Holy Family 2012

HOLY FAMILY

(Ecclelsiasticus 3:2-6, 12-14; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:41-52)

“Son, why have you done this to us?  Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”  And He said to them, “Why were you looking for Me?  Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?”  But they did not understand what He said to them.

Initially let us remark how the Holy Family did exemplify the teaching we have heard from the two previous readings:  Mary herself showed honour and respect for Joseph in her words and attitude:

Son, why have you done this?  Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.

Joseph showed his reverence and love for Mary by allowing her to speak first, giving her both emotional relief in her sovereign maternal solicitude for her Son, and first expression to their mutual longing and anxiety to understand Jesus’ strange behaviour. 

Jesus too, first of all recognizes and commiserates with Mary and Joseph’s concern with gentle words of sympathy:    

Why were you looking for me (upsetting yourselves so much)?
 

Then He proceeded to make clear, as best He could, what had been going on in His heart and mind recently:

Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house (for none but my heavenly Father could possibly lead Me to absent Myself from returning with you in the caravan  … surely you knew that!)?

The Boy Jesus – humanly speaking, He was in some most important aspects, still a boy – did not fully realize the impact of those words!  For the very first time He had called the God of Israel -- Whom they all, in accordance with Israel’s ancient and traditional Law, had been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship and honour in the Temple, His very own House – His, Personal, Father!

Those words I must be in My Father’s house are also seriously translated I must be about My Father’s business: neither translation excludes the other, neither alone can give the full content of Jesus’ words.  

Moreover, in the intimate inner circle of family life His words were most disturbing, since they could appear to be in contradiction with Mary’s carefully chosen ‘adult’ words:

            Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety. 

There had always been in the hearts and minds of Mary and Joseph – amid the wondrous amazement, gratitude, and countless joys Jesus gave them – a hidden anxiety about how best to bring up such a child: the One they had both taken, many years ago, to the Temple to present Him originally to God as Mary’s God-given son.  They had both endeavoured to live their lives in His sight and for His guidance, as true Israelites.  Without doubt, Mary’s every word and gesture as she lived her extremely busy round of family, social, and religious duties bespoke her love of God and Israel’s faith, and she must – frequently -- have shared with her Son her most intimate thoughts and experiences of the great goodness, wondrous beauty, and awesome justice, of God.  Joseph, likewise, had his own indispensable role and function to fulfil: he had to be the man for this wondrous Boy: teaching Him responsibility in His work for and relationships with others, above all with and for His mother; it was by following Joseph’s example that Jesus learned how to love the person and appreciate the sensitivity of Mary, whilst at the same time fitting into the world of working men and gradually advancing in His God-given ‘favour’ among them.  Joseph would have taken Him regularly (Sabbath, and market days Monday and Thursday) to the synagogue for readings and explanation of the Law and prophets, together with common prayers (Sh’ma – Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One); and it was at the synagogue where Jesus learnt to hear and understand, to read and write, the holy language of His people.  

Let us now humbly try to discern what may have been taking place in the mind and heart of the Boy over the years of His hidden home life in Nazareth, before culminating in that short period  of three days when He was alone in Jerusalem.

During those three days, what was the business that Jesus was about, engaged in, that He found so important and demanding? 

He was celebrating His new majority, adult-standing, before the Law; above all He was delighting in God His Father through sharing in the Temple worship, and then participating in the regular teaching and discussion sessions -- given, held, by scribes and elders in the adjacent Temple buildings -- something not unexpected, indeed welcomed, for one who, though only twelve or thirteen years old, was now responsible before the Law:

After three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard Him were astounded at His understanding and His answers. 

He was delighting in His Father, and also acknowledging and appreciating the centuries’ old fidelity of His Jewish forebears towards God’s word and God’s worship.

Notice that this love of the boy-become-man-according-to-the-Law, this love of Jesus for His Father in heaven was an intensely personal and deeply passionate love.  It was not a distant admiration and compartmentalized commitment, one that could be appreciated objectively and weighed in the scales against other loves and other, corresponding, commitments.  No!  It was a passionate and compelling love which would brook no compare.   This consuming love of the boy Jesus ‘for His Father’s business’ had been originally nourished by the teaching of His mother Mary, for she undoubtedly taught Him much about the Psalms of Israel and the words of the prophets calling for love and obedience toward God and fellow-feeling in community and society.  It was, however, above all her humility that was ever a beacon for Him Who would eventually sacrifice Himself for the sins of men.

This Child absorbed the teaching of His mother to such an extent that He understood the Psalms of which she spoke so well, far, far more that she was aware of!  He learnt to read the sacred Scriptures she so honoured and treasured with such sympathetic awareness and profound responsiveness that they became for Him a personal communion with the Author of those Scriptures, a communion wherein the Boy ‘discovered’ Himself and was guided to that appreciation of His Father which the Scriptures themselves foretold:

My Word that goes forth from My mouth shall not return to Me void, but shall do My will, achieving the end for which I sent it.  (Isaiah 55:11s.)  

The Boy’s subsequent awareness and understanding of His adulthood -- His ‘bar mitsva’ acceptation before the Law; His experience of adult worship in His Father’s house, and listening to and participating in the glorification of Israel’s God ‘in the midst of teachers’; all this was greater than anything He had previously experienced ... He was enraptured ... He would not turn from all that to join the caravan with Mary and Joseph and go back to Nazareth ... He remained three days in Jerusalem.

However, this young Man’s sublime delight in and total commitment to His now to-be-openly-acknowledged Father was not quite the same thing as His adult ‘commissioning’ by the Father for His ultimate mission.  His human understanding was still developing and so -- as was fitting for One still subject in society to His earthly parents -- the words of Mary, with Joseph’s backing, had weight enough to call Him back to an objective appreciation of His obligations as ‘their’ child.   When such obligations would be removed, however, His delighting in, loving and communing with, His heavenly Father, would inevitably take over His whole life and claim His total and absolute commitment.  In the meantime, He had made clear the essential point:

Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house ... about My Father’s business?  

It was by observing His mother Mary’s attitude and bearing that Jesus had learnt to respect Joseph as His earthly father; nevertheless, Mary and Joseph, when the time had come, were both taken totally unawares by Jesus’ behaviour at that year’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover celebrations.  There had always been a certain silence, otherness,  about Jesus … didn’t His disciples experience it as they used to walk together behind Jesus as they went about Israel with Him?  Words were not cheap with Jesus nor were His thoughts, feelings, and emotions easily traceable and recognizable … He was ‘his own man’ as a common expression would put it.  But that is not correct, not accurate, enough, for Jesus was ‘God’s man’, above all and in all He was ‘His Father’s Son’.   However, we are told that He learned to control His enthusiasm, to listen more patiently and ever more attentively to and for His heavenly Father, and:

He went down with them to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. 

Oh the humility of God made man!  He went back to family life in Nazareth and was obedient: He would calmly love and reverence His earthly parents as He awaited His Father to call Him, to ‘commission’ Him.  Learning ever more of God His Father, He continued to humble Himself before the men and women He served in His recognized work as carpenter with Joseph, to respect those among whom He dwelt, and in all such relationships to quietly encourage and confirm their awareness of God as He shared with them His understanding and Truth, His goodness and Love: 

Jesus advanced (in) wisdom and age and favour before God and man.

                                                                              

Christmas Dawn Mass 2012

CHRISTMAS DAWN MASS

(Isaiah 62:11-12; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:15-20)

Perhaps the most striking aspect of our Gospel reading this ‘happy morn’ is the fact that it is all about the shepherds: from beginning to end.  Even when the story leads us into the presence of Mary, Joseph, and the ‘Infant lying in the manger’ the shepherds still remain in focus as they:

make known the message that had been told them about this child.

And though mention is next made of Mary, the shepherds are still by no means entirely dismissed, for we are told:

Mary kept all these things (told her by the shepherds), reflecting on them in her heart.

Finally, the whole gospel passage is concluded with the joyful picture of the shepherds singing the praises of God as they go back to their work:

They returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them.

Why are the shepherds so very important for the Gospel story, so firmly established centre stage?

Surely the answer is that the Son of God was coming in human flesh that He might  shepherd Israel, God’s Chosen People, and that they might become sheep of His flock: the flock He would lead to rich pasture while sparing the ewes that were pregnant and cherishing the lambs still weak; the flock whose integrity He would protect from all dangers, while searching for and rescuing individuals gone astray, tending the wounded, nourishing the sick, comforting the fearful and calming the foolish.

From the very situation of His birth, therefore, Jesus began His life most emphatically proclaiming: I am the good shepherd. 

At Mass of the Day attention is directed to the divine Person and heavenly Origin of Jesus, and there our worship is called for and His glory exalted: 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.

Here, however, at this Dawn Mass, our love is provoked by the manifestation of His great goodness and the utter selflessness of His life-long intention to be a good shepherd, qualities rudely and humanly manifested for us by the shepherds around His crib: men who were often lonely for long periods and regularly sleep-starved; men who had to be prepared to face up to hyenas, jackals, wolves and even bears, wielding only their iron-bound cudgels and large knives; men used to experiencing ‘burning heat by day and biting frost by night’ according to the patriarch Jacob who once served as Laban’s shepherd. 

Jesus had a well-known, deep, regard for and appreciation of, shepherds, saying once:

            A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (John 10:11)

The shepherd’s life was hard and public esteem for them was generally low; but Jesus openly acknowledged His admiration for those of them willing to lay down their lives for their sheep.  That viewpoint is not generally appreciated today and can even be attacked as being wasteful of human life.  For Jesus, however, it was a self-centred life -- no matter how cultured or eminent – that was supremely wasteful; while, a life embracing self-sacrifice for love of the good (even the good of mute and, at times, stupid sheep), evoked such admiration and love from Jesus that, no matter how humble, mis-esteemed or unappreciated by others it might be, He most readily saw Himself embodying it: laying down His life for His sheep, unhesitatingly going off into the desert in search of perhaps only one, stupidly lost sheep, and  most wholeheartedly rejoicing could He but carry such a lost one back to the flock on His shoulders!

For a true shepherd there was a ‘substantial’ reward quite apart from whatever pittance they might have been able to earn from the owners of the flocks: a mutual bond of trust and appreciation.  A good shepherd loved his sheep which, though they might number thousands, were, of themselves, quite helpless, and totally dependent on him for both good pasture and protection; and, living together continually for long periods, a strong bond of affection developed between them, as the sheep, quickly and easily, came to recognize their shepherd’s commitment and to trust him completely.  The shepherd’s morning call as he led them out to drink was unique and became immediately recognizable to the sheep of his flock, and he would often play upon a pipe or flute for them as they walked along the way to water or pasture; indeed, there were individual sheep so tame that they would respond to their name being called by that voice they so clearly recognized and so completely trusted.

And so, People of God, we who are sheep of His flock, should be able recognize and most gratefully appreciate the love that filled Jesu’s own Most Sacred Heart from the very first moment of His living amongst us.  What did He expect in return?  Since Jesus came to give, not to receive -- self-love being totally alien to Him -- I think we must conclude that He expected nothing for Himself.  Nevertheless, since His ability to give would ultimately depend on mankind’s ability or willingness to receive what He offered, then out of love for us He must have deeply desired to be received as Shepherd by the sheep He came so selflessly to serve and to save.

Moreover, although Jesus expected nothing, for Himself, He most certainly hoped for, wanted, strove for, and ultimately died for, whatever the best of human nature could be brought to give to and for His Father.  What so shocked St. John and all the apostolic witnesses to Jesus was that:

He was in the world, but the world did not know Him.  He came to what was His own, but His own people did not accept Him.           (John 1:10-11)

That was the supreme tragedy of Jesus’ life: humanity (as represented by His own Chosen People) rejected Him; His own disciples (save John at the foot of the Cross and frightened Peter...probably watching from some sufficiently safe spot) temporarily abandoned Him.   And as regards His hopes, His endeavours, for His Father, the most He could say before dying was:

Righteous Father, the world does not know You, but I know You, and these (His most intimate disciples) know that You sent Me.  (John 17:26)

However, His self-less love for us triumphed over that rejection both on the Cross and in His glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and that triumph has been shared with us by His Gift of His own most Holy Spirit and  of His most Precious Body and Blood in the Eucharist.  He comes anew to us, today, as Shepherd … the Good Shepherd offering Himself to us and for us … and we, today, have, by the power of His Spirit with us and in us, the opportunity to change the wretched record of history by giving Him a welcome into our own hearts not unworthy of that relationship between Shepherd and sheep foreshadowed in the stall at Bethlehem those long years ago.

However, we must recognize that though sheep can be stupid as regards their own safety, they quickly learn to recognize their shepherd, their good shepherd; human beings, on the other hand, can be -- and for the most part are -- quite good at looking after themselves, but, does our dear Lord’s human flock, do we -- that is, you and I -- learn so quickly to recognize, so exclusively to follow, and so humbly and whole-heartedly to obey Him, as those ‘stupid’ sheep??

That is why we prayed at the beginning of this Mass:

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that as we are bathed in the new radiance of Your Incarnate Word, the light of faith, which illumines our minds, may also shine through in our deeds. 

St. Paul told us in the second reading that:

The kindness and generous love of God our Saviour appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of His mercy.

God takes the initiative, He leads, He guides, He calls … it is our part, our duty, and surely, ultimately our joy, to LISTEN, to UNDERSTAND, and to RESPOND.  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this is a wonderfully happy and most beautiful morning, for the shepherds have been invited to the grotto where Mary and Joseph adore the Lord Jesus in manger familiar indeed to shepherds, and the Child is wrapped in swaddling clothes just such as would be available to shepherds’ own families; and their presence, so delightfully prepared for, so carefully and repeatedly stressed, assures us of this most beautiful and comforting truth: Jesus wants us to welcome Him this day as our own most loving Shepherd, and invites us anew to become more humble and obedient sheep of His pasture: sheep who recognise His voice, trust Him totally, respond whole-heartedly to His call, and thus come to know how to rejoice in His presence and rest in His care.

                                        

Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year C) 2012

^Fourth 

 Sunday of Advent (C)

(Micah 5:1-4a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-44)

It has been noted from very early times in the Church that whereas the child John the Baptist -- still in the womb of his mother Elizabeth -- ‘leapt for joy’ at the  proximity of Jesus, Elizabeth responded to the presence of Mary:

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.   And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?   For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy.  Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” 

There is no question that Elizabeth appreciated that the Infant being carried by Mary (the mother of my Lord) was indeed the Lord God of Israel:

And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord -- who believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled -- should come to me? 

Why then did not Elizabeth, together with her as yet unborn son, rejoice at the proximity of ‘her Lord’ rather than at the presence of Mary?

As of old, some Protestants may, still today, feel their ‘traditional’ jealousy for the honour of Jesus which had been foreshadowed by Joshua’s passionate reaction to what he feared was the demeaning of his master Moses (Numbers 11:27-29): 

When a young man told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp,” Joshua, son of Nun, who from his youth had been Moses’ aide, said, “Moses, my lord, stop them.” But Moses answered him, “Are you jealous for my sake?  Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets!   Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!”   

Such a reaction by Joshua and such rigidly protestant sentiments, however, were and are far too narrow for the whole-hearted love of God, and far too shallow for the depth of His wisdom; since we should recognize immediately that it was under the guiding influence of the Holy Spirit of Jesus that Elisabeth addressed herself to Mary, so that together with her son, the proclaimer and precursor of Jesus, they  might show Catholics and Christians of all times how, fittingly and without fear, to welcome God’s good news of great joy for all people(s).  

Mary was and is immaculate; the handmaid of the Lord Who had done great things for her.  All that she has is of His great goodness and mercy; so that those well-known words of Jesus:

            What God has joined together, let no man separate

are supremely significant in her regard.  God the Father Himself, by His Spirit, joined Mary to Jesus through her physicality and by her faith; thus, she is, always and irrevocably, one with, and totally committed to, her Son.   And that no jealousy should ever, or in any way, try to separate them is the most important truth Elizabeth and her unborn son would proclaim and teach to all willing to listen and learn for love of Jesus.

St. Augustine puts it most succinctly when he writes that Mary conceived Jesus in her heart by faith before she conceived Him physically in her womb; words which are an echo of the teaching of Jesus Himself (Luke 11:27-28):

A woman from the crowd called out and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.”   He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” 

In our account of the Visitation, Mary is shown as a figure, a foreshadowing, of the Church.  She is, by Jesus’ gift, our heavenly mother; the Church is our mother on earth.  For, as Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Church herself gives birth to disciples of Jesus, born from her womb -- the baptismal font -- by the power of the Holy Spirit bestowed on her by Jesus. Mary is praised in Scripture as she who believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled, while Mother Church ‘unfailingly adheres to the faith … delivered once for all to the saints’.  We should recognize this mystery of oneness between Jesus, Mary, and the Church, and learn from Elizabeth and John’s individually distinct reactions to Mary’s Visitation how best to welcome and appreciate God’s Good News: by reverencing Mary and the Church she foreshadowed and by devoting oneself to Jesus, carried on the bosom and in the heart of the Church, commissioned by Him uniquely to proclaim the fullness of His truth and dispense His saving grace.

So vitally important is this oneness of Jesus, Mary, and the Church, that the conflict over its validity is most crucial; on the one hand, it is the devil himself who is most deeply committed to the separation of what God has thus joined, while,  on the other, Jesus explicitly promised that to the end of time He would be with His Church to defend her against all the Devil’s attempts to destroy her.  And to associate her with Himself in this most vital combat He has given His own most Holy Spirit in fullness to His Church, to guide her into all truth, and with His own most precious Body and Blood does He continuously nourish her growth and deepen her love.  When His disciples gather together as Church, Jesus is infallibly in their midst leading their worship of the Father; and, in their individual lives, He has promised, that by the Spirit He will abide with His Father in the souls of all who love Him and will to obey Him,

Just as we heard in the second reading that:

When Christ came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in.  Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God’”

so now, in heaven at the right hand of the Father, He still uses a body to continue His Father’s work on earth, not a fleshly one (which is in heavenly glory) but a mystical body: His Church on earth, of which He is the Head and which He continually nourishes and feeds by His sacramental body, the Holy Eucharist.

No errant thinking resulting from human ignorance or devilish pride, no burrowing, nagging, human fears so prevalent these days, must ever separate what God has joined together.  Human beings, even those most highly placed in the Church, are ever weak, and, each in their own degree, personal sinners.   Indeed, even those recognized as saintly or acclaimed as Saints may at times manifest such human weaknesses, such personal failings and occasional sins.  But the Church is greater, far greater, than any of her individual members; even Mary is in the Church, as a uniquely glorious member indeed, yet not above her;  how much more, then, is the Church greater than any other individual or groups of individuals.  At times she suffers from, but is never to be condemned by, the lucubrations of proud scholars; nor can she be judged by the sinful behaviour of some -- always too many -- supposedly holy priests or religious.  Even when there are circumstances in which we must necessarily grieve with and for her, still must we ever reverence Mother Church, given to us for our salvation by the Lord Who is and ever abides her Master and ours: He uses her uniquely to guide us and bless us; He even uses her inherent weaknesses and human sinfulness for our warning and salutary punishment.   However, He never allows her to be led herself, or to lead us her God-given children, away from His divine Truth; and He always bestows His gifts of grace through her sacraments and in answer to her prayers.

People of God learn from Elizabeth; she was, as the Gospel tells us, ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’, and that Holy Spirit led her to cry out:

How does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  

With Elizabeth therefore, reverence, love, serve, honour, trust, stand up for, pray for, and delight in, Mother Church; do all these things not because of her earthly pomp or worldly successes, her prestige or influence, but because she is one with Christ, she is His Body, He is her Head, and His Spirit is her very life.

We should also learn from the overpowering and irrepressible joy shown by the unborn John: joy that One, as yet Himself unborn, has come; One Who would, by His own Spirit of Holiness, purge Israel of her sin, just as He was at that very moment sanctifying John himself, though still in his mother’s womb, by the same Spirit of holiness. This Child – mightier than John – was the One Whose way he, John, would prepare by his life of penance and preaching of repentance:

And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. (Luke 3:3)

This was the joy of Simeon too, who, on receiving the Infant in his arms from Mary declared:

Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word.   For my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples: a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel. (Luke 2:29-32)

Finally, this heavenly glory, this spiritual joy, is Mary’s very own, celebrated most sublimely in her great canticle of humility and gratitude:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour.  For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; for behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.   For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. (Luke 1:46-49)

Therefore, dear People of God, you who have been chosen in Christ, look forward to Christmas with spiritual joy; look forward, that is, to what the God of all faithfulness and truth, beauty and goodness, promises He will give, not what human desires solicit.  In this holy season our joy should be -- first and foremost -- like that of John, simple and sincere; a joy which encourages and enables us to open our minds and hearts, to offer our very lives, to the One who comes to do His Father's will; a joy that compels us with Elizabeth, to lovingly reverence and acknowledge His Church, asking  that through her, our mother, He might continue to teach us His ways and bless us with His empowering Spirit, so that we too -- as true disciples -- may seek with Him in all things to  promote the Father’s glory.  

3rd Sunday of Advent (Year C) 2012

 3^rd. Sunday of Advent (C)

(Zephaniah 3:14-18; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18)

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