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Feast of the Holy Family (C)

December 29, 2024

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Introit

Collect

O God, who were pleased to give us
the shining example of the Holy Family,
graciously grant that we may imitate them
in practicing the virtues of family life and in the bonds of charity,
and so, in the joy of your house,
delight one day in eternal rewards.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First Reading 1 Sm 1:20,24-28

Hannah, wife of Elkanah, had no children; 11 she prayed to the Lord and made this vow: “O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.” 20 In due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. She named him Samuel, for she said, “I have asked him of the Lord.” 21 Elkanah and all his household went up to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice, and to pay his vow. 22 But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, “As soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him, that he may appear in the presence of the Lord, and remain there forever; I will offer him as a nazirite for all time.” 24 When she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three-year-old bull, a measure of flour, and a skin of wine. She brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh; and the child was young. 25 Then they slaughtered the bull, and they brought the child to Eli. 26 And she said, “Oh, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed; and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made to him. 28 Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord.” She left him there for the Lord.

Responsorial Psalm Ps 84:2-3,5-6,9-10

Second Reading 1 Jn 3:1-2,21-24

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22 and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

Gospel Acclamation

Gospel Lk 2:41-52

Now every year the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travellers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” 49 He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then Jesus went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.

Catena Nova

We are told that Moses has asked God questions and that God has answered him. So, we need to listen to Jesus and let him put questions to us, perhaps one’s we can’t answer. Maybe we want to know in which group of people he is found right now and with whom we can learn his way. This has to be done all the time, and not in a passing or occasional way. You can never find where Jesus waits for you if you act like that. Mary said, when she found him, “We have been looking anxiously for you!”, but he answered, “Didn’t you know I would have to be in my Father’s House”? Try to be as concerned to find Jesus that Joseph and Mary were. Keep looking for those who teach the way to God and always try to live like Jesus. (Origen of Alexandria)

The Word of God, born once for all in Bethlehem, according to the flesh, is born anew at every instant according to the Spirit. He is born anew to all those who long for him. You see, he delights in goodness and humaneness and so he became a little child to clothe himself in just these qualities. He knows that all can accept one who is good and humane and thus seeks to free us from every trace of ill-will or aversion. He is taking the measure of those who long for Him.... The great mystery of the divine incarnation remains a mystery forever. How can the Word truly and substantially exist in human flesh, while at the same time his whole being is with the Father? How can that same Word, who is wholly divine by nature, have become completely human without in any way disowning either his divine nature, in which he subsists as God, or our nature in which he was made human? Only faith can perceive the truth of these mysteries. They themselves are truly the essence and foundation of truths which surpass what the mind can either see or understand. And this faith has been given us! And from this gift springs that love which binds us to our God and leads us to serve and love one another. What a marvelous exchange! (St. Maximus the Confessor)

He who is without flesh becomes incarnate; the Word puts on a body; the Invisible is seen; by whom no hand can touch is handled; the Timeless has a beginning; the Son of God becomes Son of Man - Jesus Christ, the same yesterday today and for ever. … O strange conjunction! The Self-existent comes into being; the Uncreated is created. He shares in the poverty of my flesh, that I may share in the riches of his Godhead. (St. Gregory Nazianzen)

The Mother of God

The three-fold terror of love: a fallen flare

Through the hollow of an ear;

Wings beating about the room

The terror of all terrors that I bore

The Heavens in my womb.

Had I not found content among the shows

Every common woman knows,

Chimney corner, garden walk,

Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes

And gather all the talk?

What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,

This fallen star my milk sustains,

This love that makes my heart's blood stop

Or strikes a sudden chill into my bones

And bids my hair stand up? (William Butler Yeats)

Jesus, we are told, was obedient to Joseph and Mary, and yet suddenly he is off to the Temple learning from the rabbis teaching there. He not only answered their questions, as was expected, but asked them question, which was not expected. And he did all this without asking permission from his parents. They were upset when they found him. But he wasn’t repentant. Yet he followed them back to Nazareth and resumed his obedience. Our ordinary behavior is like a fine line and if we step off it we enter the new and unfamiliar. There are mysteries, not only in God but in each of us. There are potentials for newness in us that God will bring out, and in them lie gifts that we can share with others, if they are willing to accept that there are depths hidden within us to enrich lives and perhaps even change our society and culture. It is part of what Scripture calls “the mystery hidden from ages past but now revealed to God’s holy ones”. Can you accept and believe that truth God tells us? (Fr. Carroll Stuhlmueller)

The typological relationship between the finding of the child Jesus in the Temple and His paschal mystery has not been investigated adequately, if at all. Nevertheless, the parallels between them suggest a particularly close bond. Both events occur at Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. The Holy Child is in the Temple, three days hidden and lost to the sight of His mother and foster father, who fear that He may be dead. Christ is three days in the tomb, hidden and lost to His disciples, His family in grace, who know without doubt He is dead. After three days, the Child will be found in the Temple, while after three days Jesus will be found once again in the temple of his body (Jn 2:19-22). The Child will be found near the place of the figurative sacrifices of the Old Covenant, while Christ will be found near the place of the definitive, archetypal sacrifice of the Cross, for “there was in the place where he was crucified a garden: and in the garden a new sepulchre” (Jn 19:41), in which He was buried. When Mary and Joseph find the child Jesus at last, His mother asks, “Son, why hast thou done this to us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing” (Lk 2:48) and the Christ Child answers, “How is it that you have sought me?” (Lk 2:49). The angel’s response to the women who come mourning to the tomb and who will later find the resurrected Jesus is the same, “Why seek you the living with the dead” (Lk 24:5). For, as the Child explains, “Did you not know that I must be about my father’s business?” (Lk 2:49). Now the Father’s business, which is given into the hands of the Son (Jn 3:35; 13:3; 16:15), is nothing other than judging and the giving of life to the dead (Jn 5:17-30) – and the Father is always working, and likewise the Son, even on the Sabbath made for man (Jn 5:17-18; Mk 2:27-28....). Thus the Christ Child teaches in the Temple with the authority of His wisdom, and the light of His doctrine shines upon those still dead in ignorance and sin (Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar).

In the Holy Family, astonishment never failed! To feel astonishment is the opposite of taking everything for granted… It means opening ourselves to others. This attitude is important for mending compromised relationships and curing the open wounds within the family. The anxiety felt by Mary and Joseph, shows the centrality of Jesus in the Holy Family. And so we see, why the family of Nazareth is holy – because it was centred on Jesus, all the attention and care of Joseph revolved around Him. The anxiety felt by Mary and Joseph, when Jesus was lost for three days, should also be our anxiety, when we are far from Jesus, when we forget Jesus, going without prayer, without reading the Gospel for several days. Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the Temple and we too, should seek Jesus in the house of God – and especially, in the Liturgy, where we have the living experience of Jesus, in His Word and in the Eucharist, from which we receive the strength to face the difficulties of each day (Pope Francis).

Homily

So what was going on all those years in-between? Luke presents us with an Infant in swaddling clothes, a circumcision on the eighth day after his birth, and then his presentation in the temple forty days from Christmas. His next appearance is at the age of twelve. Matthew tells us nothing about the birth of Christ, only his naming by Joseph, and then of a visit sometime after by Magi from the East followed by an hasty escape into Egypt. Both Matthew and Luke leave us wondering about the long gaps in Jesus' biography during his years in Nazareth until the time of his baptism in the Jordan, when he was about thirty years old, as Luke informs us. I can only imagine how I would feel if my history were so sketchy with no birthdays except my first, no childhood friends, no tales from school, no teenage years, no graduation, no first job, no vocation. What if no one knew much about you before the age of thirty?

Now we hear a lot today about our “inner child”: the part of us that retains memories and experiences, both good and bad, of what we once were — and just as much what we have forgotten, slipping into the psychic shadowlands. Books abound on how to awaken that child lying dormant within us. How to nurture, comfort, and heal the child whose birth promised so much. And Christmas has power to rouse such children. To bring forth things in us kept hidden. Like innocence, delight, openness and awe: all the things showing us how we're still full of promise: potential perhaps potential, possible if not probable, but promise nevertheless.

Psychologist Carl Jung saw the Child as an image of future fulfillment of such things. But the image is a mixed one. Like the Christ Child himself with "missing pieces," Jung notes how "the child is all that is abandoned and exposed, and at the same time divinely powerful; the insignificant, dubious, beginning, and the triumphal end. The eternal child in [a person] is an indescribable experience, an incongruity, a handicap, and a divine prerogative." (The psychology of the child archetype ; 1951). So the child may remain only a possibility, yet also the sign we're on a path to fulfillment.

So much in us has yet to develop, along the lines of the Christ Child who advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man (G). As Jung adds, "The 'child is born out of the womb of the unconscious, begotten out of the depths of human nature, or rather out of living Nature herself. It is a personification of vital forces quite outside the limited range of our conscious mind; of ways and possibilities of which our one-sided conscious mind knows nothing; a wholeness which embraces the very depths of Nature" (ibid.).

But for that to happen, we likely need to let go of a few things. Perhaps discarding a false self-image overly tied to others' expectations, dropping a role for which we are no longer suited, expanding values that no longer respond to life's complexities, deepening relationships that risk going stale, seeking work that is more life-giving for oneself and others, maturing religious beliefs and practices more in keeping with adult faith. That inner child cannot forever live in Peter Pan's Never-Never Land, for the true self, like Sleeping Beauty, awaits awakening.

And those responsible for raising us have a lot to do with our ability to let go of such things. Parents and caregivers might well fail their children should they try to live their unlived lives through their children. Pope Francis noted something about this when speaking of St. Joseph:

When fathers refuse to live the lives of their children for them, new and unexpected vistas open up. Every child is the bearer of a unique mystery that can only be brought to light with the help of a father who respects that child’s freedom. A father who realizes that he is most a father and educator at the point when he becomes “useless”, when he sees that his child has become independent and can walk the paths of life unaccompanied. When he becomes like Joseph, who always knew that his child was not his own but had merely been entrusted to his care (Patris corde; 2020).

The same could well be said of Mary who knew all along her Son, in many ways, was not her own. Reflecting on all that transpired since the birth of her Child — keeping them in her heart (cf. G) — from that stinging retort to her question, Son, why have you done this to us? when the Child bluntly replied, Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house? (G)— until the time came when he left the artisan’s shop in Nazareth to embark on a journey that would lead to her standing beneath the cross. I doubt she could have done any of it without realizing her Child was not her own.

There's something of that in the story of Hannah and her son Samuel. Though unable to have a child for a long time, her prayer was finally answered. And rather unbelievably, she was prepared to offer him...[giving[ him to the LORD (I). And thus she left her son in the temple under the care and tutelage of Eli, thus paving the way for him to become the great prophet he was destined to be. And while no one would suggest such a thing today, when parents present their children for baptism, dedicating them to the LORD (cf. I), well, they are leaving such children in the hands of God and no one can say on that day what will become of them, can they?

Hopefully, they will have parents who are willing to “lose” them, as Christ was lost in the temple for three days: Parents, moreover, who've nurtured their own lost Child knowing the truth of John's words, What we shall be has not yet been revealed (II). But we will, if we follow the shining example of the Holy Family (Collect) to whom the divine Child Incarnate was obedient. Who lives and reigns, forever and ever. Amen.

Intercessions (Joe Milner; The Sunday Website)

For the Church: that we may recognize and honor the dignity which we have been given in being called children of God.

For the grace to grow in wisdom: that the Spirit will give us insight into our experiences and help us to learn from them how to hear God’s invitation and fully respond to God.

For all families: that family members may support one another and help each other grow in wisdom, age, and grace, and walk closer with God each day.

For all parents: that they may love their children and help them grow in understanding and living Christian values.

For children who are missing or at risk: that God will protect them from harm, guide them to a place of safety, and help the parents to continue to show love for them.

For all children: that they may grow safely in body, mind, and spirit, and develop their gifts and talents to their fullest.

For family members who are in conflict or who are estranged: that God’s love will heal their hearts and dissolve pride so that they may share the joy of fellowship and love again.

For all who have no families or who are alienated from or rejected by their families: that they may experience love and acceptance through this Christian community.

For all who are grieving, particularly children who have lost parents and parents who have lost children: that they may know that God is with them and draw strength and hope from the Holy Family who experienced great loss and pain.

For all who are ill: that God will heal all who are sick or recovering from surgery, and give strength and protection to all healthcare workers.

For all recovering from storms and other disasters: that God will ease their suffering, give them strength of mind and spirit, and speed the resources they need to rebuild their lives.

As your sons and daughters, O loving God, we come before you in thanksgiving, called and united by your eternal Word. Teach us to ponder the mystery of Nazareth, that we may always find in you the source of our strength and the unity of our families. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. (ICEL; 1998)

Offertory Chant

Offertory Hymn

There is a flower sprung from a tree,
The root thereof is called Jesse,
A flower of great worth;
There is no other such in paradise.

This flower is fair and fresh of hue;
It fades never, but ever is new;
The blessed branch where this flower grew
Was Mary mild who bore Jesu —
A flower of grace,
Against all sorrow it is solace.

The seed thereof was of God's sending,
Which God himself sowed with his hand;
In Bethlehem, in that holy land,
Within her garden he found her there.
This blessed flower
Sprang never but in Mary's bower.

When Gabriel this maiden met,
With "Ave, Maria," he her greeted
Between them two this flower was set,
And was kept, no man should know it,
Until one day
In Bethlehem, it began to spread and spray.

When that flower began to spread,
And his blossom to bud,
Rich and poor of every seed, [i.e. kind]
They marvelled how this flower might spread,
Until kings three
That blessed flower came to see.

Angels there came out of their tower
To look upon this fresh flower —
How fair he was in his colour,
And how sweet in his savour —
And to behold
How such a flower might spring amid the cold.

Of lily, of rose on branch,
Of primrose, and of fleur-de-lys,
Of all the flowers I can think of,
That flower of Jesse yet bears the prize,
As the best remedy
To ease our sorrows in every part.

I pray you, flowers of this country, [i.e. women]
Wherever ye go, wherever ye be,
Hold up the flower of good Jesse,
Above your freshness and your beauty,
As fairest of all,
Which ever was and ever shall be.

Communion Antiphon

Closing Hymn

Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son

With Mary holy we should pray,
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn,
There was a blessed Messiah born.

The night before that happy tide,
The noble Virgin and her guide
Were long time seeking up and down
To find a lodging in the town.

But mark how all things came to pass
From every door repelled, alas,
As was foretold, their refuge all
Was but a humble ox’s stall.

Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep
To whom God’s angels did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear

Prepare and go, the angels said
To Bethlehem, be not afraid
For there you’ll find, this happy morn
A princely babe, sweet Jesus, born.

With thankful heart and joyful mind
The shepherds went the babe to find
And as God’s angel had foretold
They did our Saviour Christ behold

Within a manger he was laid
And by his side the virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of Life
Who came on earth to end all strife.

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