parish scripture teaching

Homily Notes: Holy Family Year C

  • Inevitable question: What did you do for Christmas
    • “I was working”
    • Lots of people worked over Christmas
      • To manage the floods, restore rail network
      • In hospitals and nursing homes
      • To keep the retail monster churning
      • To keep this world safe in far-off places – our Forces and in local places of tension – our Police
  • For many the work of the season was to keep the family together
  • For some the season is a time of tension and stress
  • Remember that Christmas is not yet over.
  • Christmas started on Christmas Eve when Advent gave way to the Nativity
  • It will continue until Candlemas on Feb 3rd (this year) when we will gather together in S. Cecilia’s with Bishop John for the Confirmation of Jayne, Clair, Amy, Karen and Angi – a fitting culmination of our Christmas celebrations
  • Please pray for them as they continue their faith journey and as they join the wider family of the Church
    • A family which transcends blood ties
    • A family which is like other families sometimes a bit messy, a bit dysfunctional, which disagrees and sometimes even falls out
    • The Holy Family is held as a model of family life, and certainly when our own family life feels under stress we can seek our the intercession of the holy famly
      • But like all families, the Holy Family was a real family
        • Anxiety for our children
        • Panic, when we lose one in a crowded place
        • Worry about where their life is going
        • Fear for their lives
          • Never forget that the Holy Family were refugees, Asylum Seekers in Egypt
    • Joy, Laughter, Love
    • Christ would have been a child like all children
      • cf Max Ernst’s 1926 Image of Mary Smacking Jesus

max_ernst_mary_smacking_jesus

 

  • Remember that being like a child is not sinful
  • We should therefore take the opportunity to pause occasionally (amid the chaos of Christmas preparations) and treasure our family
    • Especially if at this time of year they have come to us from some distance
    • We should give thanks for what we have, and consider what we need to rebuild, to restore, to reunite
    • We should look to the Holy Family and give thanks for what they had
    • And seek to be like them
      • United in love and prayer
      • Amen
By spr