I Brought You Into This World .And I Can Take You Out!

Homily for December 30, 2012 (Holy Family)

Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:41-52

“I brought you into this world….and I can take you out!”

How many of us have heard that warning in one form or another from our parents or a mom or dad on TV or in the movies? It’s a form of exaggerated and sometimes humorous admonition intended to convey parental frustration and instill in children just enough fear to get them back on “the straight and narrow.”

But in some countries, even today, this is no laughing matter. Violent, even fatal, forms of discipline and so-called “honor” killings still occur. Indeed, we shouldn’t forget that the beating and even the killing of disrespectful children was sanctioned in the Bible. Exodus 21:15, 17 for example, commanded that children who struck or dishonored their parents should be put to death.

Of course, the Bible still has many worthwhile and laudatory things to say about children, parents, spouses, and family life. In reading the scriptures, it’s always important to consider the historical and cultural contexts in which they were written. Structures and traditions evolve over time; and we need to separate the wheat of the timeless truths and values from the chaff. It’s especially good to remember these things at a time when structures and customs of family lifeas we have come to know them are facing challenges and also when we read passages like the one in today’s second reading.

Writing from prison, St. Paul wrote to a community in Colossae that he believed needed some order, so he gave it them in the form of the instruction that we heard in our second reading. Echoing the teachings of the ancestors that we heard in our first reading from Sirach 3, where the author instructed the reader to honor, revere, obey, take care of, and be considerate of his father, he urged the children, “Obey your parents in everything. “ Similarly, Paul told wives “be subordinate to your husbands” and admonished the husbands, “love your wives.”

We live in a culture that highly values independence, self-determination, and choice. So being asked (or even worse, commanded) to obey and certainly be subordinate to anyone (even God!) can be seen as an inconvenience, a burden, or even a form of oppression. If that obedience or subordination is imposed by force, fear, or the uncritical observance of tradition merely for its own sake, then we have problems.

But that’s not what God’s word invites us to on this Feast of the Holy Family. If, for example, we focus on one verse in which Paul admonishes wives to be subordinate to their husbands and neglect the half dozen verses that precede it, then we’re missing the boat. It’s in those verses that Paul “sets the table” for his specific exhortations to the family.

He urges everyone in the community to “put on…heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.”Then he tells us to cover ourselves with something even more fundamental: love, i.e. the “bond” or superglue of perfection. Next he encourages us to be thankful.

After that, Paul says that we need to get spiritually centered—teaching, admonishing, singing and praying together. Finally, he tells us to root our lives even more in Christ: “Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

In today’s gospel passage, the humility that God showed in the mystery of the Incarnation is reinforced by the young Jesus’ participation among the teachers in the temple, “listening to them and asking them questions.” Imagine that—we have a God so loving and close to us that he sits among us, listening to us and asking us questions!

Are we willing to do the same for God? As Pope Benedict XVI said in his Urbi et Orbi (“To the City and World”) message on Christmas Day:

His all-powerful love has accomplished something which surpasses all human understanding: the Infinite has become a child, has entered the human family. And yet, this same God cannot enter my heart unless I open the door to him.Porta fidei!The door of faith! We could be frightened by this, our inverse omnipotence. This human ability to be closed to God can make us fearful. But see the reality which chases away this gloomy thought, the hope that conquers fear: truthhas sprung up!Godis born!

As we come to the end of 2012 and prepare to welcome the year to come, may we recommit ourselves to making the love of God that was made visible in Jesus also visible in us, his followers. +