Dcn. Tom McClelland's Homily:
        Feast of the Holy Family, Dec 31, 2006

Families are good!  Today we celebrate the Holy Family — Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  They experienced life together, and relied on each other.  You should also reflect on, and celebrate, your own family, especially if you make Jesus, the Word of God, a real everyday part of your family.  Because if you make Jesus a part of your family, you are truly then part of his family, and Mary and Joseph are certainly worthy of having a parenting role toward you and me, if we will allow them.

By suggesting that we celebrate our own families today, as well as the Holy Family, I'm not saying that our families are perfect, because there may be conflict and sadness and disappointment there.  But for everyone of us, there is no doubt that our parents are our point of origin.  We exist because of them, and from them we have our names and much of our set of values.  And it is from our families that we first experience love.  Yes, families are good — mom, dad, children.

Families are meant to be wonderful, because they are a creation of Almighty God.  In the First Creation Story in Genesis, it says that God created the earth and the stars and the sun and the moon and the animals and the plants and the birds and the fish, and God saw how good it was.  On the sixth day, God created man in his own image, male and female he created them.  God blessed them as the first couple and said, "Be fertile and multiple, fill the earth and subdue it."  And in the words of the Bible, after God established the first husband and wife, God said, "It is very good."  In accordance with God's design, we all are part of a family.

In today's gospel, we look at Jesus' young life.  His public life occurred only during the last three years of his time on earth as a man.  For 90 percent of his life on earth (for about 30 years), Jesus lived in Nazareth as a member of a family.  A hint of what this means is found in the two scripture verses immediately preceding today's reading, which have Mary and Joseph returning to Nazareth with the infant Jesus after his birth in Bethlehem.  It says: "They returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.  The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him."  In other words, as a youth he lived with his family and grew up, pretty much as most of us did.  As God's Son, we believe he was wiser than the others.

In the life-style and culture of Mediterranean societies of Jesus' day, we know that boys and girls were brought up together by all the women of the extended family: mother, aunts, sisters, etc.  It was also true that mothers had strong emotional bonds with their sons.  Sons were their means of social security in their old age, and so the strong bonds of mother and son lasted into adulthood.  Because all the women together reared the children and pampered the boys, and boys were breast-fed by their mothers twice as long as girls, the boys tended to be at least a wee bit spoiled by the time of puberty.  Then at age eleven or twelve, boys were unceremoniously shoved out of the comfort of the women's world into the harsh and hierarchical men's world.  Here the adolescent boys were taught their proper place and behavior among other men.  There is no reason to think that Jesus experienced anything different.

When they traveled the 85-90 miles to Jerusalem each year for the feast of Passover, Mary and Joseph did not get in the family car and put the kids in the back seat.  Instead, the trip would be more like 3/4 of the population of St. Ignace all walking together to Manistique.  Mary and Joseph and Jesus would be part of a large group traveling in caravan style, with all the women together in one part of the caravan and all the men in another part.  Boys usually didn't make the trip until they were twelve years old, so this was probably Jesus' first excursion to the big city and to the Temple.  You can imagine, perhaps, that on the way up to Jerusalem, he spent part of his time in the stoic and somewhat harsh company of the men—and he may have spent part of his time in the greater comfort to which he was accustomed with his mom and the women.

When the days of Passover were completed, it is also easy to see that Mary and Joseph could quite reasonably journey back toward home for a whole day, each thinking that the boy Jesus was with the other parent.  Probably that evening, they discovered that he is missing.  He didn't show up for dinner, and that would not be like a twelve-year old.  Jesus is not in the caravan with relatives or acquaintances.  Have any of you ever left one of your kids behind?  Mary Anne and I did one time, and I can tell you there is an immediate and painful panic when you realize what's happened.  In Jesus' case, think about Mary's worry, and her tears!  She knows that Jesus is God's Son.  Imagine her stress, wondering how she will ever answer to God when he says to her, "How could you possibly lose my Son?"

So, filled with worry and concern and huge love, Mary and Joseph go back.  Where would a child of twelve most likely be in Jerusalem?  I have no idea.  And apparently they did not either, because it took three days to find him.  Then, there he is — with the teachers in the temple.  He was not playing with other boys somewhere in the city, but he was with adult men who were teachers.  The teachers usually sat in the courtyard of the temple, and people who would listen sat at their feet and asked questions and dialogued with them.  And it says in the gospel, the teachers "were astounded at Jesus understanding and his answers."

Mary and Joseph, I'm sure, are greatly relieved to find Jesus, and Mary's words give us a perfect example of the parent's occasional irritation in any parent-child relationship: "Son, why have you done this to us?  Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety."  And Jesus words in reply, which are the earliest words ascribed to Jesus in scripture, are not combative words.  He asks calmly, "Why were you looking for me?  Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"  Rather than a biting challenge in reply, these words point directly to the family relationship that He and we need to have with our Heavenly Father.  In other words, the most important thing, more important than our earthly family ties, is our relationship with God, the Father.

The next sentence says that, in light of the profoundness of Jesus' reply, Mary and Joseph didn't quite get it.  It simply wasn't time yet.  So Jesus returns to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them.  In that last statement is probably the most amazing idea of this whole story.  Jesus, who is the Word of God and who was with the Father before time began, goes back to the home in Nazareth and is obedient to his human parents for 15 or 16 more years.

Do you see what God is doing here?  Among all of the other reasons God sends his Son to earth — to save or souls, to reveal the love of God, and so forth — he sends his Son to show us how to live together in our families, which are the building blocks of God's great eternal family.  The parents are to have love, concern, care, and great responsibility for the health and safety and education of their children, and the children are to obey their parents.  Obedience is not a word used much in American families.  Teenagers routinely obeying their parents in all things is a beautiful but difficult concept.  Even Jesus had the experience of disappointing his parents in this way — but it only happened once!

As we celebrate the Holy Family — Jesus, Mary, and Joseph — living in Nazareth, we should also celebrate our own families.  Take the advice of St. John in today's Second Reading: if we keep God's commandments and do what pleases him, we will receive from him whatever good things we ask.  It is by the love of the Father that we may be called God's children.  And if we invite Jesus everyday to be part of our family and part of our daily lives, then we are rightly part of God's Holy Family.

And by the way, if you ever lose Jesus in your life, immediately go back and look for him.