 |
The Archdiocese of Cincinnati Main Page || The Catholic Telegraph || Live Letters index |
Live
Letters The Holy Family
of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph |
The Catholic Telegraph
December 21, 2001The feast of the Holy Family has a somewhat checkered history. It was first inserted into the annual liturgical calendar by Leo XIII in 1893 and observed on the third Sunday after Epiphany. When Pius X revised the Missal, the feast of the Holy Family was suppressed. Then, in 1921, Pius XI put it back into the calendar to be celebrated on the first Sunday after Epiphany. In the liturgical reforms that followed Vatican II, it was reassigned to the Sunday after Christmas.
The gospel readings for this feast are about the childhood of Jesus, while the other readings are about the virtues of family life.
Our reading for Year A can be used in all three years of the cycle, though optional second readings are provided for Years B and C. This reading is from the letter to the Colossians.
In this section of Colossians Paul is instructing his readers about the practicalities of Christian life. In verses 5 to 9 of chapter three, he has provided them with a list of sins and faults to be avoided, things to be taken off like dirty clothes. Then, in verse 10, he tells them what they are to put on: a new self which is Christ.
This is where our reading begins. It is in three parts. The first part (verses 12-14) continue the clothing metaphor. Paul gives the Colossians a list of qualities that they are to "put on," which will constitute a sort of uniform by which they can be identified. Christians are to be sympathetic, kindly in judgement, humble, gentle, patient and forgiving toward one another. Their basic moral style should be marked by love, the virtue that holds all the others together (and, one might add, gives the basic tonality to the whole ensemble).
Next (verses 15-17), in a lyrical and carefully balanced passage, he writes of the ultimate foundations of all Christian behavior: the Lord Jesus and gratitude. They are to cultivate in their hearts the peace of Christ, and be grateful. They are to be taught by the word of Christ and respond to what they have learned with songs of gratitude. They are to do everything they do under the auspices of Christ and give "thanks to God the Father through him." The life of Christians together is to be the life of Christ, a life of thankfulness.
Finally we have a very specific list of directives for family life. Wives, husbands, children, parents are to defer to one another and care for one another in the context of the will and presence of the Lord. (In the full text of Colossians this passage continues with similar directives about the relationship between slaves and masters.)
Some people who listen to this passage may be distracted from its central message by verse 18: "Wives be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord." This verse has a countercultural tone for us twenty-first century Americans. Scripture scholars tell us, however, that, in this passage, Paul is not setting out an unchangeable plan for familial relations, but is instructing his readers to follow the social customs of their times in a particularly Christian way, i.e., "in the Lord." The issue is not who is supposed to be the boss in the family, but how Christ is to be expressed in all of their relationships with one another. (If Paul were laying down once and for all rules about the specifics of family life, verses 22 ff. would be teaching us that families are supposed to have slaves! Moreover, those who find this text jarring might want to consider that there have been times in our western civilization when what Paul says about husbands ["Love your wives"] sounded just as countercultural as what he says about wives sounds to us.)
The central message of our reading is that we are to be loving and considerate of one another because of the presence and life of Christ in us and that this presence and life should make us consistently and habitually grateful. This is the secret of Christian family life and of all other interpersonal relationships.
Living together in the family of faith is not a matter of searching out and getting close to people we find interesting or attractive. It’s not a matter of offering appropriate response to their human gifts. Rather, it’s a matter of being Christ to one another, of seeing Christ in others, and of reaching out to others in the Christ who lives in us.
And all this is to take place not in a context of burdensome demand or of fear of punishment if we don’t shape up. It’s to take place in a context of gratitude, of gratitude for the presence of the Lord in those around us, of gratitude for the presence of the Lord in us.
Gratitude is always appropriate in Christian spirituality because everything we are and have is gift, and gifts call for gratefulness. But on this feast of family - Jesus’ family and our own - a little extra gratitude for what we have received and what we are able to give in our relationships with each another seems particularly fitting.
###
Conversation Questions.
In what ways is the Lord manifested in my family?
How much gratitude is there in my relationships?
###
Main Page
|| The Catholic Telegraph || Live Letters index
Copyright © 2001 Archdiocese of Cincinnati.