Feast of the Holy Family
December 28, 2008
Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass
of the
St. Thomas More Society
celebrated at
St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church , 1013 Wood Street
Scranton, PA
Luke 2:22-40
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
When God became man in Jesus Christ, in the mystery of the Incarnation, it became necessary for Him to enter into the human institutions that as God, He Himself had created. For example, we know that Jesus was an observant Jew, as to the Law blameless. In fact, the Gospel today relates how Jesus was presented in the Temple according to the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law. We know, also, that Jesus was a loyal subject of the state that governed Judea during the time He walked the earth. He refused to foment insurrection as many hope He would, and He even said it was lawful to pay taxes to the Roma Emperor as long as one gave to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Though Jesus was the Lord of both these institutions—the Church and the state—He entered into them in order to share most fully in our human nature, and also to demonstrate how we are to live in relation to both Church and state. He showed that we are to fulfill the religious obligations God has placed upon us, and that while we are to be loyal subjects of the emperor, we can give only to the state what belongs to the state. The state cannot demand what rightly belongs to God, nor can we give to the state what is God’s.
These are important lessons to remember as we recall the most profound human institution of Divine origin into which Jesus entered. As we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the most profound institution, the basis for all other human institutions, is, in fact, the family. When God became man in Jesus Christ, we note that a man was not, in the most literal sense, necessary. Jesus was, after all, conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, our Blessed Mother Mary. But even though Joseph was not literally necessary, our Lord’s foster father was deemed by God our Father to be most necessary in raising the Son of God from infancy to adulthood. It is of the utmost importance to recognize that even though Jesus could have been born to a single mother, and raised by a single mother, when Jesus came into the world, He came into an intact family consisting of one man and one woman, husband and wife. This is the family model into which God saw fit to become man. It is thus the model for every family that comes after it.
There exists much confusion on this score throughout the world, but we must note that even many of our fellow Catholics seem not to understand the implications of the Holy Family for family life. For example, many people were encouraged that last month, the people of California reversed by referendum the decision by the California Supreme Court that legalized “marriage” between two people of the same sex. While I too was pleased with the outcome of the referendum, I was disheartened to see that 47.5% of voters did not understand the very nature of marriage, as they voted to eliminate the age-old, natural distinction between a real marriage and a false one. Almost half the voters in California think that two people of the same sex can be married?! That’s not at all encouraging.
This confusion stems from a lack of appreciation for why, when Jesus came into the world, He came into an intact family, one man and one woman committed to each other for life. We know that Americans have a hard time with commitment. We have a divorce rate of fifty percent, and when a neighborhood begins to deteriorate we are more apt to leave the neighborhood and start a new one than we are to stay and fight to preserve what we have. If you doubt this last example, consider that the city of Scranton has half the population it did seventy years ago. Half of the people have left rather than stay and fight to improve their city. Long ago, we as a people foreswore commitment as our strong suit!
I wonder whether many people even believe that the commitment that Mary and Joseph had to each other is possible. Regardless, the fact that Jesus was born into an intact family demonstrates that this is the environment in which God desires for children to be raised. It is, after all, the environment that He chose for Himself to be raised in when in Jesus Christ He became man. For our families to approximate the virtue of the Holy Family, husbands and wives must be committed to love each other and only each other until they are parted by death. Children will prosper, just as Jesus did, when they are raised in a home where the man and the woman, the husband and the wife, are committed to each other until death.
As my California illustration demonstrates, the confusion in America runs far deeper now than an aversion to life-long commitment. We are so confused today that we do not even recognize the natural complementary between man and woman upon which a true union, a true commitment is based. Jesus was not born to a single mother, nor was He born into a same-sex union, because both of these models lack the most necessary component from which life can and does proceed—complementarity. Children, quite simply, require a mother and a father, and the different gifts that women and men bring to the table, in order for them to become the well-rounded servants of God each person at his creation God intends him to become. Though Jesus did not need an earthly father to conceive Him, God did not deprive His Son of an earthly father to form Him as a person. Now please note I am not talking about people who for no fault of their own raise children on their own. I am not talking about people who have been abandoned or widowed. But to choose single parenthood – or to choose for two people of the same sex to raise a child – is to choose deprivation for that child. Such confusion leads people intentionally to deprive children of the very environment in which our Lord was raised. We ought, instead, to uphold the Holy Family as our model and do all in our power to ensure our children are raised within committed marriages that reflect the natural complementarity of which our Lord Himself was a beneficiary.
Which brings me to where I began: marriage, like the Church and like the state, is a human institution. But it is a human institution of Divine origin. Moreover, marriage and the family preceded both the Church and the state, both of which God created after He created the first marriage, the first family. The Church does not have the authority to change the Divine definition of marriage, nor will She. The state does not have the right to redefine what God created the state to protect.
What I am talking about here are our very origins, the very beginning of the human race. If you want God’s definition of marriage and family, you need look no further than Adam and Eve prior to the Fall. They fell and the true image of marriage, God’s true intention for marriage, became distorted. People entered into all kinds of false unions. On this, the Feast of the Holy Family, we recognize that in Joseph, Mary and Jesus, God reaffirmed His intention for marriage and the family. After centuries in the wilderness, God showed us the truth He intends our unions to reflect and to proclaim. And in the death of His Son, in his conquest of sin, God redeemed marriage and gave us the means to be as committed to Him and to each other as He is to us. Marriage is the life-long committed and exclusive exchange of complementary gifts that issues in life. That is the definition of the Holy Family and what should define every one of our unions, as well.