HOMILY FOR FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. We hope that the last few days have been peaceful for everyone and that you are enjoying this restful time after Christmas. We were delighted to see so many people here at Mass both on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day with everyone happy to be here and wanting to be here. Even for those who were bereaved in the past year, it was good to see them and to have the chance to embrace them with our care and to say ‘we know it’s hard but you are not alone’.

One of the sources of joy in the parish at Christmas time is to see so many families here at Mass. Christmas is a family time and it is wonderful to see that so many families still come to Church together as part of their Christmas tradition. It is as if coming to Church is part of their togetherness and is also part of our unity as a parish community. Worship and prayer is the glue that unites families and makes every parish a family of families.

On this feast day of the holy family, both the first reading and the Gospel feature two families who come together in the context of worship and prayer. Hannah presents her child Samuel to the Lord in the temple for he is the child she prayed for. Then in the Gospel, Jesus, Mary and Joseph are on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover. And when Jesus becomes lost, his parents find him and are reunited with him in the temple, the place of worship and prayer.

What message can we draw from this? That when we worship and pray together as a family, our family becomes stronger and more united. This was there for all of us to see over Christmas but holds true for all the year round. Today’s feast of the Holy Family encourages every Christian to value family and build it up. It encourages every individual to see themselves as part of a family, a community where we go together to encounter God who is himself the family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Especially when we come to Mass, we do not come alone but come as a family. We are forgiven as a family. We listen to his Word as a family. We are nourished and fed by the Eucharist as a family and finally we are sent as a family out into the world again.

It is nor easy to uphold this commitment to family life today at a time when the highest value championed is the freedom of the individual. So, as we head into the Jubilee Year of 2025, our resolve needs to be stronger and our leadership greater than ever to stick together in the family of the Church. In fact, we believe that only in the context of family can we learn to become free by growing in wisdom and virtue. We see this with Jesus himself and what St Luke tells us in the last line of today’s Gospel. It was in the family that Jesus ‘grew in wisdom, in stature, in favour with God and with men’. This wisdom and stature is not something assumed or given. It is something we learn and acquire in the life of the family.

Today we ask God’s blessing on all our families. We pray for single people, people widowed and lone parents. We pray too for those who find it hard to find a sense of belonging in the family of the Church. May they find the support they need in the family of the local parish they belong to and in the kindness of people who make them feel at home. And may the times we pray together as a family be moments when the bonds of communion are made stronger between us as brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus and as beloved children of God the Father.

Happy New Year everyone and may we cross the threshold into 2025 together as a family who prays together and who stays together.