Gospel Reflection for December 27, 2020 – Holy Family
The three verses of Sunday’s gospel in its short form tell us that the holy family — Joseph, Mary, and their child, Jesus — belonged to a people. They are not an isolated, nomadic unit or just a nuclear family but part of a larger religious community that keeps the law of Moses, centers its life in the Jerusalem temple, and practices long-held religious customs. They are Jews. Jesus is an oldest child in a Jewish family.
In Sunday’s gospel Joseph and Mary fulfill the ancient custom of presenting an oldest child to God, a custom reaching back to Israel’s beginnings as a people. The law of the covenant that makes them the people of God binds them to remember how God spared their firstborn on the night the angel of death killed every firstborn Egyptian and caused Pharaoh to free his Hebrew slaves.
Actually Luke runs two religious practices together in these verses — the presentation of every firstborn son to God, which Exodus 13.1 prescribes, and the purification of the mother after childbirth. Leviticus 12.1 considers a woman unclean for seven days before a boy’s circumcision and for thirty-three days afterward. To be unclean means one cannot come in contact with the holy, so Mary during this time could not go into the temple holy places. At the end of 40 days, the new mother brings an offering to the temple. The offering purifies her, so that she can again join in worship. The offering of the poor is two pigeons.
To present Jesus to God and purify Mary, the holy family makes a trip from Nazareth to the Jerusalem temple. Their religious practice centers in one place. Journeys to the temple for occasions like this and for the great festivals undoubtedly created a sense of belonging to the people of God.
- What rituals or customs have you observed in raising your children, for example, having them baptized? What do these practices express about your religious, social, or family identity?
- In what place does your religious practice center? What sense of belonging do you get from this center?
Catholics name churches and schools after the holy family. The adjective holy can distance this family from our own. Most art shows Mary as an idealized, dignified, older woman, not the young teenager who became pregnant before she and Joseph were married. Luke tells us Mary and Joseph can find no place but a stable for her to have her child. The holy family is a struggling family.
Sunday’s gospel ends with a one-verse summary of the holy family’s next ten years. Jesus grew in wisdom and God’s favor. Most of us fill our scrapbooks with photos that mark children’s accomplishments during these growing years — first steps, playing with the dog, birthdays, Christmas presents, first bike ride, kindergarten graduation, first day of school.
Luke’s minimal account of these years invites us to use our experience of raising children to imagine the daily life of the holy family. We believe Jesus is truly human and truly divine, so we can imagine Mary nursing Jesus, noticing that he has her hair, teaching him to walk and talk, and later to read. We can imagine Joseph telling the stories of the Old Testament. We can imagine Mary teaching Jesus his prayers.
- What makes a family holy today?
- What helps children grow in wisdom and a sense of God’s love?
Sunday’s gospel tells us that Mary and Joseph practice their religion and that Jesus grew in wisdom and grace within the family circle of their love. This Holy Family offers us no ready-made pattern for how to be a family today. They lived in an era and culture scholars have studied intensively but which we cannot fully reconstruct.
Sunday’s second reading gives us a picture of family life among Christians in the Greek city of Colossae. It, too, offers us no ready-made pattern. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul directs wives to be submissive to their husbands as their Christian duty. Preachers today may sweeten this submission by explaining that Paul also directs husbands to love their wives. However, from the early decades of Christianity, baptism has made one and equal in Christ both Gentiles and Jews, slaves and free, women and men. Today we expect love of both partners in a marriage, not submission from one and love from the other.
To shelter one another in our world challenges family creativity and calls us to identify what we value for our families. Families must invent ways to find time in seemingly irreconcilable schedules and make choices. Some turn off TV or keep cellphones captive during school work hours. Some play games. The virus has sheltered families together; some have rediscovered how much they enjoy each other.
Many families migrate outdoors to counter the time working parents spend indoors. Going to the beach, walking around the block, gardening, biking, looking for birds or butterflies, fishing, shooting a few hoops — these restorative activities also provide time for family members to talk and enjoy each other.
“The triune God is a communion of love, and the family its living reflection,” writes Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia, On Love in the Family (#11).
- What are some of your family’s creative solutions to finding time together?
- What does your family value?
- What do you want for your children?