December 29, 2024 Essay: One Family in God
If our celebration of the Feast of the Holy Family is to have any relevance for us, we have to consider the hardships faced by the family of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. We must also remember that we are all one family in God with responsibility for all of our brothers and sisters in God.
As Jesus sought to break forth from his mother’s womb, his parents found themselves repeatedly rebuffed by innkeepers who either did not have room for them or would not make room for them. Think of the desperation that Mary and Joseph must have felt as Mary’s condition grew more critical. As you think of them, think of those families who came to our border, having fled economic destitution, political unrest, or persecution for who they were or what they believed. They, too, were desperate, so desperate that some snaked their way through razor wire strung to prevent their passage. As Mary and Joseph had to accept less-than-ideal conditions in which to bring forth their child, these migrants have had to accept less-than-ideal conditions in which to try and create a new life for themselves and their families.
Mary and Joseph did not have long to celebrate the joy of bringing a son into this world. Word soon reached them of a slaughter of innocents being unleashed with the aim of killing their child. In terror, they fled south to Egypt to seek safe shelter—a forced migration requiring them to live as aliens in a foreign land. How many parents in Gaza have had little, if any, time to celebrate the birth of their child? How many of them have witnessed that tiny life snuffed out through disease, starvation, or bombings, unable, as they are, to seek and find safe shelter? How many parents in the conflict zones of Africa have also seen young lives lost through disease, starvation, and violence, as they were unable to seek, or find, safe shelter? Surely, the cries of these families must echo in the ears of a God who knew firsthand what it was like to face the situations these families faced. It must pain God to see how their suffering leaves so many unmoved, particularly those who profess to love the God whom they do not see even as they are indifferent to the suffering of the God whom they do see.
Consider what it was like for Mary and Joseph to experience the loss of their twelve-year-old son after their celebration of the Passover in Jerusalem. Once more, a sense of desperation must have gripped Mary and Joseph as they sought to find him. Finding him in the temple, Mary made it clear that Jesus had caused her, and Joseph, great anxiety. Even so, they most likely felt an overwhelming sense of relief that Jesus was safe and unharmed. How many parents in our inner cities have done the best they could to keep their children safe from harm, only to lose them to the streets, never to know the relief Mary and Joseph experienced in finding their child unharmed? How many Palestinian children have been swept up in raids in the West Bank leaving behind anxious families who have suffered cruel periods of separation that have left them uncertain as to the safety of their children? Surely, God hears their cries and how it pains God, again, to see the indifference of other members of God’s family to the plight of their brothers and sisters.
Our Feast of the Holy Family invites us to consider the one family to which all of us belong—the one family in God in which we are equal in dignity to each other and in which we are all really responsible for each other. Are we living as a holy family evidencing the care for each other that God expects of us?
— Rev. Mark C. Hallinan, S.J., Associate Pastor