December 30, 2019
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the Feast of the Holy Family (Year A) on December 29, 2019 at St. Austin Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128; Colossians 3:12-17; and Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23.
I think the Church is brilliant to designate the Sunday after Christmas as the Feast of the Holy Family, since this may be one of the few Sundays of the year where everyone in a busy, far-flung family can come to Mass together. As we hear of the unexpected challenges that faced Mary and Joseph and their newly-formed family, let us remember that things seem to go wrong, even for saintly and sinless people… and that God can still bless us when things don’t go according to our pre-conceived plans.
Our other two readings, from Sirach and Colossians, present more idealistic visions of family and mutual respect. Although Colossians was written as instructions to a Christian worshipping community, many couples choose this passage to be read at their wedding. But even if our relationships with our own families are not ideal, let us search these readings for the wisdom of God that applies to our own lives.
On the Feast of the Holy Family, we like to celebrate baptisms, and this Mass is no exception!
I cannot imagine what Joseph must have thought when he learned that King Herod wanted to kill his son. We can probably presume that Joseph and Mary did not speak the Egyptian language and that they did not understand many of the subtleties of Egyptian culture. And yet, Joseph was expected to eke out a living in Egypt to provide for his wife and young child.
I cannot imagine what Mary must have thought about the situation, either. She had given her unconditional “yes” to God, yet she probably never imagined that her “yes” would lead to her family becoming refugees in a foreign land.
In the Christmas season, we celebrate the Incarnation, that God came and dwelt among us a human being. The implications of the Incarnation are far-reaching. It means that we can find God here and now, in our lived experiences, in the immediacy of our own culture, in our own work, in our own relationships, just as we understand Jesus through his Middle-Eastern culture 2,000 years ago, in relationship with his parents and friends.
As 2019 turns into 2020 in the United States, the very concept of “family” is quite different for some of us than it was for Jesus’ own family. Some of us are products of blended families, non-traditional families, or communities of friends who have become our chosen families. Nevertheless, through our incarnational spirituality, the Church has lots of wisdom to help us with all our interpersonal relationships.
Just when we think that we have insights into how to make relationships work perfectly, things change. A family member gets sick. A child is born. Someone loses a job. In every life, relationships will be challenged again and again by unexpected circumstances. It happened to Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, so we should expect it to happen to us, too.
The British poet David Whyte wrote a wonderful book about personal fulfillment. Now, before you roll your eyes and think that a poet can’t give practical advice, hear me out: Whyte is a former marine biologist, and he leads hiking expeditions in the Himalayas. Whyte argues that human beings have the potential to find fulfillment in each of three different spheres of their lives. The first sphere he calls “marriage,” although he uses the term to embrace other types of long-term relationships in which two people’s lives are intimately entwined. The second he calls “career,” even though it can include the kinds of work people do for which they are not paid. The third he calls “the inner self,” which I think we in this room can safely call “spirituality.”
Whyte argues that each of the three spheres are more similar to each other than we usually acknowledge. His book is called The Three Marriages, because Whyte insists that we are not only married to a spouse, but also married to a career, and married to a search for understanding our innermost selves. Each of these three relationships can span many decades. Each will bring fulfillment; each will bring frustration. We journey with our spouse, with our field of work, and with our God. We are changed by these relationships, but we are fools to think that we can mold our spouse, our career, or our God to our exact specifications! That’s the beauty of the Incarnation.
Think about it. In some ways, our life in a career field can be very similar to life in a marriage. When we choose a career, there’s an initial “falling in love” with the work. That initial passion sustains us through the hard times, and as we continue in the field, we change in our relationship with our work in unexpected ways.
Our experience of God is a lot like a marriage, too. We have an initial encounter with the transcendent, but no matter how much time we spend in prayer, meditation, and study, we can never completely understand who God is, just as we will never truly understand our spouse.
But the genius of Whyte’s book, I think, is its incarnational insight. Whyte argues that we need to stop thinking that all of our personal fulfillment is supposed to come through one of the three spheres, and that the other two spheres are threats to the first. Whyte urges us to place the three spheres in conversation with one another, in what he calls “a marriage of marriages.” He writes:
In bringing these other marriages in as necessary friends, we change the context of our struggles, open a window of fresh air and probably surprise our partner at the same time. We begin to see these other two marriages, not as the usual rivals, or as competing lovers, but as necessary allies or even extended family, who must be invited in to help with the greater happiness of the first marriage.1
Parents of the children who are about to be baptized: look at the friends and family members around you. Now, please stand up and turn around to look at the rest of us in the Church. In baptism, your children will be “knit” into our ultimate family on this earth, the Body of Christ. Wherever life leads your children, it is primarily through family, friends, Church, and career that your child will experience God. Together, it is through our feet, our hands, our eyes, and our hearts that Christ will change the world.
Photo: “Three Spheres” by Steve Snodgrass is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Footnote
- David Whyte, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship (New York: Riverhead, 2009), p. 348. ↩