Jesus Makes Friendship With God Possible
Sunday, December 29, 2024
Sunday after Christmas: The Feast of the Holy Family
Sir 3:2-6, 12-14/Col 3:12-21 or 3:12-17/Lk 2:41-52
or, in Year C, 1 Sm 1:20-22, 24-28/1 Jn 3:1-2, 21-24/Lk 2:41-52 (Lectionary 17)
Whom do you know best in your family? How did that happen? Did you spend more time together? Do more things together? Talk more deeply to each other? With your friends, what is it you do together that makes you friends? How many of these things do you do with Jesus?
The Entrance Antiphon tells us Jesus was first seen by shepherds, who “found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.” The first people to find Jesus found him in the context of a family. And this is where most people find him. Most of us meet Jesus at home.
But many don’t. In many families the presence of Jesus is not felt or visible. This is true also in the family of the human race. In all of us, to some degree, God’s image is distorted. Other people can draw us to Jesus or drive us away from him. Or just leave us ignorant of the Savior of the world.
That is why we should pray to “live as the holy family, united in respect and love” — not just with our blood relatives, but with every member of the human race on earth. It is not ordinary human togetherness we are asking for, based on ordinary human respect and love. We are asking to be deeply united in the “communion of the Holy Spirit,” with an awesome respect for each other as made divine by “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We ask to experience the love between us as “the love of God” poured out in our hearts, expressed by us to one another.
This is possible because in Jesus God the Son came and “made his home” with us (John 1:14). That is why his name is “Emmanuel: God-with-us.” In Jesus God is present to us as a human among humans. We can deal with him in the same human way we deal with each other. We can treat him and experience him as a friend.
In each one of us Jesus acts in us and through us to reveal his truth and express his love to everyone we deal with — beginning in the home. So we ask that our homes might be previews of heaven, homes in which we experience the “joy and peace of our eternal home” with God. This is the sign that we are living by the Spirit of God: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5: 22-23). Where these are the Spirit is, and we are united in Christ. If these are in our home, we will reveal and find Christ there.
“Blessed are those…”
The Responsorial Psalm pinpoints the difference between a “natural” or merely human family, and a family in which we experience the presence of God: “Blessed are those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways” (Psalm 128).
“Fear of the Lord” is not fright, but respect based on awareness of who God is. Anyone who sees in perspective the power, the goodness and the wisdom of God would be insane not to “walk in his ways.” Those who do walk in his ways will make God known to one another. This is the key to family life and all Christian community.
Sirach 3:2-14 declares that those who honor God’s authority in parents and obey them will be preserved from sin, be heard when they pray, and “live a long life” — which in Scriptural language means a “full life.” They will be a comfort to their parents, find fulfillment in life and be made glad by their own children.
When children obey their human parents, they express and experience their response to God who is “made flesh” for them in their parents. God’s love is made flesh in parents’ care for their children. Physical interaction with people who are aware that in their actions they are responding to God and letting God work through them is an experience of real, physical, down-to-earth interaction with God. By acting recognizably by grace, God’s life within us, we become visibly for each other “Emmanuel: God-with-us.”
Jesus came to save the world by being in it. Every human society is saved or corrupted by the people in it: by the effect their words and actions have on each other: instilling true or false attitudes and values, making sin appear normal or abnormal, inciting to violence or to peace, enticing to healthy or harmful gratifications, inhibiting or encouraging the expression of higher ideals and faith. It takes millions of human choices, both for good and for evil, expressed in action, to create a culture. As the culture develops, for better or worse, it influences everyone in it. Jesus came to start a reversing trend against what is false or destructive in human society.
He began by preaching and teaching — through word and example — in the body he received from Mary. He continues by speaking through the words of all who are his body on earth today, and by modeling, in them, a better way to live. This is one way he continues to be “Emmanuel: God-with-us” still. “Blessed are those” who let him act in them and “walk in his ways.”
“Didn’t you know?”
In Luke 2: 41-52 Jesus appears to be unloving toward his parents. We say he was “lost” in the temple. We could say he ran away! He “stayed behind in Jerusalem without his parents knowing it.” When they found him, what was the tone in Mary’s voice as she said, “My child, why have you done this to us?” How would any mother sound?
The Jews traveled in caravans for safety, the men in front, the women and children in the rear. But Jesus at twelve could have been a child marching with his mother or an adult marching with the men. So Mary and Joseph didn’t realize he was missing until they came together that night.
When Mary asked him “Why did you do this to us?” he doesn’t give a clear answer. Isn’t this typical of the relationship between parents and teenagers? Lack of communication. Tuned in to different channels.
Jesus answered in a way that acknowledged the gap. He knew his parents could not understand the real reason he did what he did. So he answered with a question that baffled them. Mary had said, “Your father and I have been worried about you.” He replied, “Didn’t you know I must be about my Father’s business?” (or “in my Father’s house?”) In this he reminded them that his real father was not Joseph, and they had to start getting ready for the day he would leave home and go about the work he came for.
They didn’t understand. But they had enough love, and confidence in his love, to just “hold these things” in their hearts and wait for understanding. This is something all family members have to do: trust each other in love and wait when they do not understand each other.
Twenty-one years later Mary understood. She was in the same city feeling the same sense of loss, only worse. Jesus had been crucified. It seemed his enemies had defeated him. And then she remembered, “I felt this before. And when we found him, he said there was nothing to worry about: he had been about his Father’s business, in his Father’s house. I haven’t lost him. Nothing went wrong. I will find him again after three days.”
When the pain of the first separation became the comfort of the second, Mary understood what Jesus had done and why. To understand God — and each other — we have to wait in trusting love.
Words Made Flesh
Colossians 3: 12-21 shows us Jesus being “Emmanuel: God-with-us” in the Christian community and in family life, where people affect each other most deeply. Paul urges all the members to embody the virtues of Jesus in action: “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience….” Above all he urges us to express love in everything we do, since love shows appreciation for all that is good.
If we live by the values of Christ, the fruit of this will be evident, experienced peace — in our hearts, in our homes, in our communities. Peace is the fruit and the proof of love. Christ calls us to peace.
But for this to happen, we have to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14) and “let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). Otherwise, his image in us will be distorted.
We can grow into the mind and heart of Christ because in the Scriptures that record Jesus’ life and explain his teaching, we find the pure Light of the world, untainted by darkness. In his actions we see the divine Word of God expressing himself without distortion in our world. We have to go to this well and drink from it, the source of life-giving water.
In the Scriptures Jesus is “Emmanuel: God-with-us” in a way that is different from his presence in others. In the Scriptures the Church recognizes a “real presence” of the living God:
The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s body…. For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets his children with great love and speaks with them (Vatican II on Divine Revelation, no. 21).
So, to make Christ present among us, St. Paul urges, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.” For Jesus to be “Emmanuel,” recognizable in us, in our words and actions, we have to fill our minds with his words and nourish our hearts with his example.
If we read Scripture and worship together in our homes, we will say from lived experience, “Blessed are those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways.”
Through repeated encounters with God-made-flesh in Jesus, through deep reflection on the words he speaks to us in Scripture, through the contemplation of his physical actions recorded in the Gospels, and above all through the revealing action of his Spirit in our hearts, we can come to know Jesus as “friend.” His Incarnation made it possible for us to deal with him as we deal with our other human friends on earth. If we do that, we will grow into friendship with God.
Insight: In how many human ways do I interact with Jesus? What ways are open to me? Can I interact with him in all the ways I interact with my family and friends?
Initiative: Recognize Jesus dealing with you in human ways — through his words, sacraments, and members of his body. Be alert to his presence, revelation and glory.
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