THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH
29 DECEMBER 2019
When
Saint Paul writes to the Church of Colossae, he calls them God’s chosen ones,
holy and beloved. God had chosen them to
enter into an intimate relationship with his son. Already beloved because they had been created
in the divine image, they became holy when they were baptized. Having emerged from the waters of Baptism,
they were clothed in a white garment, signifying their unique union with
Christ.
Saint Paul challenges
the Colossians to wear that garment well.
He speaks not about a physical garment, but the clothing of
holiness: heartfelt compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
Clothed in Christ, they must bear with one another and forgive one
another. He knows that members of a family
can develop a grievance against one another.
He reminds those clothed in Christ to forgive one another, precisely
because God forgives them.
Saint Paul speaks this same message
to us. We are God’s chosen ones, holy
and beloved. We have passed through the
waters of Baptism. Once we emerged from
those saving waters, we were clothed with a white garment, signifying our union
with Christ. Saint Paul challenges us to
respond to God’s heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and
patience by wearing those same garments ourselves. Those garments represent our outward actions
toward one another, especially in our willingness to forgive as Christ as
forgiven us. But they also represent our
inner dispositions, expressing our trust that the Lord Jesus can transform us.
Saint
Matthew gives us a model for holiness:
the holy family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. At first glance, we might get
discouraged. How can we compete with a
family like this? The son is God himself,
the mother is a virgin who never sinned, and the father is a quiet man who
responds immediately to the angel’s messages to him in dreams without uttering
a single word! However, we can
understand that their marks of holiness can become ours. The Scriptures tell us very little about this
family. But we they observed religious
traditions. They communicated,
especially when their child was lost in the Temple. This family is bound together by love, the bond
of perfection. Faced with the danger
posed by Herod, the parents trust the Father and take the risk of fleeing to
Egypt to protect the child. As a
toddler, Jesus probably took his first steps as an immigrant in a foreign
land. The parents continue to trust the
Father when the angel tells Joseph in a dream to return to Nazareth. Saint Matthew gives this detail to express
the reality that God had always been with his people. God had been with the brothers of Joseph when
they went to Egypt to escape famine. God
had been with his people when Moses led them through the desert to the Promised
Land. God continues to be with this
particular family in their dangers.
We
celebrate this Feast of the Holy Family during the Octave of Christmas. We continue to reflect on the Incarnation, on
the Mystery of God dwelling in our midst through Jesus Christ. We are called to be holy, to wear the
garments of our baptism, as a parish family.
We evangelize best with humility and trust when we wear those garments. The same is true of the individual human
families in our parish. When Saint Paul wrote to the Colossians, he used the
family structure of his day, urging wives to be submissive to their
husbands. But he also departed in a
radical way from the way the culture expected men to behave. He insisted that husbands love their wives as
Christ loved his bride the Church: dying
for them. He speaks to us today, no
matter what our individual families may look like. Our families may conform
themselves to the patterns of holiness in our culture. But they can be radically transformed by
taking Paul’s advice and clothing themselves in Christ. Wear those garments
proudly. They define who we are.
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