Holy Family
Peace In The Middle Of A Storm
Feast Of The Holy Family 2023
Deacon Tom Vert
Preached: Dec. 31, 2023
There can be peace in the middle of the storm!
It is well documented in tornadoes of even the highest wind speed, that the center of the storm is quiet and calm, even though everything around it is going crazy!
Sometimes, we might see life like this, if we watch CBC or CNN news each day we hear of wars in the Middle East and the Ukraine, wildfires, drought, flooding; high inflation, the price of food and housing, and season of viruses – Covid, flu, RSV.
This storm of constant negative news battering our lives each and every day can be overwhelming, if we think that we are alone, and our only job is to survive.
And yet, when reflecting on the gospel reading today, I think this thought could have been on the minds of Mary and Joseph!
We sometimes think life was perfect for the Holy Family – all dream like, like our statues and stained glass and paintings of the Holy Family.
They are great role models or mentors in the faith life, not because they are perfect, but instead because they endured the storms of life and thrived in their faith, their joy, in love and with peace.
What did they really endure? How about:
- Mary as a pregnant teenage who was not yet married and the judgement, she would
have received from the local community. - There were living in a land occupied by the Romans with strict rules on how they were to live.
- Travelling 100km from Nazareth to Bethlehem on a donkey when Mary was 9 months
pregnant. - Giving birth in a stable with barn animals, no bed, no relatives, no friends and only strangers to help.
- Having to leave Bethlehem as refugees when Jesus was around 2 months old to escape Herod and go 200km to Egypt, leaving Joseph’s carpentry business in Nazareth.
- And later, Joseph dying and leaving Mary a widow before Jesus was even 30 years old and finally of course Jesus unfairly being crucified before his mother’s eyes as the crowds denied him and sent him to his death.
You can be sure that during a few of these events, Mary and Joseph must have said: “How do we endure during these storms?”
And they would have focused on their relationship with God, put themselves in His hands to follow the journey of life that God had asked them to live as parents of Jesus.
I think sometimes that we all believe that what is going on now is not normal…but what is normal? Normal really is accepting the unpredictability of this world. To accept that each day a new challenge may come, and yet, with a close personal relationship with God, we can not only endure but shine forth God’s love.
As we sang in the psalm today –“Happy are those who revere, honor, worship God, and walk on His path, in His ways.”
We are happy and thankful, not because everything is going perfectly, but instead because we know that we do not walk alone, we walk with our God by our side!
We rely on God no matter what comes, and peace will be with us, and we don’t worry about our actions controlling outcomes, but knowing that God will be acting in our lives and those around us to bring forth His plan.
But how do we do this? How do we walk in His ways? What are the daily actions we are to follow?
St. Paul tells the Colossians and tells us the answer: put on the virtues of the Christian life, and tap into the fruits of the Holy Spirit in our lives! He tells us in the 2 nd reading that we are God’s chosen ones, and He has made us holy and beloved!
As God’s chosen ones we are called to have:
- Heartfelt compassion and kindness – which means to have consideration of other’s situations with love and understanding and feet ready to move to help when called.
- We are to have gentleness and patience bearing with one another – we are to fully accept people for who they are, their weaknesses and faults and flaws, and allow them worth and space in our lives.
- We are to forgive as God forgives us. How many times has God forgiven us and taken us back in life? This same perpetual forgiveness will allow us to forgive 70×7 also!
- And of course, on top of all of this, wrapped in our lives, encompassing all, we are to put on love! As St. Paul told the Colossians and the Corinthians, love conquers all and is the greatest of all virtues.
- And finally, when we have asked God to come to us in this way, we feel the peace of “shalom” – the peace knowing that God is in command, and we are not. The peace in knowing that we have one who loves us unconditionally, whatever may come in life or how much we stumble on the spiritual journey.
- With all of this knowledge of God’s incredible love for us, we will be truly thankful and sing with joy to the Lord in our hearts!
- We know that God has accomplished all, our job is only to accept it and be thankful – you just have to enjoy it, you don’t have to make it happen!
This is truly the lesson of the Holy Family!
They lived in a world of war, sickness, poverty and stress and yet the tapped into God’s virtues despite the incredible challenges they faced in life.
We need to remember that Mary and Joseph accepted God’s plan; they didn’t come up with it! May we remember the Holy Family in our times of trouble, remember His promises and we will know that:
There can be peace in the middle of the storm!
The Scandal Of The Holy Family
4th Sunday Of Advent
Fr. Mark Gatto
Preached: December 18, 2022
The Holy Family is not the Traditional Family. Often you will hear people today, sometimes politicians, sometimes religious leaders, speak about the Traditional Family, and the values of the Traditional Family. But, the Holy Family itself would not be considered a Traditional Family.
God comes in a helpless little baby. Born away from home with no place to stay. As part of an oppressed people occupied by a foreign empire. God did not come among the rich, the powerful, the influential. Soon they would be forced to leave their homeland, like one of our modern day migrants.
Jesus was born in the context of a scandal. Mary was a young, unwed and pregnant woman. When she first received news of her pregnancy, she would have realized that she faced possible rejection by her family and community. She was faced with a humiliating situation. People gossiping about her, and at first she would be wondering if Joseph would accept her or not.
Joseph was also faced with great uncertainty. He was probably not sure what to think and was discerning about what to do next. His first thought was to quietly dismiss Mary, to lessen the reaction she would face.
Joseph and Mary were faced with a frightening and uncertain situation. It is not surprising that the first words both of them heard from the angel was “do not be afraid.”
The story of Joseph facing this situation is described in Matthew’s Gospel that we just heard. As he is discerning what to do, after a dream in which he reflects on a passage of the Prophet Isaiah, he overcomes his fear and chooses to take Mary as his wife and support her.
Joseph, reflecting on Isaiah, sees that this child will be Emmanuel, “God is with us.” In this surprising, unexpected, unplanned event. In this experience of scandal, God is with us.
One of the great spiritual battles each one of us faces to allow God to be with us is to overcome fear. We all need to hear in our hearts, “do not be afraid.” Fear is an obstacle to God being with us.
Sometimes we think that God is not with us for various reasons: We say, I am a sinner or I have made too many mistakes in life or my life situation is broken in some way. Some of us might say that my life or my family is not traditional or holy. Some might say that I am not important or famous.
But, the story of the birth of Jesus should help us to realize that God comes to us in surprising places and ways. God comes even in the midst of scandal. God comes where we do not expect. Often God comes among people who are rejected, excluded or avoided by so called traditional society.
The challenge we have is to recognize in our lives, Emmanuel, “God is with us.” Do not allow fear to prevent you from seeing God is with you, in your life, as it is. Our challenge is to find God with us even in unexpected places and situations.
The Holy Family was not a Traditional Family. Yet, there we can say, Emmanuel, God is with us.
Look around in your life, in unexpected places, in surprising events, in the messes of your life. Find God with you even there.
The Lesson Of The Holy Family
Feast of The Holy Family
Deacon Tom Vert
Preached: December 26, 2021
When will it end? When can we get back to normal? How many more things will we have to endure?”
This question is being asked I think by every one of us right now with the 5th wave of Covid, the Omicron wave now upon us. When will it end? When can we get back to normal? Will we ever get back to normal?
And yet, when reflecting on the gospel reading today, I think this same question was on the lips of Mary and Joseph!
How many things would they have to endure in raising this child, the Saviour?
We sometimes think life was perfect for the Holy Family – all dream like, like our statues and stained glass and paintings of the Holy Family.
But we really do not do them any justice with this way to thinking. They are great role models or mentors in the faith life, not because they are perfect, but instead because they endured the ups and downs of life and maintained their Christian faith, their joy and peace and love.
What did they really endure? How about:
- Mary as a pregnant teenage who was not yet married and the judgement she would have received from the local community
- Travelling 100km from Nazareth to Bethlehem on a donkey when 9 months pregnant (my understanding from personal observation is 9-month pregnant women don’t really travel easily)
- Giving birth in a stable with barn animals, no bed, no relatives, no friends and only strangers to help
- Having to leave Bethlehem when Jesus was around 2 months old to escape Herod and go 200km to Egypt, leaving Joseph’s carpentry business in Nazareth.
- Starting a new life in Egypt for 3 ½ years before the angel told them it was safe to return. Again, they would have to leave another place of employment and make the dangerous trip back to Nazareth with his wife and young child.
- The gospel today in which Jesus was in the temple doing his Father’s work, but Mary and Joseph so scared after 3 days. (I lost one daughter for 5 minutes in the mall and that was enough)
- And later, Joseph dying and leaving Mary a widow before Jesus was even 30 years old and finally of course Jesus unfairly being crucified before his mother’s eyes as the crowds denied him and sent him to his death.
You can be sure that during a few of these events, Mary and Joseph must have said: “When will it end, when can we get back to normal?”
But what is normal? Normal really is accepting the unpredictability of this world. To accept that each day a new challenge may come, and yet, with a close personal relationship with God, we can not only endure but shine forth God’s love.
As we sang in the psalm today –“Happy are those who revere, honor, worship God, and walk on His path, in His ways.”
We are happy and thankful, not because everything is going perfectly, but instead because we know that we do not walk alone, we walk with our God by our side!
We rely on God no matter what comes, and peace will be with us, and we don’t worry about our actions controlling outcomes, but knowing that God will be acting in our lives and those around us to bring forth His plan.
But how do we do this? How do we walk in His ways? What are the daily actions we are to follow?
St. Paul tells the Colossians and tells us the answer: put on the virtues of the Christian life, the explosion of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in our lives!
He tells us that we are God’s chosen ones, and He has made us holy and beloved!
As God’s chosen ones we are to have:
- Heartfelt compassion and kindness – which means to have consideration of other’s situations with love and understanding and feet ready to move to help when called
- We are to have gentleness and patience bearing with one another – what a great visual – we are to fully accept people for who they are, their weaknesses and faults and flaws, and allow them worth and space in our lives
- We are to forgive as God forgives us. How many times has God forgiven us and taken us back in life? This same perpetual forgiveness will allow us to forgive 70×7 also!
- And of course, on top of all of this, wrapped in our lives, encompassing all, we are to put on love! As St. Paul told the Corinthians, love conquers all and is the greatest of all virtues
- And finally, when we have asked God to come to us in this way, we feel the peace of “shalom” – the peace knowing that God is in command, and we are not. The peace in knowing that we have one who loves us unconditionally, whatever may come in life or how much we stumble on the spiritual journey
- With all of this knowledge of God’s incredible love for us, we will be truly thankful and sing with joy to the Lord in our hearts!
- We know that God has accomplished all, our job is only to accept it and be thankful – you just have to enjoy it, you don’t have to make it happen!
This is truly the lesson of the Holy Family!
They operated with these virtues despite the incredible challenges they faced in life.
Mary and Joseph accepted God’s plan; they didn’t come up with it!
May we remember the Holy Family in our times of trouble when we cry out to God:
“When will it end? When can we get back to normal? How many more things will we have to endure?”
Joy Amidst Uncertainty
Feast Of The Holy Family 2020
Deacon Robin Mendonca
Posted: December 27, 2020
The Holy Family lived During a Time of Uncertainty
When we think of the Holy Family, of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we tend to think that here is the perfect family. The images we see during the Christmas season of the nativity scene are quite endearing, however, the gospels show us Jesus, Mary and Joseph lived in a time of great uncertainty. In many ways their times and our times have some similarities. They might not have been in a lockdown because of COVID-19 but there was lots of political turmoil, religious persecution and economic uncertainty.
Remember just a couple days ago on December 25 we celebrated the King of the universe being born, not in a hospital or in a palace, but in a dirty, smelly stable surrounded by farm animals.
These types of uncertainties are a part of our lives as well
These types of uncertainties that we see in the life of holy family are things that we too also experience because our own families and our own individual lives can have lots of uncertainty. And uncertainty can be something that is quite painful and can cause a lot of mental anguish especially when we stop to think about all the various areas from which this uncertainty can come from be it our health, the strength of relationships within our families, our financial position or the prospect of what the future holds for us.
With this we can wonder, what’s this upcoming new year going to be like? What’s the next few years going to look like? Will we get back to normal? What’s my job going to look like? What’s school going to look like? Am I going to be happy? Fulfilled? How am I going to manage? And so on.
The only certainty we have is the past
In many ways, what we’re seeking is certainty with our lives and certainty with what the future holds. But that’s a real challenge because, try as hard as we possibly can, we can never guarantee ourselves a future which is free of ambiguity. In some ways the past tends to be more certain than the future.
Because when we look back at the past we can realize how we’ve been guided to where we are today, we can see the various obstacles that we’ve been able to get through and the blessings that we’ve received along the way. But also, we tend to remember the past because the past is certain, and we know we can’t change it. Think about how we like to tell old stories and reminisce about fond memories.
One of the reasons we do this is because, first off, we can look at those things in the past and think about what we like about them and how they made us feel. I’m not saying that all past memories are good memories but we’re using this as an illustration to show that generally speaking the past has a certainty to it whereas the future tends to carry more uncertainty. And when it comes to the future, we can let the lack of security and the lack of certainty steal our joy from us. But is there a way to have joy even when things are uncertain?
Joy in uncertainty?
Well I think scripture shows us that this is certainly possible. Think about the time when the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her that she would be the mother of Jesus. The angel simply came, announced this news, Mary submitted to the Lord’s will and then the Angel left. No other instruction on how to handle the fact that she was pregnant was provided to Mary. No instruction was provided to her on how she would break this news to Joseph, her fiancé was provided. No preparation was given about how she and Joseph would raise Jesus.
She wasn’t told that Jesus would be born in a stable in Bethlehem, that three wise men would come visit them, that Jesus would get lost in Jerusalem, that St. Joseph would die an early death and that would eventually Jesus would die on the cross. None of this was revealed. Mary and Joseph had to take things day by day and have FAITH that God was present in their lives.[1]
Faith is the Answer
And now the same is true for us. Just like the Holy Family who had to have faith that God was with them, so do we have to have faith that God is with us, within us and is in control of our lives especially during this time of pandemic, lockdown and isolation. And this is the key to having joy amidst uncertainty. Now faith is a virtue and virtues are gifts from God but that doesn’t mean we have no part to play. On our part it takes practice and growing in the habit of this virtue.
There are various ways that we can grow in faith but here are two ways we can grow in this. First, it is important that we vigilant over our thoughts. St, Paul, in Corinthians, teaches us that Christians have the ability to replace negative thoughts with godly thoughts.[2] And secondly, we must PRAY because faith in the end is a relationship with God and faith means really believing that the God who made us loves us more than we can ever imagine that he has our life in control and that he will never lead us where His grace will not sustain us.
Today and always, let us ask for the intercession of the Holy Family so that like them we can rejoice in our joyful moments and continue to have that joy even amidst uncertainty.
[1] Talk given by Fr. Mike Schmitz from Ascension Presents
[2] 1 Cor. 2:16
What Makes A Family Holy?
Feast Of The Holy Family 2019
Fr. Mark Gatto
Preached: December 29, 2019
The Holy Family versus our families.
For many of us when we look at our families perhaps we think of them as more dysfunctional rather than holy! It is therefore sometimes hard to see the Holy Family as an image for us and our families. It seems to be some model outside of our reality.
Well, look at this Holy Family. Joseph, Mary, Jesus. It all began with what would have been a great scandal. Mary is pregnant before they were together. In fact, Joseph’s first plan was to quietly dismiss Mary. Mary was frightened, probably very confused by this situation. All of their plans for their life together were turned upside down.
They also faced the reality of being an oppressed people by the overpowering Roman Empire. At the time of the birth of Jesus, they were away from home, had no place to stay.
Then their early years were spent as refugees in a foreign land. We see so many refugees in our world today, forced to flee their home and country due to various dangers. Joseph, Mary and Jesus we see in today’s Gospel, were also refugees who had to flee their homeland for their safety.
Joseph and Mary also faced the challenges of being parents, we know from the story when Jesus was about 12 and gets left behind in the Temple. Any of you parents who have been worried about your children for any reason will know the worry that they felt.
The end of this family came with the crucifixion of Jesus, punished as a criminal. His whole mission and project seemingly ending in failure.
This Holy Family faced as many or more challenges than our own families. Everything did not go smoothly for them. From appearances it was unlikely that anyone would have seen them as particularly holy or special. Just a regular family with the same struggles that most families face in this world.
So, what made them Holy? Jesus, the Son of God, was in the midst of this family. The presence of God dwelled in the heart of this family. Our families can also be holy when we allow Jesus to dwell in the midst of our family, when we allow the presence of God to be in the heart of our family. We do that by praying together, by celebrating the Sacraments together, by praying for each other. We do that by forgiving one another and caring for each other when in need.
Many today might say that is not possible, no one else in my family believes in God, few in my family pray or are trying to live as a disciple of Jesus. But, if there is just one member of a family who is praying, one member of a family celebrating the Sacraments, one member of a family praying for the others. Then God continues to dwell within that family.
You may be the one person who keeps the presence of God alive within your family. Your quiet prayer, your prayer for the others in your family, this keeps alive the presence of Jesus and so your family can be called holy.
Our somewhat dysfunctional families can be connected to the Holy Family when we keep Jesus in our families, when we keep the presence of God in our families, even if it is just one member who is doing that.
Bring The Warmth Of Love To Your Family – Fr. Mark
Feast of the Holy Family
Fr. Mark Gatto
Preached: December 30, 2018
A Japanese magazine had a picture of a butterfly on one of its pages, that was a dull grey, until someone puts their hand on it. Then the warmth of the hand causes the special printing inks to react and the dull grey is transformed into flashing colours.
What other things can be transformed by the warmth of your love and your touch? How about your family? Or your place of work? Or the place where you study? Or your parish?
The world is hungry for the warmth and touch of someone who cares – who really cares.
First Letter of John says, “Beloved: see what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God.” The children of God. Then we should have the warmth of the love of God. We are to touch one another with the warmth of someone who really cares.
The hardest and most important thing that most do in life is family life. Forming a healthy loving family is really hard. If we are honest, most of us have somewhat dysfunctional families, there are things that we admit are not so good. Obviously, because families are formed by human beings, who are sinners, sometimes selfish, sometimes insensitive… So, our families are not so perfect, not so holy, we certainly do not see our families as being compared to the Holy Family.
Yet, God places children in the care of families. Trusts children to human families. So, we need to do the best we can with what we have in our families. The first step is that I put God first. For when I love and obey God first, then I will become the best parent, the best child, the best sibling. For when I love and obey God then I will be honest, I will be committed, I will be faithful, I will keep promises, I will care about others, I will forgive. All of the things required for good, healthy family life. There is a poem that many of you may have already seen before, but I will share it today because it reflects a spirit that is important in all family life.
“If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn . . .
If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight . . .
If a child lives with fear, he learns to be apprehensive . . .
If a child lives with pity, he learns to feel sorry for himself . . .
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy . . .
If a child lives with jealousy, he learns to feel envy . . .
If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilty …
BUT
If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient . . .
If a child lives with encouragement, he learns to be confident . . .
If a child lives with praise, he learns to be appreciative . . .
If a child lives with acceptance, he learns to love . .
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves..
If a child lives with honesty, he learns what truth is . . .
If a child lives with fairness, he learns justice . . .
If children live with recognition, they learn to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn to be generous.
If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith in himself and those about him . .
If a child lives with friendliness, he learns the world is a nice place in which to live.
The human family, the church family and each of our individual families are in need of people who bring the warmth of love, who bring the touch of someone who really cares.