Holy Family

Some may remember this feast as being celebrated during the Octave of the Epiphany. Then in the 60’s, when the liturgical calendar was revised, it was moved to the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas as we have it today. So, what exactly is a family? By definition: A family is most commonly understood as a group of people who are related to each other, especially parents and their children. Sometimes when people talk about a family, they mean children. (They decided to start a family.) Or sometimes when people talk about their family, they mean their relatives and ancestors. Then there is that general group meanings, when we say a family of animals or plants is a group of related species and so on. What then is the significance of the title HOLY FAMILY? Here we have a father, a mother, and a son living together as a family. What makes this family Holy is who they are, and the way they are brought together as a family – it is by God’s divine intervention; it is God who brings Joseph together with Mary as husband and wife. Mary conceives Jesus in her womb, but not by Joseph’s seed. Jesus’ Father is God, Jesus is God’s Son. Joseph will be a father to Jesus, by caring for all his needs, helping him to grow healthy and strong. These are the mysteries of faith that have been the focus of our meditation in these recent holy days.  Today’s focus on the Holy Family helps to reinforce for us the vital role and importance the family has in God’s creative plan – his plan for the continuation of the whole human race, and his plan for the human race to ultimately be formed into one heavenly family. Now if God has an enemy – and indeed he does, legions of enemies, then attacking the family must be priority number one for his enemies, as we see beginning with the murderous undertaking of king Herod. The unifying bond of the family is love; husband and wife, parents and children. The family is the womb of love and the school of love wherein we learn that life itself is dependent on mutual caring, one for another. This priority of mutual caring carries over into the whole of society, making it healthy and strong. Our generation is experiencing a toxic atmosphere for true family life; a climate of selfish, self interest, “Me first and only as long as I like it”. This mentality is proving to be lethal to the family. That makes today’s feast all the more important for us to commemorate. Here are three ways we may do this. 1.       To gather as families of faith in worship and prayer, thanking God for the gift of his Spirit who fills our hearts with divine love and teaches us how to love one another. 2.       Filled with that love flowing from the Holy Family, let us be instruments of compassion and healing, in our families and others, where the absence of love has wounded and divided. 3.       To be both sign and advocate in our society for all that strengthens and advances authentic family life as modeled in the Holy Family.

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Advent Series - New Encounter - Christmas Week

Flight into a Far Country - William Kurelek

Christmas Week
Lectio	When the magi had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him." Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, Out of Egypt I called my son. Mt 2:13-18
Meditatio	We come to the end of this special Advent/Christmas series with this image by William Kurelek. It is a special one for me. I was pastor of St. Anthony's parish in Kincardine, Ontario, for six years. On Sundays, after the Masses, I would drive down through Mennonite country to visit my family in Cambridge. I would often see this very image, in reality, as they made their way home from their Sunday Church gathering. In this dream, William sees the Holy Family leaving his community and disappearing into the blowing Snow. He tries to run after Them to beg them to stay, but his legs sink deeper into the snow and he cannot move. He calls to Them in panic: "Please don't go!" This time he is heard. Their compassionate words float back to him through the blizzard: "We will return one day - when you are ready to receive Us with undivided love". How appropriate a reflection this is for our generation. A blizzard of secular humanism is obscuring us from recognizing who it is that we have lost sight of. St. Ignatius tells us that God will choose to withdraw his consolation: (the graces to know his comforting presence)  so that our hearts, that have grown indifferent, will again hunger for Him. With hearts now purified, and more mature in understanding, the grace of consolations is returned to us. When this generation finally comes to understand what it has lost, a new age of renewed faith will come upon us.
Oratio	O Merciful and loving Father, it is because of your great love for us that you now discipline us for our wayward, divided hearts. It is so, that we will come to see how empty and un-consoling are the gods with which we now surround ourselves. When at last, we come to our senses and cry out: "Come O Lord and save us", New Life will once again flood into our hearts.
Contemplatio	"We will return one day - when you are ready  to receive Us with undivided love".

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Advent Series - New Encounter - Christmas

Across the River from the Capital - William Kurelek

Christmas
Lectio	In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Lk 2:1-14
Meditatio	In the middle of the Ottawa River, across from Parliament Hill, there is a tiny island named International Island. It is the setting for this Nativity Scene by William Kurelek. In this dream scene Mary is holding the infant Jesus who is reaching out to touch the forehead of a man bundled up in a sleeping bag. Kurelek explains that the man is himself and as the infant touches him he complains, "Buzz off, will you!" Then Kurelek awakens from this dream crying out loudly, "That can't be me. I will never reject him." At the time of this painting, Kurelek wondered about the people who occupy the seats of authority on that hill above the river. Would they reject the touch of Christ? Sadly yes. We see this rejection growing all around us today. We see it argued by those who outright embrace atheism, who teach it in places of learning; we see it influencing law makers who reject the moral values that once assisted them in their judgments.  But perhaps the most troubling examples of this growing rejection is the sheer apathy toward religion in society today, especially among the younger generations.  In Matthew's gospel account, Ch. 21:43, Jesus tells the parable of the unfaithful Tenant Farmers who failed to return the produce of the land they were given to cultivate, rejecting the servants sent to them and even killing the Son who was sent to them.  Jesus asked them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.’ That is why I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce fruit for it.” Vs. 42-43 In the midst of all the Christmas celebrating and the commercialization that tends to dominate it, let us not become disconnected from Him who is with us and who comes today to take us into an even deeper communion with Him in the days to come; days that will be marked by an ever deepening struggle with the secularization that surrounds us.
Oratio	O Lord, troubling is it to see how your coming anew is rejected by so many. Even more troubling is the awareness of how often I too ignore your invitation to a deeper walk with you. May your Holy Spirit open my heart more deeply; filling me with joy and expectation of the new wonders that await me at your coming this year.
Contemplatio	When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us."

Advent Series - New Encounter - Eight

Two Barns - William Kurelek

Wednesday Week Three
Lectio	In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you." But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end."  But Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?" And the angel said to her in reply, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God." Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her. Lk 1:26-38
Meditatio	In our previous post we reflected on Joseph's encounter with the revelation of Jesus coming into the world and the special role he was to have in this wondrous mystery. Now we turn to Mary's experience. "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you." ...  "Do not be afraid, Mary" ... " - for you have found favor with God." How might we ever imagine what the experience of a visitation from an angel would be like. For Mary, it was frightening. This is an entirely other world now connecting to this world. This is not a matter of "thinking about" this is "real".  The angel, who's identity is Gabriel, must first bring a calming peace to Mary, and then reveal to her what she could never have otherwise imagined. "Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus." Gabriel goes on to explain further. What ever Mary's plans for her life may have been, now another is planning for her. Mary accepts now, this new and unimagable plan for her life, and seeks only a little clarification, "How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?". In this age, obsessed with the idea that this is my life, "I" decide what "I" will do with it, do you ever think that you also have a God-given vocation - indeed, that as you begin each day, God already has plans for you?  On that "to do list" posted on the fridge door, should we not, at the bottom, leave a space entitled: "But what ever you have planned for me Lord, let thy will be done."
Oratio	O Mother Mary, by your prayer of intercession, help me to have a listening heart. Help me to see that the Lord has a plan for my life also; that my personal faith is but the beginning of a wonderful vocation as a servant, a handmaid of the Lord. May my prayer each day echo your words spoken in reply to the angel; "Behold, I am the servant, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word."
Contemplatio	"Speak Lord, your servant is listening."

Beginning December 17th. the "O" Antiphons are featured in the liturgies of the final week of Advent. They sing with joyful anticipation the wondrous graces that await us. They are a rich resource for our prayer in these final days of Advent. In an earlier post I explored the O Antiphons in greater detail. Here is the link to that post. /// LINK \\\

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