Over the past several years, serving at our parish in Portland, Oregon, I had the privilege of preparing a number of young couples for the Baptism of their children. I always met with them in the church, near the Baptismal font, where I could explain the symbols of the Sacrament: the white gown, the candle, the holy oil, and especially the water.
But I always ended by telling the parents that if they remembered nothing of the Scripture I read them, or what I told them about the history of the Sacrament, and the meaning of the symbols, I wanted them to remember just one thing: the most important obligation of Christian parents is to show and teach their children of God’s tremendous love for them. That’s the responsibility they were accepting by bringing their children for Baptism.
I even offered some suggestions for how they would accomplish that: by praying with and teaching their children to pray – by telling them the stories of Scripture and bringing them to Mass – by modeling for them a life of Christian service and helping them discover their vocation in life.
Now that certainly sounds wonderful. I certainly have no doubt that what I told these parents is true. What’s more, I don’t at all doubt that each and every one of those couples wanted to strive for that admirable goal of Christian parenthood.
But then there is the messy reality. Brining a toddler to Mass, and trying in vain to keep them quiet could try the patience of Job. Children not only learn from our good example, they follow us into bad habits as well. Siblings fight and quarrel. Teenagers rebel and are nearly impossible to understand or communicate with. Grown children drift from the Church and cease to practice the faith as we would want them to.
In parish ministry, in counseling and in Reconciliation, perhaps more than any other single issue, priests hear from parents about their concerns for their children – their fears that they are failing as parents; that they haven’t done enough. In my experience parents do indeed accept the challenge and strive mightily to build solid Christian homes – but they look at the Holy Family, which we celebrate today, and they judge themselves as having fallen terribly short.
They believe the Holy Family exhibits complete peace and harmony among its members. And they ask, “how can we live up to the model of the Holy Family, when Jesus was Divine, and Mary was sinless, and each perfect member so perfectly followed God’s perfect plan of salvation?” They know all too well, you and I are not perfect.
But on this Feast of the Holy Family, our readings challenge this image of the Holy Family and offer us a much more consoling and hopeful path forward.
First, Luke’s Gospel account of Jesus’ finding in the Temple challenges our conception of the Holy Family as distanced from the painful realities of real family life. Luke narrates that the adolescent Jesus is lost to Mary and Joseph and they search for him in a panic. There is confusion and worry and heartache. Even when He is found, Jesus’ explanation for his absence is at best confusing and difficult to understand, and at worst a bit snarky.
If this kind of loss, worry, confusion and grief marked the life of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, perhaps it’s not so hard to understand how they can be a part of our family life, while not indicating that we have somehow failed in our quest for holiness. Perhaps it means we merely have an inadequate understanding of ‘perfection’ and ‘holiness’ and imagine incorrectly that those things preclude difficulty and struggle.
Our first reading compliments this Gospel message by offering us a different way forward. Hannah, who was thought to be barren, has prayed with Eli the priest to be given a son – and now that her prayer has been answered, she returns to Shiloh and consecrates her son to the Lord, leaving Samuel to grow up in the temple precincts.
Hannah’s faith makes clear to us that the most important element in building a holy family, the necessary first step in teaching our children that they are loved by God, is recognizing that they do not belong to us, they are not our possessions, but are in fact “children of God;” they belong to Him.
This kind of fidelity to God, this obedience to God’s will, and “growth in wisdom” is what makes the family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph holy and what can make our families holy as well. It is not that our families or our parenting will be perfect – that there will never be loss, worry, confusion or grief. The real Holy Family disproves that completely.
It is, rather, when parents know that their children belong to God and are in His care, that they can give the love, guidance and freedom their children need as they grow and mature. Even parents who worry that they have failed, that their children are lost to them, can find comfort in today’s Gospel, realizing that Mary and Joseph knew such worry, and knowing too that Jesus’ journey toward self-understanding required His return to their loving home in Nazareth.
This Feast of the Holy Family assures us that even amidst inevitable misunderstanding and worry, if Christian parents dedicate their children to God, as Hannah, and Mary and Joseph did, they can trust that God will direct and protect them. Basking in the glorious light of Christmas we ask not so much to be spared the suffering and fear that even the Holy Family had to endure, but rather that we might have some measure of their faith and trust in God and love for one another.
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