Sunday, Holy Family

V/​ I will turn to you O God, 

R/​ to God who gives joy to my youth

V/​ Give me the Wisdom that sits by your throne; 

R/ that I may be counted among your children

Lord, in your all-providential plan, you have led me to this moment to rediscover me in your Word and Wisdom. Aid me to make this time of meditation and prayer enriching, transforming, and liberating for my well-being and others. Amen!

THE KALEIDOSCOPE OF PRESENCE

Eccles 3:2-14; Ps 105:1-9; 1 Jn 3:1-2, 21-24; Lk 2:41-52

The theme of seeking and finding occurs frequently in Luke’s Gospel. Luke wrote his account as prayerful pilgrimages for those seeking Jesus, which involves surprises and the eventual findings in unexpected places. This is the bane of discipleship, the constant struggle with understanding the manner of presence to which God invites us. The feast of the Holy Family becomes a kaleidoscope for us to explore the profound riches and lessons, with God identifying with the family of Nazareth and indeed all families. The God-man approaches every moment of his human life as a necessary unfolding, wherein he graces the seeming ordinariness of family life as indispensable to our exercise of faith.

The Gospel reading places us in the post-Passover experience of the finding of Jesus in the Temple. For Luke, to be lost to Jesus means placing our expectations, concepts and ideas over and above who Jesus really is. Just as finding oneself is to be intimately united to the Father’s affairs. The family is this necessary space which frees us from self-illusion, which poses a major danger to healthy relationships. In the face of anxiety and confusion, Mary offers a spontaneous response of “wonder to ponder,” whence as through a prayerful presence that opens our hearts to act always from the recognition of our common heritage in God.

Our second reading buttresses this fact of “belonging to the household of God” which intimately binds in the Father’s will, through mutual self-giving that fosters wholeness. Joseph was present as a father according to the law, and he supported Jesus and Mary with his work. It was from Joseph that Jesus learned his trade, which was to be his means of earning a living. From Mary’s presence, Jesus also learned household and agrarian wisdom which he was later to use in his preaching and description of the Kingdom values. Jesus, the divine presence finds expression in human word for the Divine Word.

What grace do we forfeit in rejecting the place of the family which anchors our presence in history, culture and place? Unfortunately, the family has come under threat with the surge of virtual presence, and AI inventions which dent real interaction that guarantees mutual understanding. The family mirrors the shared life in the Triune God. This communal reality of God helps us to understand what we are called to be.

The Carmelite family like the little family of Nazareth is characterised by its silent contemplation, reinforced by Joseph’s patronage in our pilgrimages of finding Jesus “always and in all ways,” and pondering with Mary these experiences in the light of the father’s will. We embrace a contemplative stance to life, which reinforces a certain disposition to discipleship and awareness of our individuality in our shared witness to the life of grace. St. Miriam of Jesus crucified expresses thus; “I cannot tell you how happy I am to be in Carmel. All day we keep to silence, and solitude…[and speak only from this place of contemplation] We are here twenty-six, but we are one soul.” This is nothing short of the Trinitarian communion through the agency of a Christ approach to being present.

As the Christmas message resounds with an air of gratitude for the life we share with those who will not give up on us through thick and thin. To them, we must offer the gifts of our personal development and commitment to the Father’s affair. May our families become like the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, as witnesses to a genuine communion under any given circumstance. Amen