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
- But like all families, the Holy Family was a real family
- Joy, Laughter, Love
- Christ would have been a child like all children
- cf Max Ernst’s 1926 Image of 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
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