Msgr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family, C, Vigil
December 28, 2024
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.28.24_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
* This is Msgr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation God wants to have with each of us, as together we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. We celebrate this feast on the Sunday between Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, on January 1. It is an opportunity for us to focus on how when, the Word of God took on our humanity and dwelled among us in order to save us, he chose to enter the human race in a family, just as each of us does, so that he could redeem the family that the devil had attacked from the beginning with Adam and Eve, and so that he could in fact make the Church a family. The Church is the extension of the Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth, comprised of those who, like the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph, hear the Word of God and observe it, and who seek to live their life centered on God-with-us, Emmanuel.
* This year’s celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family is particularly special because it is taking place as part of the long-awaited Jubilee of Hope, which Pope Francis inaugurated during Christmas Mass-During-the-Night on Christmas Eve at St. Peter’s in the Vatican. In a wheelchair, the Holy Father movingly opened the Jubilee Door and invited the whole Church to make a pilgrimage through that door, leaving behind a world in which there are so many signs of desperation and entering through the door who is Christ our hope. But that was just the start of the Jubilee. On the Feast of the Holy Family, two things are happening. First, in Rome, Pope Francis will open the Holy Door at his Cathedral, the Archbasilica of Saint John in the Lateran. Second, he decreed that in every cathedral and co-cathedral of the world, bishops are to celebrate Holy Mass as the solemn opening of the Jubilee year. So in the mother church of every diocese in the world, including your own diocesan Cathedral, there will be a special Mass with particular prayers for the occasion. I would urge you to try to go to your Cathedral this Sunday to celebrate in a particular way this Jubilee along with the successor of apostles sent to shepherd you in your part of Christ’s worldwide vineyard. And the Jubilee will continue in each diocese of the world until the Feast of the Holy Family next year. This shows us that the Jubilee is meant to be marked not just in Rome, and not just in every Diocese, but in every family, seeking to help every family model itself on the Holy Family and become a beacon of hope for the world, as Christian families individually and collectively give a reason for the hope we bear within us (1 Pet 3:15).
* The Feast of the Holy Family this year will take place on the fifth day of Christmas and it’s key, if we’re going to understand and live out the Jubilee well, for us to grasp the true meaning of hope. If you look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it says that hope is the “theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 1817). Hope is, therefore, a gift of God by which we ground our life trustingly in Christ’s words and promises and avail ourselves of the help of God to seek to live in his kingdom, in but not of the world,
Episode: https://catholicpreaching.com/wp/holy-family-c-conversations-with-consequences-podcast-december-28-2024/
Podcast: https://catholicpreaching.com/wp/category/audio-homily/podcast/
