The heart of a family

Bishop Scott Bullock
The Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Jospeh
December 29, 2024

I share this following event from my family history because it’s the family I know a whole lot about. I’m sure every family here has had similar experiences in its history. It was in 1974, when General Motors made my father an offer he couldn’t refuse —an order, actually. If he desired to remain employed by General Motors it would be at a new location, some 600 miles from our family’s native state of Michigan. A move to the Philadelphia area. Looking back, it is clear that neither my father nor mother really wanted to move. For, relocation meant a great distance between us and the rest of our family, and both mom and dad were natives of Michigan. Yet, I believe that my dad took the transfer out of obedience. Not so much obedience to General Motors as obedience to our family and the vows, also, that he had professed at his wedding to care for his spouse and children. So off we went! 

If we think about it, what’s at the heart of a family and its harmony is obedience. Often in our world, obedience is seen as something negative — some type of enslavement or some type of dependence on the whims of another. But, more accurately, obedience means “listening and responding to the needs of others.” 

While my father did listen to the demands from his employer, motivated by his need to keep a job, he also acted out of obedience, that is listening to his family’s needs. And he was motivated by love there. 

The perfect family that we honor today, the Holy Family, too was held together by obedience. Surely, both Mary and Joseph had heard the message of an angel, listened to it, and responded with obedience and married one another, even while Mary was with child. But, notice that in today’s Gospel also specifies that Jesus was obedient. After being found by Mary and Joseph in the temple, and, we’re told not being understood by them when he explained, “Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s house,” the Gospel continues this way. “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.” Jesus, the very second person of the Holy Trinity, chose obedience to Joseph and Mary. The result being, we’re told, he “advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” So, living in a family, filled with obedience, Jesus advanced into a fully human person.

If obedience is at the very heart of a family, what is necessary for it to succeed? We know that sinfulness is the obstacle. It demands obedience for unholy motives like anger, self-service, or fear, to name a few, will not make obedience a success. Instead, to succeed in obedience, we’ll need to be motivated by more and more perfect love. For, when we love someone there is nothing that can stop us from listening to them and doing whatever we can to fulfill his or her needs. We’ll be successful as families when we’re obedient to each other — husbands obedient to wives; wives obedient to the needs of  husbands; children obedient to parents; and parents obedient to children. That is listening to each other. And we will succeed in obedience, we’ll do that when we’re filled with love.

So listen now to the opening prayer we just heard for this Mass of the Feast of the Holy Family. Then we prayed, “O God, who were pleased to give us the shining example of the Holy Family, graciously grant that we may imitate them in practicing the virtues of family life and in the bonds of charity, and so, in the joy of your house, delight one day in eternal rewards.” 

That prayer speaks that family life will succeed “in the bonds of charity” and we can be obedient to one another only when filled with charity. That is divine love.

It is for this reason that we come to this Eucharistic altar and receive the very same Body of Christ that was born of the virgin in Bethlehem. And, since God is love, receiving Him means we receive divine love itself which empowers us for family life by being obedient to each other. To listen to and respond to the needs of each other so that our families might, more and more, resemble the Holy Family which we today honor.