Family Issues A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
    There’s a new Star Wars movie out, and I saw it opening night a little over a week ago.  I won’t give anything away, but it seemed familiar to the original three Star Wars movies.  In all the Star Wars movies there are certainly some family problems going on.  In the original three episodes (numbers 4-6), Luke is being raised by his uncle and aunt, who are murdered, and it’s later discovered that Darth Vader is Luke’s father, whom he hates as working for the Empire, but also wants to save, as the Emperor wants Luke to take over for his father.    The next three episodes (number 1-3; it is a little confusing) is about young Darth Vader, or Anakin, as he was then known, who also has family issues, as he has no father (he was conceived by the Force), and ends up really messing his life up by taking vengeance on those who hurt his mother.  He also falls in love with a princess, and even though, as a Jedi, he’s supposed to be celibate, marries her, and they conceive twins (Luke and Leia).  While I won’t go into detail, even the new movies (numbers 7-9) continue the family drama storyline.  But what is common to all the episodes is that the family drama has to do with power and abuses of it.
    I bring that up because, as we heard our second reading, our minds probably went immediately to power.  Maybe they didn’t go there at first, but as soon as we heard, “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands,” I’m sure we all probably bristled a little bit, for one reason or another.  Maybe some felt like that shouldn’t even be a part of Scripture anymore, since, so some think, we’ve moved beyond the “backward” culture in which it was written.  Maybe some of us were trying hard how to understand it, since it is a part of Scripture, which is the infallible Word of God.  But all of us likely heard that passage in the same context of power on which all the Star Wars interfamilial drama is based.
    If this feast of the Holy Family teaches us anything, it’s that the family is not about a power struggle.  It’s not about who has the most power, or who is the boss.  Instead, the Holy Family was all about obedience to God and protecting one another.
    If the Holy Family was about power, then Jesus would have come out of the womb telling Mary and Joseph what to do.  After all, Jesus is the co-eternal Son of God.  Jesus is God, who created all things out of nothing.  He even created, with the help of their parents, Mary and Joseph.  No human could ever be God’s equal, and so, if family life was about power, Jesus would have been the one in charge.  But Jesus came as an infant, with no power, totally reliant and dependent on the love of his mother, Mary, and his foster-father, Joseph.
    After Jesus, Mary comes next in the power hierarchy, as a woman who never sinned.  She was conceived without original sin, and always said yes to God.  So with Jesus as an infant, not able to talk or care for Himself, if the choice was for Mary or Joseph to be in charge, to have all the power, it certainly would have fallen to Mary, based upon her holiness alone.  But, the first time that Mary really issues a command in the Gospel is after Joseph is dead, at the wedding at Cana, when she tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them.
    Poor Joseph.  In the midst of the Holy Family, he’s the only one who could be at fault.  His foster-Son is the Son of God, and his wife is sinless.  If anything goes wrong in the household, everyone knows whose fault it is.  Joseph is just, but he wasn’t perfect, and in the midst of such holiness, his sins must have stood out like a sore thumb.  And yet, to whom do the dreams come, where God advises how to proceed?  To Joseph!  In today’s Gospel, the angel appears to Joseph twice, once to tell him to leave for Egypt, and then to tell Joseph it’s safe to return to Israel.  This is backwards from how it should be, if power were the motivating factor in the family.  But that should tell us something: power is not the motivating factor.
    So as we read the passage from our second reading, we have to read it in the light of the model of holiness demonstrated by the Holy Family.  Their concern was not power, but about obedience to the will of God, as it was known to them, and protecting each other.  Sometimes the will of God will have wives obeying their husband; sometimes the will of God will have husbands obeying their wives (many wives will tell you that their greatest skill is letting the husband think that he is being obeyed, when it’s really her decision).  But it’s not about any human will that is being expressed, but what is in the will of God.  And as long as the family is seeking to be obedient to that will, then that family is well on the way to holiness.
    If Star Wars teaches us anything, it’s that viewing the family through the lens of power and control is a recipe for disaster.  And that message, whether intended or not, is based upon the Word of God, which reminds us that, for a family to be holy, it need not be concerned with who has power over whom, but how all the members of the family can be obedient to the will of God.

Statues of the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt at the Milk Grotto

 

A Birthday and a Wedding

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas)

    When we think of Christmas as a celebration, we often think of it as a birthday celebration.  And it certainly is.  We celebrate the birth of Jesus in the flesh in Bethlehem.  Some families have even gone so far as to have birthday cake on Christmas, or to sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus at the family Christmas.
    But we can also think about Christmas as a wedding.  Our church takes on some of the appearance of a wedding.  At wedding, the church often is decorated with lots of flowers, like the poinsettias that we have here.  Often times you’ll have more candles lit at a wedding.  At wedding Masses we sing the Gloria, the song of the angels in heaven when Jesus was born.  And people dress up for weddings, like so many of you are dressed up today. 
    But the wedding that we celebrate is not between a man and wife, but between heaven and earth, between divinity and humanity, between God and man.  At Christmas heaven descends to earth as Jesus is born.  At Christmas we come to know of the union, never to be broken or divorced, between divinity and humanity in the Person of Jesus.  At Christmas, the angels make known the birth of the God-man, Jesus Christ, the Son of God and son of Mary. 
    The Prophet Isaiah himself uses the image of a wedding:

No more shall people call you “Forsaken,” or your land, “Desolate,” but you shall be called “My Delight,” and your land, “Espoused.”  For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse.  As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you.

God is our Builder and marries our humanity in Jesus.  God is our bridegroom and we, His people, are His bride.  No longer are we weighed down by our past sinfulness; no longer are we forsaken or desolate.  But we are the delight of the Lord, and espoused to Him. 
    We were not a bride that was desirable, because of our unfaithfulness.  We had been engaged or betrothed to God through Abraham, when God chose to make us His People.  But time and time again, we were unfaithful to God and wandered away from Him.  We were burdened by the yoke of slavery to sin, and Satan was our taskmaster.  But when Jesus Christ was born, He, the only one by whom we are saved, took us back to Himself and freed us from our bondage.  Jesus is truly “a savior…born for [us]” who heals us from our ancient wound of sin and gives us the freedom of the children of God.
    This is Good News!  This is the wedding announcement that should make all of us rejoice and be glad on this holy night/day.  For “The Lord has bared his holy arm in the sight of all the nations;” “All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God.”  “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets; in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son.”  God has finally wedded us in Christ, and He will always stay faithful to His marriage vows, even when we stray and are unfaithful. 
    And this Good News is renewed for us each time we come to Mass.  In every Mass, it is as if Jesus is born again, as the bread and wine presented by you become the Body and Blood of Jesus.  Especially on Sunday Masses, we almost always sing the hymn of the angels, the Gloria, as Christ is born in our hearing of the Word of God, and in the confection of the Eucharist.  Heaven is joined to earth, with all the angels and saints, who worship God the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.
    But think about a wedding, and think about how you respond to that joyful news.  My sister, Allison, was married this past March, and my sister, Amanda, celebrates her 11th Anniversary on 27 December.  People were so happy and shared the news to those they met, in person and over social media.  Weddings are reasons for celebration and sharing that joy with others.  And so is the wedding of heaven and earth, divinity and humanity, God and man.  Isaiah encourages us: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation.”  Will we keep this good news of this special wedding to ourselves?  Will we keep the lamp of joy under a bushel basket of fear?  Or will we join with the angels and shepherds in proclaiming to the ends of the earth the wedding which brings salvation to all those who have sat in the shadow of death?  The wedding is certainly good news.  And “Blessed are those called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.”

My brother-in-law, Tom, with my sister, Allison

St. Joseph: Our Model

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    In my nine years as a priest I have come to have a deeper devotion to St. Joseph.  While he’s quite popular with those selling houses, and certainly I knew about him while I was growing up, he was not on my original list of top saints.  The Blessed Mother was always a focus, as was St. Anthony (for obvious reasons), but St. Joseph always seemed to fade into the background, and was never very noticeable.
    The Scriptures do not record any words from St. Joseph (perhaps wives would suggest this silence to their husbands!), but he does play an important role in caring for the Blessed Virgin Mary and the child Jesus.  We hear about St. Joseph for the first time today in the Gospel according to St. Matthew: Joseph is a righteous man, and is visited by angels.  He, like Joseph in the Old Testament, is given the gift of powerful dreams, by which God directs St. Joseph. 
    But I think it’s important to look, once more, or perhaps for some of us, for the first time, at St. Joseph and his circumstances.  St. Joseph is engaged (betrothed) to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  He is planning on marrying her.  And then he finds out (I would guess Mary told him) that his fiancée is with child.  Can you imagine, gentleman, your fiancée sitting you down, and maybe the conversation goes something like this: “Honey, we need to talk” (never a good phrase to hear if you’re in a relationship).  “Dear, I need to let you know that I’m pregnant.  But don’t worry!  I wasn’t unfaithful to you.  An angel appeared to me and told me that I am going to be God’s Mother, that the Holy Spirit will make me conceive and the child will fulfill the promises made to our father David so many years ago.”  Can you imagine how you would have felt in such a circumstance?
    Understandably, Joseph is a bit shaken up, and decides to divorce Mary, but, knowing that if she is found to be with child without being married, she could be stoned to death for being an adulteress, he decides that things are going to be done quietly so as not to shame her.  This is part of the evidence of the fact that he was a righteous man.  He must have cared for Mary, but couldn’t see past this new situation in her life. 
    And then, to make matters even more confusing, an angel appears to him in a dream, and tells him to take Mary as his wife, because the child truly was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  And furthermore, Joseph is to name the child Jesus, Yeshua, which means in Hebrew, “God saves,” because Jesus will save the people from their sins.  After this dream, Joseph obeys God, and we know the rest of the story.
    It would have been easy for St. Joseph to walk away.  In modern terms, we could say that all that happened was “too much.”  Fiancées aren’t supposed to get pregnant before marriage.  Children aren’t supposed to be conceived by the Holy Spirit.  And most people don’t get dreams that come directly from God.  And yet St. Joseph doesn’t walk away.  He is obedient to God even in very difficult circumstances, which will become even more difficult, as Joseph and Mary have to leave Nazareth for Bethlehem, and then within two years they need to flee to Egypt, and then return to Bethlehem, and then Jesus stays behind on the family annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 
    Following God is not always easy.  There can be times where you want to walk away because things are not going the way we want them to go.  But St. Joseph is our model, for men and women, to follow the will of God. 
    Of course, just because the will of God is difficult, does not mean that it’s self-contradictory.  Sometimes people think that they are doing the will of God, when they’re really only following their own will or desires.  How do we know if it’s our will or our desire or the will of God?  Look to the Scriptures.  In the first reading, the Prophet Isaiah spoke for the Lord, saying that “the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.”  So when Mary conceived without having relations with Joseph, it wasn’t the normal way to conceive, but it also wasn’t contrary to the will of God, since God himself had foretold it through Isaiah. 
    But, if what we think God is asking us is in accord with the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church, then God will help us through, no matter how difficult things can be.  It can even be that way with the Church.  Over the past few years we have had some difficult times: new scandals, including even a former cardinal; misuse of donations by some bishops; even some bishops and priests teaching contrary to the teachings of the Church.  We might be tempted to walk away, but St. Joseph encourages us to seek God’s will even in the midst of difficulties. 
    As we finish out these last days of Advent, may St. Joseph guide us to be faithful to God, no matter how difficult or how confusing.  And may we, like St. Joseph, have the courage to care for Jesus in our daily lives by being obedient to God’s will.

Ways to Prepare for Christmas

First Sunday of Advent
    Probably the question people have asked me the most about my trip to Australia (other than the general, “how was it?”) was: “How was the flight to Sydney?”  My particular route was Flint to Chicago to Houston to Sydney (and that same route in reverse for the return trip), and the flight from Houston to Sydney alone was sixteen and a half hours on the way there, and sixteen hours on the way back.  That’s a long time to be on a plane.  And, I have to admit, on my return flight, almost as soon as I got on the plane, I wanted to be back in Flint, driving home from Bishop International Airport.  But of course, I was far from that reality.
    Perhaps we’re in the same boat as we enter Advent.  Our four weeks (24 days this year) of Advent might seem like a sixteen and a half hour flight, and all we want to do is be at Christmas.  Don’t get me wrong; the destination is the most important part.  We cannot say, as so many often do, that the journey is the most important part, because, in the spiritual life, where we end up is what should take the most import in our lives.  Still, the pilgrimage to Christmas, the pilgrimage to the cave where Christ was born, also is weighty and substantial.  We cannot skip over Advent, especially if we hope to truly appreciate Christmas and its meaning in the salvation of the world, and the salvation of our hearts.
    So what are you doing during Advent to get ready for the Nativity of the Lord at Christmas?  What steps are you taking to make sure that you’ll be ready when you get there?  I mean, imagine if I simply bought my ticket to Sydney, and got on the plane, without any planning, without any luggage, without any passport.  I would not have made it that far.  And even if I brought simply my passport, if I didn’t have clean clothes and toiletries, I don’t think I could have enjoyed the company of even my brother priests.  Or if my clothes that I brought were only reflective of the 8 1/2 inches of snow that we got the first day I tried to leave, rather than the 70-80 degree sunny days that were happening in Sydney, I would not have enjoyed such an exotic vacation getaway. 
    What doesn’t count for preparing for Christmas is listening to Christmas music and attending Christmas parties.  Those things aren’t necessarily bad (I’ll be honest, I’m listening to Christmas music in my car now that Thanksgiving has passed), but they don’t really prepare us to celebrate Christmas, even if it is Bing Crosby singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” or Nat King Cole singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”  Our preparations have to involve our soul if we want to reap the benefits of the beautiful, and yet short, season of Advent.
    So are you praying daily?  The little blue books, or the Bishop Barron daily Advent reflections that are on our parish website can assist us in daily prayer.  Maybe it’s just 5 minutes each day, or maybe adding on another 5 minutes if we already pray daily, but whatever it is, make sure you’re taking time to talk and listen to God.  In particular, I would invite you pray for someone who is not practicing their faith.  Pray for them daily, specifically, with the intention that, by God’s grace, they are brought back to the faith.  And, if possible, invite them to join you for the fourth Sunday of Advent here at St. Pius X (hopefully you could also bring them with you to confession to prepare for the Mass). 
    If you are able, add adoration time to your schedule.  We offer adoration here almost every Friday from 7-8 a.m., and on the third Friday from 8:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m.  It doesn’t have to be for the whole hour, or the whole day, but stop in and see Jesus, present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, and adore your God who took flesh to save you, even if all you can give God is fifteen minutes before you go to work or during your lunch break.
    Read Scripture.  This year we’re walking through the Gospel according to St. Matthew.  There are 28 chapters in that Gospel, and 24 days of Advent, so you can almost make it through the entire Gospel simply by reading one chapter per day.  St. John reminds us that, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  Familiarize yourself with that Word, Jesus, the co-eternal Word of God who was incarnate of the Virgin Mary. 
    Give alms.  Alms, of course, is money that we donate to the poor, or to the Church.  Scripture tells us that almsgiving atones for sins that we committed.  When we take from what is precious to us, our money, and give it to someone else who needs it, whether the poor who need it for their survival, or the church so that people can find eternal life, we show that same love that Jesus had for us when He, who was rich as God, became poor by taking on our humanity and becoming subject to all things like us, though without sin.  It’s not so much about the amount (remember that the widow who gave two small coins was praised, not for the great amount, but because it was what she had, what she treasured). 
    I hope you noticed that none of those things is that complicated.  You don’t need a degree in theology; you don’t have to traverse to the farthest corners of the world.  You don’t have to take yourself to the brink of death.  In those simple ways, you can make sure that you’re ready to celebrate the Nativity of Jesus Christ at Christmas.  Don’t let this sacred time pass you by, which it so easily does when we’re not prepared.  Don’t arrive at Christmas without the proper preparation.  Christmas will be here before you know it!