The Holy Family

            The teaching that is at the very center, the very heart, of our Faith as Catholics is perhaps also the most difficult to get a hold of.  I mean that in the sense that the Incarnation -- the belief that Jesus Christ, born on Christmas, is really and truly God-come-in-the-flesh -- that this belief is so staggering it seems the closer we get to it in our thoughts the more depth and mystery it takes on.  How could it be that the baby Jesus, so obviously human, a little baby boy, needing His mother’s care as do all infants, is also God?  How can God be held in the arms and nursed?  How can God be carried about and taught to read and write and all the other things that children learn to do?  How can this be? 

            Of course, we can also, as we contemplate the latter part of Jesus’ life on earth, we can also ask, How can it be that God suffers, that He allows others to betray, deny, mock and torture Him?  How can God be crucified?

            The only answer, of course, is in getting back to the Catholic Faith’s insistence that God can only do and suffer all these things if He really and truly becomes human.  That is, if and only if, there is such a thing as the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.  What a staggering thought!  That the men and women who held discourse with Jesus in the Gospels, when they talked to Him and looked into His eyes, they were looking into the eyes of the One through whose eyes God saw the world He had created. 

            We believe, we profess each Sunday, in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made; one in being with the Father.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit He was born of the Virgin Mary and became Man.  Became Man.  There’s the Christmas part of our holy creed.  God became Man in Jesus Christ.  God in Himself, in the eternal joy of His own existence, knows nothing of our world of change, suffering, sorrow and death.  Yet He knows all of it, intimately and personally, because through Jesus Christ He took it in, welcomed all that it means to be human into His own experience.  As Man He could fully and completely identify with us.  As God He could -- and did -- give it all a new and redemptive meaning.  All the human things Jesus Christ -- true God and true Man -- went through, He sanctified, made holy with His divine presence.  

            So then beginning with Jesus’ conception in the womb of the Virgin this played out.  This place of the beginning of life has been hallowed, for the Lord has passed through it.  Indeed, woman herself, and therefore all women, holds a special place in humanity, for she is God’s means of coming into the world.  Womanhood, motherhood, femininity are all graced because God has so honored them.  And then infancy and childhood, these too are now sacred to us, for at one time God was the Child we worship in the manger.  Having passed through this stage of human growth, Jesus ever kept it with Him, warning us that we too must be childlike if we would enter the Kingdom of Heaven.   Labor -- good, hard work -- was not beneath our Lord; rather, He engaged in the use of His hands to work and earn a living, thereby giving a sense of worth and purpose to this very human activity.  He graced with His presence weddings, dinners, debates and discussions, elevating all that pertains to being human.  In being baptized, He prepared the holy, cleansing waters for all of us who would follow in His footsteps.  As a Man He could be baptized, as God He infused the power of God’s spirit into this Sacrament.  

            But today we focus on that aspect of being human most familiar to us, which Jesus Himself lived through and honored.  Family life.  God-come-in-the-flesh was not too good for the family.  On the contrary, He took what is naturally good -- that most basic unit of human society -- and made it holy.  And so every time a woman and a man come together in marriage, a little divine drama is undertaken:  the Christian couple promise to so love and respect each other faithfully for the rest of their lives, that their very endeavor to do such becomes God’s opportunity to yet again grace our world with His life-giving presence, this time in the Sacrament of Matrimony, much like Jesus graced His own human family.  When husband and wife love one another, stay true to their commitment to each other and let their faithful love overflow into the lives of precious children, then it’s like Christmas all over again -- and again and again and again.  

            That’s how holy the family is.  It’s no wonder, of course, that it is then under attack in a culture that puts little stock in commitment, faithfulness, and sacrifice (the sacrifice that is required to live out marriage vows and raise children).  The fidelity and utter respect that Joseph had for his wife, and our Lady’s deep concern for her divine Son’s welfare, her faithful following of Him all the way to Calvary -- all this is lost upon a culture that whines about self-fulfillment, “my rights” and “being independent.”

            We are losing sight of the profound truth that real happiness cannot be found if directly sought.  Rather, happiness is found in being human, really human, in the sense that our Savior Himself showed us.  Such happiness happens when we refuse to let the world strip away our childlikeness, when we pour ourselves into our work in imitation of our Creator, when we lay down our rights and so-called independence so that we might, instead, know the great comfort and joy of loving someone else.  Happiness can begin to dawn in the human heart when we stop chasing the pipe dream of self-fulfillment, and realize that fulfillment is the fruit of sacrifice, the seeking of the good of others, especially one’s spouse and children. 

            Again, to go back to our Lord as model:  who else really but He -- God Himself -- has a claim to independence, and yet He laid aside the glories of heaven, and came to us in poverty so that we might know the riches of God’s Kingdom?  Here is no clinging to personal rights and dreams of self-fulfillment, but rather a pouring out of Himself for us.  And even as Jesus contemplated the Cross itself, as the writer of the book of Hebrews tells us, He endured it, He chose to go through it, for the joy that was set before Him, the joy of seeing us set free from our sins. 

            The joy.  That’s what we are talking about.  The joy that flows from being human after the manner of Jesus, who is the Creator of humanity come in the flesh.  And that joy is found not in pursuing the latest product of Hollywood but in loving, loving God first and foremost as our author and our end, and each other, spouses, children, friends and all the family.  That’s what God wants of us.  That’s why He entered our world 2000 years ago, to form us all into His own holy family.  That’s why, at this time of year, at Christmas, we appropriately sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.”