Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Solemnity of the Holy Family, B, Vigil
December 30, 2023
To listen to an audio recording of the brief homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/12.30.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3
The following text guided the homily:
* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday and Monday, as the Church celebrates back to back the Solemnities of the Holy Family and of Mary, Mother of God.
* We are still very much in the Octave of Christmas, which is first and fundamentally the celebration of how God so loved the world and took on our human nature himself so that he might fully restore us to the divine image and likeness. He entered into conversation with the human race, taking on our humanity so that ultimately, through his saving work, we might take on his divinity. The priority of Christmas is always on that gift of God’s coming into our world to save and sanctify us and show us the way to live forever with God-with us. The second part of that conversation is how we respond to God’s opening, grace-filled outreach. And so we’re beckoned to respond to him like the Shepherds, the Wisemen, the angels and the animals, to make a spiritual pilgrimage to Bethlehem and, filled with awe, adore, praise and thank God for the greatest of all gifts.
* To help us learn how to receive the gift of Christmas and how to respond, the Church always has us celebrate on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas the Solemnity of the Holy Family, because we see in the Holy Family of Joseph and Mary how to react to the gift of Jesus, God with us, not just as individuals but in the communion of our own family, with the family of the Church, and, even more broadly, in the human family.
* It’s an amazing truth that when the Son of God became man, when the Word became flesh, he chose to be conceived and be born within a family of an already committed husband and wife. He didn’t choose to come as a 30-year-old adult, or a teenager, or an 80-year-old sage. He didn’t choose to be born of a single mom, or raised by two men or two women, or some other arrangement. He chose to be born within a nuclear family … precisely in order to redeem the family. The family is always in need of redemption. We know that with the first family of Adam and Eve, the devil succeeded in separating husband and wife from God and from each other, and we see the immediate consequences of the devil’s work in the next generation when Cain slew his brother Abel. Because the family is meant to be the world’s greatest image of God as a loving communion of persons, the devil never ceases to go after the family. We see it in how Herod sent his henchmen to try to assassinate the baby Jesus, terrorizing not only the Holy Family but all the families of ancient Bethlehem. The feast of the Holy Family is an annual opportunity allows us to reflect together on the purpose of the family, what it means to be a husband and father, a wife and mother, a child and brother or sister. The family has a purpose in God’s plan; it’s meant to be a school of love, a domestic Church, a gift of God to help all of the members of the family grow into the realization of who God created each of them to be. In the Opening Prayer of Sunday’s Mass, we’ll pray, “O God, who were pleased to give us the shining example of the Holy Family, graciously grant that we may imitate them in practicing the virtues of family life and the bonds of charity.” All of us can learn so much from virtues and love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph about how to make our families schools of love.
