Gospel of Luke, chapter 2-19

Throughout this Christmas season we have been presented with exaggerated images on television and in the movies of ideal families gathering in ideal homes with snow falling through perfectly windless skies. Living as we do in the real world, we know that these images are artificial, and that today’s family is far from perfect. It will be helpful to remember that COMPASSION, not perfection, is the order of family life. Thank God we are called to be a compassionate people, not a perfect people.

Everyone has family connections. So strong are they that sometimes we would like to escape their hold on us. But, they generally follow us wherever we go and bind us fast. Families form the basis of our lives and our society. They are the prime support of our faith in God and help us to value the goodness of life. Families are important for the individual, society and the church. The family serves as the core experience of the church because it functions as a base community for human and spiritual growth. The family that has Christ at its center could be described as the first and basic Christian church because it is held together by the good news of the Gospel.

It was no accident that the Son of God was born into a human family. There, He was raised in the values, traditions and faith He was to champion. He experienced the depth of a mother’s love through Mary and a human Father’s care through Joseph. He had aunts, uncles, and cousins who supported Him sometimes, but, at other times opposed what He was doing because they didn’t understand Him. Once they tried to pull Him away[Mark 3:31-35] from the crowd because they thought He was an embarrassment.

Jesus grew up in a simple family without any pretensions. Scripture tells us that He was obedient to His earthly parents and, like a good Son, He supported His parents by working as a carpenter. It is evident in the Gospel of Luke, chapter two, that Mary and Joseph did not know the profound implications of what it meant to rear the Holy One of God. They had to grow into an understanding of their child, as most parents have to do; and they had to grow into an understanding of themselves as all of us must. Mary, the scripture tells us kept everything she learnt from her Son “in her heart ” ( Luke 2:51). Jesus grew “in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” (Luke 2:52) in the village of Nazareth. He had to leave Nazareth because He was not accepted there and He re-located to Capernaum.

We will never find the perfect circumstances in which to live, and neither did the Holy Family. What matters is how we handle the circumstances in which we live, with integrity of spirit like Mary, by meditating on the words of her Son, in our hearts.

Happy New Year!

Fr. Hugh Duffy