Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family

Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14

Colossians 3:12-21

Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

It is always a source of some discouragement to me that our second reading today is often shortened by many so as not to read the section which says "wives be subordinate to your husbands as is proper in the Lord." In that entire section of the reading, St. Paul lays down a very simple model of the Christian home. In addition to his admonition about wives and husbands, he urges children to obey their parents, something he also says in the Letter to the Ephesians, telling children to obey their parents "in the Lord," which is a very important distinction, and fathers not to provoke their "children to wrath." 

To understand what St Paul means here, we really need to look at a passage of Scripture that should be seen as the companion to our second reading today, and that is Ephesians 5:21-33. In this passage, Saint Paul underscores a reality that both the Second Vatican Council and recent Popes have reminded us of, and that is that just as the Church is the Bride of Christ, that the home should be a domestic Church. This is why Paul calls on wives to be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, but he also calls on husbands to love their wives in the same way that Christ loved the Church, in other words they are to love their wives to the point of even being willing to lay down their lives for them, just as Christ did for His own bride. 

The Apostles were keen that men should exercise the spiritual leadership in their homes in the same way that Christ exercises the spiritual leadership over the Church. There are some who misinterpret these passages and take them out of context, as if to say that the apostles would condemn women being in any leadership role in the larger society. They were more concerned about men behaving as Christ would, and taking the spiritual leadership in their own domestic Church.

The Church clearly teaches us that women are equal in dignity and worth to men, and we know that women can be equal (and often surpass us) in talent, abilities, and gifts. But what the Church has never taught is that men should abdicate the role of spiritual leadership in the domestic Church. The whole Church is built upon a Nuptial model, the Church is the bride of Christ, Christ is the bridegroom, and indeed the priest acts in the person of Christ. This is the reason why Sacred Ordination is limited to men, it has nothing to do with the equality, dignity or ability of women. 

When men abdicate the spiritual leadership of the home, this will begin to affect the leadership of the Church as well, since the family is the domestic Church. Studies on Church participation have repeatedly shown over and over again that in families where both the father and the mother attend Church with their children, the children are vastly more likely to continue in the practice of their religious faith. Saint Paul wasn't just an old fashioned male chauvinist fuddy duddy, he saw it with his own eyes in the early Church. When men take the role of spiritual leadership in their families, the families follow them, and that impacts the Church as a whole, and even the larger society.

Increasingly, in those households where the children are fortunate to have both parents present, it is not uncommon for men to abdicate the role of spiritual leadership and spiritual educator to the women of the house. Holy women set holy examples, holy families usually have holy men willing to be the spiritual guide that they need to be.

We see this very example in today's Gospel. When the angel made Joseph aware of the threat to the life of the holy child Jesus, Joseph led his family to Egypt, and when the time came to leave that place, the Gospel tells us that it was he who made the decision to return to Nazareth to avoid any further threats to the Lord Jesus. 

When Saint Paul repeatedly urges men to take the lead and wives to submit to their husbands as to the Lord, he is calling on Christian men to take that spiritual leadership. Our society needs the spiritual example of Christian men even more in our own day and age. Saying that does not mean that the contribution of holy and zealous mothers, daughters, and women in the Church is less valuable to the Kingdom of God or any less important, but it is saying that men should not abdicate their biblical and apostolic role.

All too often, we have seen mothers, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, be the ones to cry out in prayer for their straying family members, their children and grandchildren. Sometimes, men in families think that the women should take charge of the children's religious training, I've even heard some men say that the women are better at that, but the home that has families that pray together, including and especially Dad, is more likely to have children who observe the faith. When Dad takes God seriously, it is far more likely that the whole family is going to take the things of God seriously as well.

God's Word tells us that, in the end, there is nothing new under the sun, and so this is a problem that the Apostles saw in their own day. St. Paul reminds us that in our brokenness and our sinfulness, our home should still function as a domestic Church, and the Church is still the bride of Christ and is organized itself as a family, with Christ as the head and we as His bride.

It is not an accident that it was the plan of God that the Second Person of the Trinity, His only-begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, would enter into the world and be born into a human family, and then he would make his Church in the image of a family with himself at the head of it, and ordained men who represent Him at various levels leading the Church on earth.

 We have been fed a steady diet of scandal in the Church now for many years. What the feast of the Holy Family should remind us of is the reality that as the family goes, so goes the Church, and as the Church goes, so goes the nation and the culture. All of the problems we see in the Church and in society don't happen in a vacuum, they happen in a family, or in the lack of one. In our own brokenness let us pray that the Holy Family will be the model for our own, and that as we rebuild our families, we will rebuild our Church, and rebuild our nation and our world.