The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke. Each year, the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem for the feast to pass over. And when he was 12, they went up according to festival custom. After they had completed its days as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it.
Thinking he was in the caravan, they journeyed for day, and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances. But not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions. And all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.
When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety. And he said to them, why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I had to be in my father's house? But they did not understand what he said to them.
He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them. And his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man. The Gospel of the Lord.
We celebrate today the feast of the Holy Family of Mary Joseph and the child Jesus. We mark the fundamental fact that when the Son of God became man, when the Word became flesh, He became flesh as a little child within a family. That was a divine choice. For Jesus didn't have to come into the world that way.
He could have come as a 33-year-old adult immediately began his public ministry of preaching, teaching, healing, and saving. He could have come as an 80-year-old sage, or at least at the age of 12, dabbling the scribes and priests in the temple like we see in today's gospel. But he was conceived and began his existence
as a one-celled human zygote in Mary's womb, progressive elastasis, then an embryo, then a fetus, until finally he was born as a baby in a family, or as nourished according to his human nature, and grew as we see in today's gospel in wisdom and favor before God and man. Why did he do this? He didn't tell us the reason. But you don't need to be a great theologian to see why it makes sense.
He wanted to redeem all of human life in its totality from its very beginning, which meant redeeming the family from its very beginning. All of existence is meant to be familial. St. John Paul II used to call the Blessed Trinity a family because it is a structured communion of persons in love with a father, a son, and the love between them, the Holy Spirit.
The human person was made in the image and likeness of God as a communion of persons. Male and female, he made them. And hence, the image of God is familial. A husband and wife can love each other so much that like the Trinity, their love can generate a third person. They can literally make love in the name, raise, and live in joyful communion with the love they make.
But man, woman, and children didn't live up to their being in the image of God. Right from the beginning, sin invaded the family. It began with Adam and Eve in the first sin, which Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent with neither taking responsibility and with both hiding their most vulnerable aspects of the humanity from each other and from God. The sinfulness quickly harmed their children. Cain killed his brother, Abel.
There was jealousy between Abraham's sons Isaac and Ishmael, admitted between Isaac's sons Jacob and Esau, envy between Jacob's 12 sons, ten of whom ganged up to try to kill their brother Joseph. There was deadly jealousy in King David's family. Jesus' family tree is a chronicle of generations of infidelity from each other into God. Polygamy and Kunkubinaj became rampant.
Divorce was introduced because of the hardness of people's hearts to keeping their promises for life. God would sum up the relationship with His people through the Prophet Oseah under the title of adultery, because adultery rather than fidelity, had almost become the rule in the relationships between spouses and family members, between individuals, families, and the family of Israel with God. Simply put,
the family had become a mess. As the human family increased and multiplied, so did sin. Jesus was born of a family in order to redeem the family, to reconcile all a family life to God, because the family has a crucial role in the world God created.
The family based on marriage is the primordial sacrament because it's meant to be an efficacious sign of the love of God in the world, of the loving communion of persons who is God. When the family is thriving as God intended, everything else can find its proper order. When the family becomes a den of sin instead of a school of sanctification, the wounds cut the deepest. That's why the devil always goes after the family.
From out of the needs to the families we grew up in, to religious families, and to the family, Jesus himself founded with his bride and body, the church. Jesus' whole work can be looked at as restoring the family to its proper place in the beginning by helping it to become a crucial part of the redemption and the house of holiness. We see this restoration in the holy family of Nazareth.
where their life was centered on God in prayer, where they sacrificed for each other out of love, where they helped and strengthened each other to fulfill the vocation God had given them even a great personal cause. When Jesus inaugurated his public ministry, he continued to give witness to the importance of the family in God's plan of redemption. He began the public manifestation of his work,
with the miracle of the wedding feast of Cana, changing the water of the good of marriage from the beginning with Adam and Eve to the wine of a sacrament that communicates God's own divine life. Jesus taught about marriage in God's original plan and sought to purify people's hardened hearts to accept that God would make fruitful, faithful, indissoluble love modeled on divine love possible.
He shared in the moments of familial life with Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, and even in the family of Peter with his mother-in-law. He responded with haste to the cries of parents for their children, as he did with a centurion whose son was died. The synagogue official whose little girl was more abundant. The widow and name whose only son had breathed his last. And Martha and Mary after their brother Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.
Throughout his public ministry, he also tried to reconcile people to God's plans for marital and familial love. He tenderly told the adulterous woman that she wasn't condemned, but called her to go forth and break no more families up. He compassionately exposed for this American woman that the man she was with was not her husband.
He praised St. John the Baptist, who was imprisoned because he reminded Herod that it was not right for him to marry his brother Philip's wife. Jesus came to redeem the family, dwarf him, my family of origin, and the whole family of the church. And that should fill us with extraordinary hope, even when we face trouble in our family.
This year's celebration is a feast in the Holy Family, particularly special, because it's taking place as part of the long awaited Jubilee of Hope, which Pope Francis inaugurated in Christmas Eve at St. Peter's in the Vatican. In a wheelchair, the Holy Father movingly opened the Jubilee door and invited the whole church to make a pilgrimage to that door, leaving behind the world in which there were so many signs of desperation
and entering through the door that symbolizes Christ our whole. But that was just the start of the Jubilee. Today, on the piece of the Holy Family, two things are happening. First in Rome, Pope Francis will open the Holy Door at his cathedral, the archvacilic of Saint John in the latter. Second, he decreed that in every cathedral of the world, bishops are to celebrate holy mass,
as the solemn opening of the Jubilee year in their diocese. So the Mother Church of every diocese in the world, including St. Louis Cathedral here in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, there will be a special mass, the particular prayers for the Jubilee. And the Jubilee will continue in each diocese of the world and fill the Feast of Holy Family next year. This shows us that the Jubilee is meant to be marked not just in Rome,
not just in every diocese as a cathedral, but in every family seeking to help every family model itself in the Holy Family. And thereby become a beacon of hope for the world as Christian families individually and collectively give a reason for the hope we bear within. We're going to live out this jubilee year well
It's essential for us to understand the true meaning of Christian hope to look at the catechism of the Catholic Church. It says that hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the Kingdom of Heaven in eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but in the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Hope is, therefore, a gift of God.
by which we ground our life trustingly in Christ's words and promises, and avail ourselves of God's help to seek to live in His Kingdom, in but not of the world, with our hearts set on God and the great hope of eternal loving communion with Him. That's a very rich, beautiful, deep definition.
In a Christmas time, we can think of all the promises God made that were fulfilled with the birth of Jesus from Messiah, of a virgin, of Bethlehem, of a prophet, of all the other promises that would be fulfilled in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. But I've always loved the definition suggested to us by Pope Benedict in his 2007 encyclical on Christian hold called space housing, or saved by hold.
Relying on St. Paul's words to the Christians in Ephesus. The Holy Father said that to live without hope is to live without God in the world. That's kind of like a photographic negative through which we can shine light to discover the true meaning of hope. If hopelessness is living without God in the world, then hope is living with God in the world. We know this to be true.
No matter what challenges we're facing, when mountains we need to climb. If we try to tackle them on our own, they can often prove crushing and overwhelming. If we face the problems, however, conscious that God is with us, helping us and sustaining us, we know that nothing is impossible. That's the hope the baby Jesus sought to bring into the world.
Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be Emmanuel. Literally, God is with us. Jesus, God, man, is indeed with us in New Orleans. He's with us in the world full time, every day, never quitting. He's with us in the dark valleys and on the beautiful summits. He's with us on rainy days and sunny ones. He's with us always, as He promised it His ascension, until the end of the world.
And because He is with us, we're never without hope. Because we know He's not just there, but He's there loving us, madly. As we heard today's second reading from St. John's first letter, see what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called children of God, and yet that is what we are.
God has loved us so much that He didn't even spear His own Son so that we wouldn't perish but might have eternal life. And that Son is still with us in the whole Eucharist. That Son literally enters into us. If God loves us that much, that He would go to such lengths to save us. How can we not be filled with hope to overflowing?
who we have to remain with the God who grounds our hope. Today's gospel, we discover what happens when we're not with the God who has come to be God with us. That's a radical possibility of our human freedom. We can try to structure our life to live without God in the world. And that's where we start, step by step, to go down the path of this fear that so many people are now experiencing, anxiety, all types of medication, you name it.
because their life isn't properly ordered with the Lord. We see what happens even in the lives of the two greatest saints of all time, Mary and Joseph, when they lose the third member of the Holy Family, Jesus. The scene of losing Jesus for three days and then finding Him in the temple constitutes both one of the seven sorrows of Mary as well as, as we know, the fifth joyful mystery.
It's an episode of the life of the Holy Family, unless we regularly meditate on the mysteries of Holy Rosary, we don't ponder enough. Because it only comes up in the gospel one out of every three years, as it does today. For those who come to Daily Mass, if the priests celebrate the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, they'll hear it then. Otherwise, at Mass, we'll only hear this scene once every three years.
within the context of the Jubilee home. It's a scene from which we can learn so much because it teaches us about hopelessness and hope. The Holy Family of Bethlehem and Nazareth was called Holy first and foremost because it was centered on God who literally dwelled among them, whom they held in their arms, nursed, clothed, taught, and helped grow according to his humanity.
We see in today's gospel that there was a time in which Mary and Joseph took their eyes off of Jesus.
After one of their three annual 60-mile pilgrimages from Nazareth to Jerusalem, as they were heading home, Mary thought Jesus was a Joseph, because normally the boys would travel with the dads, but if they were infants, if they were young kids, they'd travel with the moms, but the men and the women would travel separately. So Mary thought Jesus was a Joseph, Joseph thought Jesus was with Mary, and both were totally wrong. Both.
had just presumed that he was with the other. They had both taken their eyes off of Jesus. After a day's journey, when they recognized that they were both mistaken, and discovered that Jesus was with neither of them nor with any of the other traveling back in the Caravant War Galilee. Their whole life changed. They hadn't sinned, but it was clearly an imperfection.
They just figured that Jesus is with the other because they weren't with it. So they began to look hurriedly for him with growing anxiety in the camp, but without success. We know every parent near knows that to lose a child is the worst possible nightmare, but they weren't just losing a child. They were losing the turtle son of God.
who had been entrusted to them. So they journeyed all the way straight back up the hill to Jerusalem and began to look from there at the places where they had stayed, eaten, visited, and so on. They searched the whole second day without finding them, either, as doubtless their dread began to grow. Finally, on the third day, they found Jesus in the free sinks of the temple area, sitting in the midst of the teachers, astounding them with his understanding, questions, and answers.
When they confessed that they had been looking for him for three days with great anxiety, the not even yet teenage Jesus, that's why they hadn't realized that he would have had to have been in his father's house, busy about his father's work. He wasn't anxious for them because he anticipated that they would have known where to find him, that he was in the temple much like Samuel, and today's first reading had been left as a boy in the temple by his parents.
While Mary and Joseph had taken their eyes off of Jesus, Jesus had not taken his eyes off his father. Losing Jesus for three days is not just something that points to his eventual three days in the tomb when the whole human race would in some sense lose his presence for that period. It also points to the anxiety, the hopelessness, even the despair that comes when we really lose the presence of Jesus in our life.
We can become like Mary Magdalene in the morning of the resurrection, asking everyone where they have taken the Lord's dead body. The remedy to keep our eyes laser-beamed on Jesus, to be with Him and seeking the will of the Father, to stay with Him, even for a while in His Father's house, but to stay with Him in a work, whatever we're doing over the course of the day, so that we like Him can be about God the Father's business.
seeking to accomplish the Father's will just like we see Jesus doing. To be with Jesus in this way is something that will always ground our hope. The scene of the anxiety of Mary and Joseph puts in a release that the Holy Family otherwise was totally focused on Jesus, on helping Him and each other to do the will of God. Our families, as well as the parish family of the Basilica Saint Stephen,
Well, as the entire church is the family of God, it's meant to help us to center our life on Jesus in a similar way. Is your life truly centered on Jesus? Do you keep the eyes of your heart focused on him throughout the week, or suggest an episodic glance? As we celebrate today, the peace of the Holy Family and inauguration of the Jubilee of Hope and the Archdiocese of New Orleans and beyond,
Let us ask God with us to convince us in a particular way of His holy presence so that we can be filled with the hope He brought into the world and wants to bring into our life. The Eucharist is the greatest familial sacrament of all and the greatest source of our hope. It's here that a manual literally comes to be with us.
The Jesus we receive in Holy Communion is the same Jesus who dwelled in Mary's womb for nine months. The same Jesus whom St. Joseph held in a strong manly arms. The same Jesus who gave his life for us on Calvary rose from the dead and ascended to the Father's right side. It's the same Jesus who just looks differently. So humbly dwelling for us and the appearance of the sinful human food.
But he is here for us, our good shepherd, our Savior, our way through resurrection and life. He wants us to bring us in a community with him and with each other, in our families and in his family, the church. He wants us always to live conscious of his presence, keeping our eyes on him, knowing he can't keep his loving eyes off us. When we live this way,
conscious of God's abiding Eucharistic presence, then we will become ambassadors of hope in a world that so much needs hope. When we live this way, we will fulfill Pope Francis' prayer for the church as we begin this special holding year. Holy Father wrote in His letter inaugurating this jubilee, through our witness, may hope spread to all those anxiously seeking it.
May we live our lives in a way that says to them in so many words, hope in the Lord, hold firm, take heart, and hope in the Lord. This is what the Holy Family of Jesus Mary and Joseph are praying that others will be able to find in us just as we find our hope in them. Hope in the Lord.
Jesus Christ is our home to Him be praise and glory, honor and blessing forever and ever in that.
