Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/31/23 Family Life

Episode Date: December 30, 2023

Homily from the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph The Holy Family was holy, but not without struggles. Jesus entered into this broken world by entering into the reality that all of us have experienced: family life. He did not insulate Himself from the harsh realities of life by embracing a life of wealth. Rather, all He had was borrowed. Mass Readings from December 31, 2023: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 Psalms 128:1-5Colossians 3:12-21 Luke

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

with your spirit. He reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Glory to you, Lord. Chapter 2 verses 22 through 40. When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, they took Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord. Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord

and to offer a sacrifice of a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons in accordance with the dictate of the law of the Lord. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform the custom of the law regarding him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying, Now, master, let your servant go in peace according to your word.

For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you are prepared in the sight of all peoples. A light for revelation to the Gentiles and glory for your people Israel. The child's father and mother were amazed at what was said about him, and Simeon blessed them and said to marry his mother. Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted. And you yourself, a sword will pierce, so that the hearts, thoughts of many hearts, will be revealed.

There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Fanul, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived seven, years with her husband after her marriage and then as a widow until she was 84. She never left the temple, but worshipped night and day with fasting and prayer. And coming forward at that very time, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem. When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions of the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. The gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. I'll meet you to have a seat. So this day, this feast, I think the reminder of the fact that Jesus entered into this world and a family, the fact that we have the Holy Family today, I think sometimes this feast of the Holy Family can be really difficult. Because it reminds us of something that either, well, reminds us the fact that some of the greatest blessings in our lives are from our families. And some of the greatest joys in our lives are from our families, some of the best things in life we get. through family. But it also reminds us that some of the most painful moments of our lives, some of the greatest difficulties we experience in our life, some of the greatest sufferings in our life have come through our families. And so we realize that when it comes to the Holy

family, having a family is hard. And if you're someone who doesn't have a family, you know that not having a family is even harder. And that's becoming even more common. I mean, you probably know this already. But in the United States, the rate of marriage is down 60% in the last 50 years. Which is, again, fewer than half the number of people than our population are getting married than they did 50 years ago. You probably know that I think it's 25% of people over 40

in our country have never been married, which is crazy. That's up 5% in the last 10 years. It's just this part of reality. It's just people aren't getting married. And not only that, so people aren't having families. In fact, I came across this statistic, this really fascinated me.

South Korea has the lowest fertility rates in the entire world. That in South Korea, for every 100 South Koreans, there will only be four great-grandchildren. So think about that, just in a couple generations for now, that will be a 96% extinction rate. And this is what's happening in our world. That's not only, it makes impact. Obviously, there's many issues when it comes to that.

But one of the things most critical issues is the reality then of isolation, the reality that we just, again, we find ourselves more and more alone. We find ourselves not even more alone on our own, but even more isolated from our families. And I think we have a culture right now that we separate ourselves from our families. And so what happens? I mean, all the memes over Christmas, all the, all the jokes about like having to go home over Christmas and have to endure your stupid family with their stupid ideas and your stupid opinions. And like the idea, I can't wait to get away from them. Because why? Because again, family is one of the sources of greatest sources of blessings, but also we have such brokenness. Of course,

there are some families that are even more broken than just causing some pain. There's some dangerous families, certain dangerous relationships. And so we realize this, again, even as we hold up the ideal of the family and we talk about the Holy Family and we talk about like we need to have this more and more, there's the reality that there are some relationships where you and I will have to draw a boundary even in our families. Why? Because our experience of family is the greatest joys and also the greatest difficulties. And that's nothing new.

If we read the Old Testament, and this is the crazy thing, read the Old Testament. And if you haven't started reading the Old Testament, well, tomorrow is New Year. And so what you could do is maybe you could hit, Day 1 of Bible in ear. And you get an impression of, not an impression, you get a picture, a snapshot of how broken this world is, because only chapter 1 and 2 look good. And then the rest of the Bible is just the story of brokenness. And that's the story of general brokenness, the story of familial brokenness. For generations, there's this brokenness between,

husbands, wives between parents and their children. The remarkable thing is, here's, today we're celebrating this feast. Because the remarkable thing is into this brokenness, God stepped in. In the midst of broken families, God stepped in. And again, you say, well, yeah, but the holy families from crying out loud. So it'd be perfect. Well, no, they were holy, but they weren't without their problems. I mean, this is so important for us to understand.

We know this. If you enter into scripture and read even the story of Jesus' life, we know that the Holy Family, Joseph and Mary, incredibly misunderstood. There's even a time we know at least one time where they misunderstood each other very, very clearly. They know that there's at least a couple times when there was some miscommunication, maybe that time where they lost Jesus. That would be kind of a stressful moment for the Holy family. So Holy, not perfect. Now, holy, not without problems. They also, I mean, the fact is they had to escape to Egypt, right? Jesus's life being threatened from the very moment, or even the fact that they lived in poverty and not just minor poverty.

When Jesus comes into this world, I think something that can protect us from a lot of the world's problems, from a lot of life problems, something that can kind of buffer us from a lot of life's problems is money, is having stuff. I don't know if you've noticed this, but Jesus didn't choose that protection. Actually, in fact, Jesus chose to forego that protection. Jesus came into a world, not only a brokenness, not only to this family, he came into a poor family. We heard it in the gospel today. That when even when they redeemed Jesus

in the temple, what they offer? No, they could have offered a goat. They could have offered a lamb, a ram, they could have offered all these incredible, what most people would offer would actually a full grown animal. The Joseph and Mary were so poor that all they could offer was a pair of birds. That's it.

And we realized that the rest of Jesus, actually not all of Jesus' life, we don't have a picture of him owning anything. Everything we see Jesus use, everything we see Jesus have is all borrowed. I mean, from the very moment, right? Jesus, he borrows everything. This is how poor he is. He borrows a cave to be born in. He borrows a manger, a feeding trough for a crib. That Jesus, from the very first moment of his public ministry, Jesus borrows a boat to preach from. Jesus borrows a coin to pay the temple tax. You know that Jesus borrows a room

for the last supper. Jesus borrows someone else's cross. Even when Jesus dies and he's buried, it's in a borrowed tomb. Jesus had nothing. The things that can sometimes shield us from the difficulties of life, Jesus chose none of those things. And when he entered into the Holy Family, he even borrowed a dad. Joseph is in some ways his adoptive father, right, his borrowed father,

to highlight the fact that God comes into even broken families. And he doesn't protect himself, he doesn't insulate himself in the way that you and I would want to do. this. He enters into this in poverty. And what does he tell us to do? This is the thing for today. That means this. That means that if God understands what it is to be part of a family, yes, they're the holy family. And they're, yes, Mary without sin, Joseph, the righteous man, they're good, they're holy people. But God enters into this world. And he says, here's what I'm going to ask you to do. We heard it in Syrac chapter 3. We heard it in the second reading from Colossians today.

things like care for your parents even when they have nothing to offer you. I know for myself, in some ways, I mean, as a kid, I would hear like the Fourth Commandment about honor your father and mother. I go, okay, do what mom and dad say, you know, obey them, don't sass back, that kind of idea. And then we realize as we get deeper and deeper into this that as we grow and as they age, that the obligations that we have to our parents is not just to honor them and not just to not talk back. the obligations what we owe to our parents is now what we hear in Syrac my son do not

disdain your father in his old age but care for your mother when she has nothing else left there's something we're called to we're not just called to again be polite to our parents we are actually commanded to take care of our parents where it goes on to respect their place

in our lives. Like even, even, again, even in the midst of broken families, even where parents are not perfect, we're commanded by the Lord to respect their place in our life. We don't have to respect them. Their character might not be up, you know, might not be perfect character, but they might not even even have good character. But if they are our mom, they are our dad, we have to respect their place in our life. Or even as it says in Galatislashians, to forgive one another. If there's a grievance, there's anything to forgive. God says, can you have to forgive that? That's one of the is why I just, I invite all of us to go back, go back to Syrac, chapter 3, or the whole book of Syrac, to go to Colossians, go back and reread today because it's so confusing, right?

It's one of those situations where it can be like, okay, how in the world am I supposed to do this? How in the world can I do? I mean, that might have been fine for back in the day. Like, that might have been an okay thing that Jesus could do. That may be when they wrote the letter or the book of Syrac or St. Paul wrote the letter to the Letters, maybe that be okay, but we live in a different age right now. We live in a way in an age where, like, how in the world can we possibly know what to do? And this is the last thing. I know it's confusing because every day is confusing. But if we look at what's changed, the heart hasn't changed still.

The heart's still, we all still come from families. We're all still made for families because we're made for relationship. We're made for love. And so the commands are still the same. It reminds me of a scene in The Lord of the Rings, the book, it's out in the movies, but it's in the book that at one point, Aeomer is talking to Aragon. Aragorn. I don't know that. I know their names. Amor is talking to Aragorn, right? He's the king. And Amor is looking at this and saying like, what is going on here because he sees Aragorn traveling

with Gimli and traveling with Legolas, right, with a dwarf, dwarf and with an elf and this whole thing. And he realizes that here is come. The final battle is coming. He says the world, we live in troubled times. And here's what Amor says. He says, it's hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world has all grown strange. Elf and dwarf and company walk in our daily fields and folk speak with the lady of the wood and yet live. And the sword comes back to war that was broken in the long age era of the father of our fathers rode into the mark. How he asked the question? He says, how shall a man judge what to do in such times? And this is what we could say too. Like, here we are. I know I'm called to do this. I'm called to take care of those who can't take

care of themselves. I'm called to honor those who might not be living honorable lives. How am I supposed to do that? How, as he says, how shall a man judge what to do in such times? and Aragon responds, as he has ever judged, good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one thing among elves and dwarves and another thing among men. It is a man's part to discern them as much in the golden wood as in his own house. And that's where we're left with today. Today on this feast of the Holy Family, we recognize that God's commands are still there.

and we might not know how to follow them, might not know how do I move forward, how do I have boundaries, healthy boundaries in my family relationships or other relationships, and at the same time do what God has asked me to do. It's hard to know what is right and wrong. How shall a man judge what to do in such times? And the answer is, as he has ever judged, good and evil have not changed. It is up to our part to discern them. And that's why we look to the Holy family. Jesus, you grew in wisdom and age and grace. You were obedient to your mom and dad. How? In this day, in this age, in this family, can I grow in wisdom, age, and grace? How can I, in this day, in this age, in this family? Love as you would have me love.

Thank you.