{"id":1261,"date":"2013-12-29T09:54:08","date_gmt":"2013-12-29T14:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=1261"},"modified":"2013-12-29T09:54:08","modified_gmt":"2013-12-29T14:54:08","slug":"homily-holy-family-year-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/homily-holy-family-year-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Homily – Holy Family, Year A"},"content":{"rendered":"

Holy Family, Year A<\/a>
\nSirach 3:2-6, 12-14
\nColossians 3:12-21
\nMatthew 2:13-15, 19-23
\nDecember 29, 2013<\/p>\n

\u201cBearing with one another and forgiving one another.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

These are words that Paul writes to the Colossians.\u00a0 Who do you think of as you hear these words?\u00a0 Who is it that you feel you have to bear with?\u00a0 Who do you need to forgive?<\/p>\n

It can apply to various people in our lives but it can apply to our families in a unique way.\u00a0 If you have a friend who you feel hurts you a lot, we are called to forgive them or perhaps to bear with them through a difficulty but in then the end, if they are a \u2018bad friend\u2019 we can find a new friend.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t work that way with family.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s with family that we learn compassion and kindness, humility and gentleness, and perhaps most of all patience.<\/p>\n

Today we celebrate the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.\u00a0 What does it mean to be a family?<\/p>\n

God did not create us to be isolated individuals.\u00a0 God created us to be in communion with one another.\u00a0 We see the communion in the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who are united in perfect unity.<\/p>\n

We see it in the Holy Family.\u00a0 Jesus, Mary, and Joseph do not exist as isolated individuals who come together for selfish gain.<\/p>\n

Who leads the Holy Family?<\/p>\n

Reading today\u2019s gospel, in terms of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Joseph is leading the way.\u00a0 This can bring to mind Paul\u2019s words \u201cwives be subordinate to your husbands.<\/i>\u201d\u00a0 These are not popular words today.\u00a0 Whether we are female or male, we don\u2019t like to be told what to do.<\/p>\n

A wife who tries to honor these words may feel like her husband always makes decisions that are selfish.\u00a0 Any husband who does may hear the words \u201cwives be subordinate to your husband<\/i>\u201d and uses them to get his wife to cater to his every need, hasn\u2019t heard the words that follow \u201chusbands love your wives.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

If we love someone and the love is mutual we should expect that each makes accommodates the needs of the other but not \u201caccommodating the other\u201d is not enough.<\/p>\n

In love, we go beyond accommodating to making sacrifices for the ones we love.<\/p>\n

I already mentioned how Joseph appears to be leading the way.\u00a0 We see he does not make decisions based on his own needs and wants.\u00a0 If he did, he probably won\u2019t have moved the family to Egypt.<\/p>\n

He moved the family for Jesus.\u00a0 Jesus was not safe in Israel so Joseph uprooted the family, sacrificing the life he had for the family.<\/p>\n

Before Paul says \u201cwives be subordinate to your husbands<\/i>\u201d and \u201chusbands love your wives\u201d<\/i> he says \u201cdo everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Joseph, in taking Mary (who was pregnant) into his home and taking the family to Egypt was following God\u2019s will.<\/p>\n

What does \u2018being a family\u2019 mean for you?<\/p>\n

Do you pick a spouse who brings you physical pleasure and is willing to do things for you or do you seek a spouse that helps you to be become a better spouse, finding love and in finding love, find how God is calling you to live?<\/p>\n

I wrote a paper<\/a> in seminary that used a similar passage from Paul and titled it \u201cMutual Submission\u201d.\u00a0 <\/a>In the paper<\/a>, which is on my website<\/a>, I describe the mutual submission as to one another.<\/p>\n

That was ten years ago.\u00a0 I still believe what I wrote then (or I won\u2019t still have the paper on my website) but as we celebrate the Holy Family, I think we can extend the \u201cmutual submission\u201d to the whole family, mother, father, and children to submit to one another (making sacrifices for one another) and to submit together to God.<\/p>\n

In this a family becomes what we call \u201cdomestic church\u201d, an image of God\u2019s love, living that love.\u00a0 It begins with coming together as a family to church.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I enjoy seeing families in church, together<\/i>.\u00a0 It\u2019s great to see people in church period but I find a special joy in finding families coming to church together.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t matter the age.\u00a0 I can look out in the pews and see multiple generations of families, not just parents and children, but grandparents too; three generations (sometimes even four) sitting together.\u00a0 With the families I am thinking of the youngest generations are in their teens and the oldest is often retired but I would say that in every one of the families, it started with bringing babies to church, establishing the importance of God and coming to church early in life that it can become part of who we are on a core level.<\/p>\n

In doing this, we follow the example of the Holy Family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Holy Family, Year A Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 Colossians 3:12-21 Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23 December 29, 2013 \u201cBearing with one another and forgiving one another.\u201d These are words that Paul writes to the Colossians.\u00a0 Who do you think of as you hear these words?\u00a0 Who is it that you feel you have to bear with?\u00a0 Who do …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Homily – Holy Family, Year A’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-kl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1262,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1261\/revisions\/1262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}