Christmas, we are told, is a time for family.  And even where the religious significance of Christmas has been forgotten or reduced to something marginal, it remains the central family feast of the year: a time not only to give gifts, but for families to come together, to reconcile differences, to take some time out from their busy lives to experience the gift of each other's presence.   

Obviously, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has thrown a wrench into our family gatherings this Christmas – whether at home or in church.  But then, isn’t Christmas always complicated, by one thing or another?  For many, Christmas is a time of great joy and festivity; for others, it is a time of disappointment, the painful realization that one's family life does not live up to the image of what a "happy family" is supposed to look like.  

Perhaps it's that dull ache of the first Christmas after the death of a beloved family member, or the pain of a recent divorce or estrangement, or the stress of illness or financial difficulties.  Or maybe in these pandemic times, it’s just feeling very far away, from one's family, whether that distance is geographical or emotional. Christmas puts us in touch with both the deepest possibilities and hopes for our families, and with the challenge of overcoming the obstacles and healing the wounds which seem to prevent us from fulfilling this potential, for living this hope.   

As a Church, as a nation, indeed as a world – we need those particular gifts which families bring.  In celebrating the feast of the Holy Family on this day after Christmas, we recognize the manifestation of God's love in one particular family – that of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  But we also celebrate the gift of all human families: all those who choose to live together in covenant, knit together by bonds of love, faithfulness and commitment.

In our first reading today, we encounter Hannah and Elkanah, an infertile couple, advanced in age, desperately desiring a child of their own.  (It is, in fact, a very contemporary problem: so many couples, even today, deeply desire to have a child, but struggle to conceive and carry a child to term.)  But Hannah believed in God’s promise to her: she put her faith in God, and her prayer was heard.  And she says something quite wonderful, in entrusting her son to the service of God in the Temple: “as long as he lives, he is given to the Lord."  Hannah knows that her son is a gift from God.  A child is not a possession, something which she owns, which is her “right” to have.  A child is a precious gift, entrusted to loving parents, but in the end, “just loaned”: for all our children belong ultimately to God.

Then in Luke’s Gospel, we have this one episode from the so-called “hidden life” of Jesus – the only incident related of his life linking the infancy narratives and his Baptism by John, which launches his public ministry.  We meet Mary and Joseph – a little older, surely a little wiser.  We meet Jesus, who at age 12, was probably preparing for his bar mitzah – that time when a Jewish boy accepts adult responsibility, becomes a “son of righteousness”, a follower of God’s commandments. 

What is the point of this little story?  Why did Luke choose to include it?  Why do we read it during the Christmas season?  It is because, as in the narratives of Jesus’ conception and birth, it continues the motif of the mystery of God’s Word taking flesh in the person of Jesus: fully human and fully divine. 

In this text, family ties are affirmed as precious and important.  The family of Mary and Joseph – the extended family in the “caravan” with whom they had travelled to Jerusalem, among whom Mary and Joseph assumed Jesus was safe – is that place where Jesus will grow into maturity.  Here, he will be formed and prepared to embrace the great mission that the Father has prepared for him.  Through their love and care, through their guidance and discipline, Jesus grows “in strength and wisdom, in divine and human favour.” 

Yet he will always remain something of a mystery to them: although fully a member of this family headed by Joseph and Mary, Jesus belongs first and foremost to God.  He must be about “his Father’s business”: not the workshop of the carpenter, but the work of his Father’s kingdom.

This means that Mary and Joseph will have to let go.  Jesus has just been loaned to them for a time.  He belongs to something much bigger: to Someone.  They will encourage Jesus to leave home and follow his own vocation: his dream, his destiny, his mission.  Is this not true, in an analogous way, for all parents with regard to their children?  They go their own way.  They form their own opinions, their own judgments, their own values.  They leave home.  They move away – sometimes far away.  They marry – or they don’t.  They have children of their own – or not.  Sometimes, tragically, they die before we do.  And in each case, there is a further letting go.  Ultimately, parents give their children two gifts: roots, and wings.  Parents let go, trusting their kids will find their own way, without forgetting where they come from.  That they will know there is always a home to come back to.

We sometimes find it hard to relate to the Holy Family.  We put them up on a pedestal: perfect, holy, but somehow remote and unapproachable. Cardboard cut-outs, dressed in brown and blue, hands folded, haloes securely in place.  And yet, apart from a few extraordinary occurrences in their life, Mary and Joseph were people very much like us.  They struggled with doubts, fears, questions; they had to plunge ahead in life with no guarantees, just with faith that God would somehow make it all come right in the end.  As a family, they experienced poverty, danger, exile, homelessness, hard work, sickness, and death.  But I am sure that they also knew good things: laughter, togetherness, affection, trust, forgiveness, acceptance, commitment, and most of all, love.

What is more, they were deeply aware of the presence of God in their lives. They sought at all times to listen to God's voice speaking in the depth of their hearts, and through the events of their daily lives. And they acted upon this voice. This is what makes them “holy”: their God-centeredness. This is their ongoing gift to the Church, to us today. Their unity was not just “family for family's sake,” a family turned in on itself, protected from the world. 

In their daily tasks, in their relations with their extended family and their neighbours in Nazareth, Mary, Joseph and Jesus lived out the love of God, who had brought them together for a purpose, and entrusted to them a mission. 

We live in a time when many people struggle with their experience of family. With all the added restrictions on gatherings, many of us are missing being with friends and family this Christmas.  As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder! But we all know that even when we do get together, every family has its flaws as well as its strengths, the happy and the dysfunctional ways in which we relate (or fail to relate) to each other.  There is indeed no such thing as a “perfect family”. Every family fails, in small or large ways, in its attempts to communicate love, respect, and acceptance, both within and beyond the bounds of the family. Christmas is a time where we are aware of both the power and the fragility of our family bonds.

But isn't that why Christ came into our world 2000 years ago?  Isn't that why he continues to come every year?  To bring hope, healing, and comfort to those of us who, in spite of our best efforts, continue to mess up on a regular basis?  If we focus solely on our wounds and dysfunctions, on conflicts within our families, we may lose hope.  If we smooth them all over and pretend they don't exist, we're living in a dream world and as soon as Christmas is over, we revert to the same old patterns.  But if we bring them to the Lord, to Jesus who comes into our world as Saviour and Healer, then we discover a whole new meaning for Christmas.  The child in the manger becomes not just a Saviour, but my Saviour. The Holy Family becomes not just Jesus' family, but my family also. Then my family – at home, but also my church family – can become more inclusive and welcoming, because rooted in a God who welcomes all his children into his embrace.

So, as we celebrate this feast of the Holy Family, let us ask for the strength and courage of Joseph, for the peaceful and patient love of Mary, and for God’s very presence in Jesus to come into our hearts and into our families.  Let us open wide the doors of our parishes and church communities, so that any who have experienced pain or abuse or rejection in their families of origin, or from society, may find in our Church family a place of warmth, comfort, security and trust: a home.