12.26.2020 Homily

The very center of the Christmas season is the belief that in one moment out of God's great love and goodness, He sent His only son to live with us, to live among us, to be one like us, to enter into human history. And from that moment, history has been altered, has been changed has, in effectS been turned upside down. And now through the days and the weeks of the Christmas season, the Church invites us to look to various aspects of what it is to say that the Son of God has come to live among us.

And today the Church asks us to reflect on the fact that Jesus of Nazareth exists within a familial unit. Like all of us, He doesn't come into the world on His own and he doesn't live on his own, that human beings by their very nature are social animals. And He too had connections, had relationships. And not only with His parents, not only with Mary and Joseph, but there was Zachariah and Elizabeth, the relatives of Mary, that were His grandparents. There were other people who were members of that extended family. In Jesus' time people didn't regard themselves as a nuclear family. They regarded themselves as much more of an extended family. And those families were strong and they were vibrant and they were able to bear the burdens of the day.

Nuclear families and marriages are fragile. There aren't enough shoulders to carry all that has to be carried. Today the world is fighting a pandemic, a plague that personally touches the lives of many of us. For many there is an empty chair at the table this Christmas season. Our society is divided, rancorously, and does not seem to be willing to come together in any real fashion. Our cities have been besieged with violence and we are in an economic crisis where businesses are closing and jobs are being lost.

And all of this reflects directly upon the family. All of this is the burden that the family carries. All of this finds its expression in the challenge of family life. And you and I know that as well as anyone that over the past nine months, family life has become in many ways, challenging and difficult. We aren't built to be sequestered inside for that long period of time, without broad connections. We're social animals. And yet we're called to live out that relationship, that familial relationship, in such a way that strengthens and enhances the lives of each other.

And so I would suggest to you that there are probably two virtues that are called for in the family today. One is forgiveness, the ability to really forgive the other for whatever the word or the action or the attitude that touched and hurt one. To be able to say, I forgive you. I'm willing to let that drop. I'm willing to step beyond that. I don't hold any grudge about that. And to forgive oneself, to forget the failures that we find in ourselves, the shortness of temper, the anger, the frustration.

The second virtue, I think that I would invite you to reflect on is patience, to be able to cut each other some slack. To be able to create some space. If not physical space, at least psychological space, in which people can be more at home with each other, to not crowd each other too closely. And to be patient with the quirks and the foibles, and all those things about the other person that drive you up the wall. And be willing to give some patience to that.

It's not easy to live in a family. And yet the family becomes and is the main stay of society. And when families fail the whole social fabric fails. Family knits community together. And so it's appropriate that Jesus, the Son of God, become one with us and one among us to do so within the context of family life.

So there is nothing about family life that is foreign to God at this point, because He has taken it over. He has embraced it. He has entered into it. And today we pray that in each of our families, the spirit that filled that family of Jesus and Mary and Joseph, that spirit of patience and generosity, that spirit of forgiveness and mercy might touch each and every one of us.