Feast of the Holy Family

Today's Feast has not always been one with which I could resonate well because I grew up in what would euphemistically be called a "dysfunctional" family in which love was a difficult and sometimes difficult-to-find reality. Thus, the symbol of the Holy Family was one I was sure I did not understand and might never really come close to understanding. On the other hand,  both then and now, I have had many really profound experiences of  "family" in a broader and less formal sense including families who "adopted me" (again, in an informal but real sense), in music groups, with friends throughout school, via parish communities, and with Sisters with whom I lived in community or otherwise shared the values and bonds of religious life. 

In all of these, I learned the importance and challenge of loving and being loved into wholeness, that is, loving and being loved in a way that allowed my deepest potential as a person to be realized. And yet, that wasn't always an easy thing to allow! It took and still takes the focused work I associate with spiritual direction, the deep and intense silence of prayer, and the community in all its forms that grounds and renders meaningful and coherent the eremitical solitude that represents the context, charism, and goal of my own life with God. Luke's infancy narrative gives an account of Mary's single powerful "Fiat!" and notes, "She pondered all these things in her heart," which points to a process extending far beyond that single "Fiat". Coming to be the bearer of Light and Life God wills us each to be in Christ takes innumerable "Yes-es" -- and not a few no's as well! The pondering we do in our hearts is not always peace-filled, and the Magnificat we learn to sing with our lives may be more compelling for the dissonances and darkness that continue to mark it in various ways.

 (Reprise) Christmas is a season of Joy not because there is no darkness, no sin, no oppression, or death, but because it reminds us that God has made of our humanity a sacrament of (his) own life and light in spite of the continuing presence of these other realities. History has become the sanctuary of the transcendent and eternal God. Our God is now Emmanuel (God-with-us) and we, the littlest and the least have been ennobled (and revealed as made noble!) beyond anything we might otherwise have imagined. In and through Christ we too are called to be Emmanuel for our world, in and through the Christ Event we are each made to be temples of the Holy Spirit. As Advent reminded us, we live in "in-between" times, a time of already but not-yet. There is work to be done, and suffering we will still experience. But the light and joy of Christmas is real and something which will inspire and empower all that still needs to be done: caring for, loving (!) the least and littlest so they truly know they are the dwelling places of God; opposing the Herods of this world in whatever effective way we can so the Kingdom of God may be more fully realized by divine grace through time; allowing the joy and potential of the Christ's nativity in our world and ourselves to grow to its proper fullness of grace and stature as we embrace authentic humanity and holiness.

My very best wishes to all on this Feast of the Holy Family and my special thanks to the Sisters of the Holy Family (Fremont, CA) for the charism embodied by the members of their congregation and the mission they embrace so selflessly. As they mark the renewal of their vows on this feast we celebrate that they have been and remain a light to the littlest and the least amongst us, to the lost, the abandoned and rejected, to the homeless or those who are otherwise without families, and to all those who have found in them a compassionate Presence capable in Christ of healing the wounds occasioned by the sin and death at work in our world and sometimes in our own families. I personally locate them at the crossroads of Mercy and Grace and I know I am not alone in this.