Holy Families

Gospel
Lk 2:41-52

feast
of Passover,
and when he was twelve years old,
they went up according to festival custom.
After they had completed its days, as they were returning,
the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem,
but his parents did not know it.
Thinking that he was in the caravan,
they journeyed for a day
and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances,
but not finding him,
they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.
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.
When his parents saw him,
they were astonished,
and his mother said to him,
“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.
He went down with them and came to Nazareth,
and was obedient to them;
and his mother kept all these things in her heart.
And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor

before God and man.

Sermon at St Saviour

The Holy Family

One of the things that I like about the chapel at Madonna House at Robin Hoods Bay is the altar board extends to left and right across the aperture in the east wall and has a continuous wood carved frontal with Joseph to one side, Mary to the other, and Jesus between.

Today is the Feast of the Holy Family and I want to locate them for you at Bethlehem, and then in Egypt, and finally at Nazareth.

In the last few days we have travelled again to Bethlehem to celebrate the Lord’s birth there in the stable – reproduced here in church in the nativity tableau. I am fortunate to have been in the cave in Italy where the first Christmas Crib was created by St Francis of Assisi using live animals and a real baby. There, as here, the scene is close by the altar. At Bethlehem we have the reality of God made man and on the altar at every mass we have the real presence in our midst. Wherever two are three meet Jesus is in the midst. As one of my Christmas cards this year puts it ‘Jesus is the heart of Christmas’.

The Holy Family had to leave Bethlehem and flee as exiles because of Herod and his soldiers following the massacre of the innocents. My contacts with the Coptic monks at Langdale End have re-awakened my interest in this period in the life of the Holy Family. Two thousand years ago, the Child Jesus found safety and blessed the land of Egypt and the very beginning of the Coptic Church. As Christianity spread in Egypt churches were built throughout the length and breadth of the land on sites chosen because the Holy Family and Our Lord blessed them on their travels. When we celebrate and pray for the universal church and its unity we must always include the Orthodox as well as Catholics and Protestants. The Church continues to be persecuted and we who worship with freedom must remember and pray for the persecuted church and welcome Christian exiles who seek safety among us.

Finally the Holy Family was able to return to Nazareth and set up the family home and business there allowing our Lord to grow in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man during those hidden years until the He was ready to begin his public ministry. Nazareth was where Mary and Joseph grew up, met and were married; where Joseph died and Mary became a widow. We can guess a good deal about their family life there even from the little we know and thank God for the way it formed and influenced Our Lord. Marriage and family are under great pressure and even attack today but from our Christian perspective we must continue to trumpet its importance in God’s plan for humanity and fight for all that strengthens and upholds it and against all that would undermine and destroy it. As the Chinese philosopher Confucius said long ago “The strength of the nation derives from the integrity of the home” and even the atheist, George Bernard Shaw, wrote “ Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anyone to the country and to human kind is to bring up a family” whilst John Paul II declared 2 Every effort to make society sensitive to the importance of the family is a great service to humanity. As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live”.

Today we thank God for our Lord’s family and for our own families and for the family of the Church.

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.