The Advent
season is behind us and our Christian celebration of the Christmas season
continues as we celebrate today the Feast of the Holy Family and approach the
Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God this weekend. During this precious time in
our Church calendar, can we take time to ponder how we are being called to
serve in 2017? How can we say yes to God as the Holy Family did -- accepting
ourselves as members of holy families just as Jesus, Mary and Joseph were a
human family with joys and sorrows, comfort and fears? This blog invites you to
take a look at the Gospels of Luke and Matthew (have your Bible handy) and what
they tell us about how Jesus came to be born to Mary and to his earthly father,
Joseph. Explore what Pope Francis has to
tell us about the yes of Mary and Joseph and why Jesus was born into a
human family. What does it mean for us today?
Find a quiet
place to settle in for a while. Invite Mary, Joseph, and Jesus into this quiet
place with you.
Imagine
yourself as Mary. You are a poor girl living in a miserable little town in very
difficult political times. You probably cannot read or write though you are
likely familiar with the oral tradition of Scripture being shared. You are
betrothed to an older man named Joseph. Scholars usually put Mary’s age at 12
or 13 or 14.
And out of nowhere,
the Angel Gabriel appears:
What was
this young girl thinking as the angel spoke to her? Was she frightened?
Disbelieving? Defensive? Overwhelmed? Faithful? Perhaps all of the above.
Most of us would
likely be delighted if we were told we had found favor with God. But Mary knew
enough about Scripture to know that others who had found favor with God were
not just blessed but missioned. To be favored by God, as the prophets were,
meant you were indeed chosen but often chosen for a very difficult mission. And
yet in the same sentence Mary is told “do not be afraid.” God never finds favor
with his beloved sons and daughters without also providing reassurance.
Mary is not
shy, as so many artistic renderings of her would have us believe. No, she comes
right back at the Angel Gabriel and challenges the very feasibility of her
being with child. “How can this be since I have no relations with a man?” Her
response is such a human one. Even more so in those times when the cost of
being pregnant out of wedlock was one’s very life.
Think about
how Gabriel responded to her protest. He says the Holy Spirit will come upon
her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her. I don’t know about
you, but those words would not comfort me. But if she was familiar with the
stories of the Old Testament, of the exodus, of Moses, she would recognize in
those words the idea that she may be about to experience something overwhelming
but again with the reassurance that God would indeed be with her as the mother
of the Son of God.
It’s right
after the angel says that Elizabeth is with child “for nothing will be
impossible with God.” Then Mary says the sacred YES, “Behold, I am the handmaid
of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”
On the feast
of the Immaculate Conception, Pope Francis said in his homily that Mary’s yes
was not halfway. He said that she does not say, sure God, I’ll do it, I’m available
now but after this we’ll see. “Hers is a full yes without conditions,” he said,
“but we are experts at the ‘half-yes.’ We are good at pretending not to
understand what God wants” or saying I can’t or I’ll do it tomorrow. But not
Mary. “In all humility, she gives a full and unreserved yes.”
Personally, I
have always loved that sequence – that Mary’s yes comes just after she learns
of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. What would Mary have thought when she heard that her
much older cousin Elizabeth is pregnant and in her sixth month? Does the
knowledge of the gift God has bestowed on her cousin somehow provide comfort
and encouragement? Is it a sense that she and her cousin will support each
other? Does she suddenly have a new soul friend? Does she see it as her duty to
take care of Elizabeth?
Mary soon
makes haste to travel a long distance to be with Elizabeth. Mary was traveling
from Nazareth to a small village south of Jerusalem – about 90 miles! And she
was a very young girl. Young girls would never have traveled alone and
certainly not that far. So she would first have needed to convince her parents,
Anne and Joachim, that she needed to make this journey. Would they have known
she was with child? Where was Joseph? Lots we don’t know but we do know that
she could not have physically made haste. But in a spiritual sense, she was
compelled to be with her elder cousin and she must have moved heaven and earth
to make it happen.
Pope Francis
explains it another way. He recently preached about Mary during a special
weekend dedicated to her as part of the Jubilee Year of Mercy:
The Pope
said that Mary’s “first act was to listen to God…” However “it’s not enough
simply to listen.” While this is the first step, it must be followed by
concrete action. “The disciple truly puts his [or her] life at the service of
the Gospel,” recalling Mary’s own actions, pointing to how after the
Annunciation, Mary immediately went to her cousin Elizabeth to help her during
her pregnancy.
And
Elizabeth is a most sacred woman in Scripture, the key figure with Mary in the
Visitation scene. The two women encounter each other with such great joy. Two
words dear to our Pope’s heart: encounter and joy. In their encounter they are
completely present to each other and it’s as if the two unborn sons somehow
great each other as well. The Pope is always encouraging us to authentically
encounter each other – Mary could have sent a message of support to Elizabeth.
Instead she went to great, great lengths to be with her, to minister to her in
person.
And
Elizabeth proclaims Jesus as her Lord. She is the first to proclaim the
identity of Jesus. Women in Scripture ARE perceptive.
Some say
that the two women coming together represents a bridge – a link from the
Covenant of God in the Old Testament with the people of Israel to the New
Covenant born in the baby Jesus and the New Testament – the dawn of
Christianity. Mary and Elizabeth did bear the world in their wombs.
And yet both
women do so with so much humility. Such authenticity. Such concern for the
world around them.
This is of
course the Canticle of Mary, the Magnificat, the conclusion of the first
chapter of Luke. This hymn of praise acknowledges Mary’s awareness of herself
as lowly and unworthy yet nonetheless blessed, or favored, by God. It
underscores how God never seeks out the obvious disciple but the most unlikely.
And this canticle is radical in its message of God’s
justice, and our call to be people of justice and mercy. It turns all our
thinking upside down – the people with power will be thrown down; the lowly
will be lifted up. The hungry will be filled; the rich will be empty. And we
are called, as we have been throughout the past Year of Mercy, to remember
God’s mercy – the mercy of God this is indeed divine, surpassing our human
capacity for compassion and having no limit. The canticle is not just about
Mary, and Jesus coming into her world, but a reminder of how God has saved us
all and continues to show us his mercy today. We are called to respond to this
mercy by sharing it through our own acts of mercy toward others. We are called
to be present to others, with loving care, with fierce protection.
And that
brings us to that other key figure in our Christmas story, our protector, the
patron saint of my parish, Joseph, ever-present spouse of Mary, loving, earthly
father of Jesus.
This is one
of the few biblical accounts that we have of Joseph and the only one that tells
this particular story. Joseph is asked to act on faith beyond all reason and
imagining. Just to clarify that word, betrothal: by Jewish marital customs in
those days, Mary and Joseph would have been “engaged” when they were young, an
arrangement by their parents. Up until the formal “betrothal,” Mary could have
opted out but once betrothed, as they were, it was legally binding. They would
even be referred to as husband and wife during the one-year betrothal and to
separate would indeed require a divorce. But they would not yet be living
together as husband and wife because Mary was too young – too physically
immature to be with a husband.
So before
the angel comes to Joseph in the dream, Joseph, aware of the pregnancy, is
trying to do what a good Jewish man would be expected to do—divorce her
quietly. To do so quietly would have been to try to spare Mary not only public
humiliation but the very real possibility of execution by stoning, according to
Old Testament law. So it’s no small act of faith and courage and humility for
Joseph to quietly accept Mary as his wife and Jesus as his foster son, saying
yes to God despite what must have seemed a preposterous story of conception by
the Holy Spirit. Were it not for Joseph’s extraordinary act of faith, on top of
Mary’s, our salvation story might be very different.
Pope Francis
has described the mission of Joseph in this way: “Joseph did as the angel of
the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife. These words already point to
the mission which God entrusts to Joseph: he is to be the protector. The
protector of whom? Of Mary and Jesus; but this protection is then extended to
the Church… How does Joseph exercise his role as protector? Discreetly, humbly
and silently, but with an unfailing presence and utter fidelity, even when he
finds it hard to understand.” The Pope continues, “From the time of his
betrothal to Mary until the finding of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple
of Jerusalem, he is there at every moment with loving care. As the spouse of
Mary, he is at her side in good times and bad, on the journey to Bethlehem for
the census and in the anxious and joyful hours when she gave birth; amid the
drama of the flight into Egypt and during the frantic search for their child in
the Temple; and later in the day-to-day life of the home of Nazareth, in the
workshop where he taught his trade to Jesus.”
The Jesuit, Fr.
James Martin, in My Life with the Saints
says Joseph lived a “hidden life” as he raised the boy who must have been full
of childlike wonder. We know so little about Joseph yet he had a profound
impact on the son he called his own. Along with Mary, Joseph would have been a
primary teacher of the faith for Jesus. As a carpenter’s son, Jesus would have
been taught the skills of the trade and virtues needed to be a respected
craftsman: patience while you wait for the wood to dry; judgment to be sure
your lines are straight; honesty to charge a fair price, and persistence to
sand the wood smooth. Patience, judgment, honesty and persistence would serve
Jesus well in his public ministry, after Joseph had presumably gone home to God.
But it all
began with the carpenter’s willingness to hear the message God sent to him in a
dream. As Pope Francis says about Mary, Joseph not only listened, he acted. And
because he acted, Isaiah’s prophecy could be fulfilled: “the virgin shall
conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel,” the name that means God
with us. Joseph is told by the angel “do not be afraid” – just like Mary he too
is chosen but he is not left alone.
For Joseph,
the obedience of faith required him to provide a loving home, protection, and
safety for Mary and Jesus – to make a family. That’s the model of faith left
for us to emulate today. Within the context of whatever family looks like for
you today – a big, loud messy household, an empty nest, maybe you’re even
struggling alone – still we are called to see ourselves as holy, blessed, and
chosen by God to continue the ministry of Jesus – to listen and to say YES,
without condition or lame excuse – and then to act, to personally encounter, to
share God’s mercy.
On this
feast of the Holy Family, we hear again in Matthew’s Gospel about Joseph’s YES
to God’s plan for his young family – he flees to Egypt to save his infant son
from the jealous wrath of Herod. The family stays there until the angel returns
to Joseph to draw them back to Nazareth where the boy Jesus is raised and
prepared for his life in ministry.
In Amoris Laetitia, The Joy of Love, Pope
Francis points to one fact that should
leave us breathless at Christmas: God chose to send his only Son into
the world to save all humanity as part of a family. A poor family. An obscure
family. A family like yours and mine. Here’s what he says:
“The
incarnation of the Word in a human family, in Nazareth, by its very newness
changed the history of the world. We need to enter into the mystery of Jesus’
birth, into that “yes” given by Mary to the message of the angel, when the Word
was conceived in her womb, as well as the “yes” of Joseph, who gave a name to
Jesus and watched over Mary. We need to contemplate the joy of the shepherds
before the manger, the adoration of the Magi and the flight into Egypt, in
which Jesus shares his people’s experience of exile, persecution and
humiliation… We need to … peer into those thirty long years when Jesus earned
his keep by the work of his hands, reciting the traditional prayers and
expressions of his people’s faith and coming to know that ancestral faith until he made it
bear fruit in the mystery of the Kingdom. This is the mystery of Christmas and the
secret of Nazareth, exuding the beauty of family life! …
The covenant
of love and fidelity lived by the Holy Family of Nazareth illuminates the
principle which gives shape to every family, and enables it better to face the
vicissitudes of life and history. On this basis, every family, despite its
weaknesses, can become a light in the darkness
Let us all
pray to be the light in the darkness of our world. Amen.
This
weekend, we will hear in Luke’s Gospel that as the shepherds announced the good
news they had heard, Mary pondered all of these things in her heart.
Take a few
moments now to ponder in your heart: How is God trying to act in your life,
today, in your present circumstances? Where is God calling you to act?
A prayer to
close this reflection, adapted from Little Rock’s Alive in the Word study Mary, Favored by God:
Like Mary,
may I create the opportunity to share good news,
embrace a
new thing God is doing even when it seems impossible,
and receive
God’s word with joyful acceptance.
Like
Elizabeth, may I recognize the presence of God in and around me,
foster in my
family the desire to proclaim good news,
and humbly
fulfill the plan of God in my own life.
Like Joseph,
may I place all my trust in God,
give all of
myself to being present and attentive to family needs,
and offer my
protection and care to all in need.
Amen.
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