Christmas II Holy Family

The Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:22-40

[We] “haven’t spoken since.” I send my sister and her wife a Christmas gift every year but this year I’ve not heard back.

We got into a terrible argument. My mother got so angry. It escalated. “It ended with me telling [my mother] to leave.”

I cried having to block my father from my email this fall; a constant stream of messages that would not stop even after I had asked. “I’m just sad, just because, you know, he’s my dad, and he’s always helped me if I’ve ever needed it.”

“I feel like I’ve been in mourning for someone who is still alive. My mother was an enthusiastic gardener and antique shopper and she became obsessed spending all her free time staring at her iPad. I could no longer get through to her. The person [my mother] used to be is not here anymore. I miss her so much.”

These are four family situations that were reported on by the New York Times around Thanksgiving [See NYTimes, Saturday, 28 November 2020]. They reflect the growing intolerance in our country over this past national election and the politics surrounding it causing deep rifts in families. When asked if relationships would heal in the future, everyone interviewed for the article responded they did not think so – at least not immediately.

Differences of all kinds are costing relationships. They range from political perceptions, strong religious divisions in Hasidic communities as reported by The New Yorker magazine [7 December 2020 issue], and stories of estrangement and suicide among gay, transgender and intersex family members. The lives of these families are marked by anger, sadness, mourning, loss, and feelings of helplessness. Something is dying.

As I read these articles of disintegrating families, my sadness for them resulted in the realization I had no family. Dead are parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles, & even now, a first cousin, my generation. Other cousins and my sibling are not close. It is a place many people eventually find themselves. My singleness, if you will though, is the natural course of events for many people. On the other hand, these reported situations are…are just deeply sad.

They, like Simeon’s words today, clash with the joy of Christmas as he speaks of “the rise and fall of many…a sign that will be contradicted…a piercing sword…”  How do you hear those words? Is our present wounded situation the experience of a sword piercing not just parents, but the hearts of siblings, daughters and sons and friends? And what might this mean?

I really don’t understand what it means when a person identifies as transgender and intersex. I have encountered a narrow-mindedness and lack of historicity in some Catholics longing for a perceived past and truth that I don’t believe ever existed and so leave the community. Family members have always argued but today wounds are so deep.

Is this why we pray into today’s liturgy, “We offer you, [O God] the sacrifice of conciliation, [a sacrifice of healing] humbling asking that…you may establish our families firmly in your grace and peace…” ?

It is ironic that as some families are wounded the pandemic has forced us to realize home is the safest place to be. The virus has sent us back to that space where life begins and where we first experienced love at its best.

‘Family’ may never have been easy to live out. I can’t imagine the Holy Family always understood each other. But today there are extreme pressures upon people that family has never encountered.

As Paul writes about the Christian family, he instructs us in necessary values. These values though will not save us or our families from rises and falls, from contradictions and painful piercing swords. But like the crucified they will lead to that sacrifice of healing. Thus Paul invites us into…

Heartfelt compassion. The ability to suffer with another person. No questions asked. No judgements.

Humility. The realization that we are wounded and in our pain we wound others. That our personal life does not encompass all life experience. Thus humility first means being willing to listen to another person’s story. No commentary or judgement.

Patience. The ability to wait with and for another person. Our incompleteness and yearning for wholeness is an individual journey that cannot be rushed by anyone else.

Forgiveness. We experience healing when we heal the wounds of others.

And then, sing! Sing psalms and hymns. Sing joy and sorrow. Sing lament and hope. Whatever the song, breathe deeply and sing. For singing is healing, our body and soul together expressing the divine within each of us. And is that not an aspect of family and holiness?