the Ten Commandments, interpreted with Christ, which are merely the
explanation of what love is in specific situations.”[1] Jesus, if you will,
expands the Ten Commandments broadening and fulfilling their meaning so that by
keeping them we more perfectly imitate him.
If
we go to Mass every Sunday and holyday, if we begin and end every day in
prayer, and if we make every decision based on the Ten Commandments, and help
each other to do so, we will indeed have holy and happy families. Holiness
really is this simple, but that does not mean it is easy. God gives us our
families so that we might help each other in the hard journey toward holiness so
that together we might make the pilgrimage from our family home to the House of
the Father.
In
these remaining days of Christmas, let us look to the example of the Holy
Family. Let us strive to set ourselves apart for the service of God and let us
strive to help each other find the satisfaction of every desire of our hearts
in the Father’s house. Amen.
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