Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family December 29, 2024

Some years ago, a Japanese magazine had a picture of a butterfly on one of its pages. The color was dull gray until it was warmed by a person’s hand. The touch of a hand caused the special printing inks to react, and the dull gray was transformed into a flashing rainbow color.

When we think about the story of the Holy Family, and the details of the first Christmas, I think we find a lot of dull grays. When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, there was no room at the inn. The place was so crowded that the best they could find was a place where animals were kept and fed. Then, when the young couple brings the new-born child to be presented in the temple, the old man Simeon, who spent much of his time praying there, informed them that there were dark days of suffering ahead, and that Mary’s heart would be pierced, as with a sword.

When astrologers from the East arrived, searching for the newborn, they went for directions to the palace of King Herod. That seems logical: when searching for a newborn king, what better place to begin than at a palace? Unfortunately, the news of a newborn king unhinged Herod, and he decreed that all the boys under age two in the Bethlehem area should be slaughtered. And so, Jesus, Mary and Joseph are forced to become refugees, leaving their native land, and crossing the border into Egypt.

And then, there’s the story of Jesus as a young adolescent, left behind in a crowded city, exposed to dangers that he might not be able to handle. Can you imagine the panic and trauma that Mary and Joseph must have felt?

And yet, with all these threats, all these negative experiences, all these dull grays in our story, we also find some warm colors. Born in poor circumstances, that child, who understood poverty from the inside, would become the Savior who champions the cause of the poor, identifies with them, and gives us the mission of serving their needs, thus providing hope for the vast majority of the world’s population. And again, by becoming a displaced emigrant, Jesus knows what it is like to flee persecution and to endure the injustice caused by the rich and powerful. Thus, those who are displaced by war, violence, natural disasters, and drug wars, know what it is to live with panic, always on the watch, hoping for a better future. Those who live on the edges of civilization and the peripheries of nations know that the Savior understands them, and will bring them to justice in the end.

And that sword of violence, pain and death, alluded to by Simeon, that ultimately brings Jesus to his passion and cross. And it is by laying down his life that Jesus reveals the depth of his love, his solidarity with the human race, and his mastery over sin and death. It is thus that the Savior gives hope to the entire human race. By dying and rising again, Jesus turns the somber grays of death into the unimaginably beautiful colors of an eternity with God.

And so, we honor the family called “holy.” That doesn’t mean that their life was somehow easier, or that they knew how it would all play out ahead of time. They had to survive. They had to summon up their courage. They had to take bold steps. They had to suffer. And through it all, they had to trust that God would see them through. It is that trust, that ability to believe that God could “write straight with crooked lines,” that makes them holy, enables them to serve as an example of patient endurance and undying grit, and helps us to face our fears and carry our burdens. The Holy Family we honor today does not consist of well-scrubbed and pious figures in our manger, but human beings of flesh and blood who teach us what it is to be extraordinarily human and stubbornly holy.