Schooler's Sagacity and Senility: Homilies from Fr. Bill

THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH

30 DECEMBER 2018

          A friend recently told me of losing his son.  He was standing in line in the basement of Saint Jude Parish in Fort Wayne with his two year old son, Kevin, waiting to say goodbye to the departing pastor who was being transferred to Saint Pius.  His wife, Laura, was at home with their new born son, David, who was only a few days old.  As he was waiting in line talking to friends about the excitement of being a new dad, Kevin separated from him.  In a moment, he was completely out of sight.  A flood of panic engulfed him.  He said that it was like a punch in the gut.  A thousand thoughts went through his head as he frantically searched for him.  One of those thoughts was that his wife would kill him if he came home without their son.  Even in that short time, he felt that he had been a total failure as a parent.

            Joseph and Mary lost their twelve year old son for more than a few moments!  Only parents can imagine what thoughts must have gone through their heads as they searched for their son for three entire days.  In their frantic search, they too must have felt like complete failures.  The Father had entrusted them with the long awaited Messiah.  Now they have lost him.  When they finally find him after three agonizing days, his response is less than consoling.  His mother asks him why he has done this to her and his father.  Like a typical twelve year old, he wants to know why they have been looking for him.  He tells them that he must be in his Father’s house.

            In this only story told about the childhood of Jesus, parents who have lost children can take consolation that this happened to the Holy Family.  They can identify with the precocious child who eagerly embraces a formal education in the faith.  But there is a much deeper level here.  Some thirty years later, Mary would lose her son again for three days, buried in a borrowed tomb.  She would experience again what she and Joseph experienced in Jerusalem.  Confronted with loss, she would have no idea of how things would turn out.  When she would find him in the Mystery of the resurrection, she would understand better the words he had spoken, not about his step father Joseph, but about his Heavenly Father.  In quoting the response of the twelve year old, Saint Luke deliberately uses ambiguous words.  A literal rendering of the Greek text would be that he must be “about the affairs of my Father” or “in the house of my Father.”  In other words, Jesus understands from a very early age that he has a very intimate relationship with the Father, and that he needs to be trusting and obedient to his Father’s will.

            Saint Luke tells us that Jesus went down with Joseph and Mary to Nazareth and was obedient to them.  He learned to trust and obey his Heavenly Father by trusting and obeying Mary and Joseph in their human family.  They would teach the precocious child and answer his questions as he would continue to grow in wisdom and age and favor.  He would learn to listen to them, much as he had listened to the teachers in the Temple in Jerusalem.

            This is the task facing every one of our families today.  None of our families are perfect, and none of our families are without sin and failure.  But, we all have aspects of holiness in our families.  Like the holy family of Nazareth, we can form our children in the ways of faith and teach them how to be obedient.  Obedience does not mean blindly doing what we are told.  It used to irk me as a kid when I would ask why, and my father would respond, “Because I told you!”  The word “obey” literally means to listen.  As we enter into the New Year, we can all take advantage of new opportunities to listen.  We will listen to the Word of God at Mass and also in the adult education programs we will be offering this year.  If we listen and teach our children to listen, we can learn as a parish family how to trust the mystery of the dying and rising of Jesus.  They can learn that dying to themselves will open the way to rising with Christ to others.