OMELIE / Omelie EN

29 dic 2019

29/12/2019 – The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph  - Year A

29/12/2019 – The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph  - Year A

 Reading 1  SIR 3,2-6.12-14   Psalm  127 Reading 2  COL 3,12-21 Gospel   MT 2,13-15.19-23

Today we are celebrating the first of the families, the one which Jesus has been welcomed in and brought up in! The Gospel is showing us some difficult and painful moments lived by that family. We are calling it holy, because in it lives the Holy One of God, and in it they all have the tendency to fulfill the Father’s will! Joseph, the spouse who welcomes Jesus as his own son, wants to be faithful to the very end to the mission he has received. His care in fulfilling God's will is welcomed by God Himself, who lets him know through the dream which paths he will have to go down in order to protect the Son and His Mother! Despite the fact that fulfilling it will involve sudden and rapid changes of a whole life, he is available. The obedience saves him from powerful men's violent hands!

This family is given us as a model, nay, as the ideal example! And there is really need in today’s world for a model of family! The western world, all focused on material richness, does not recognise anymore the deep values of a family based on God's will, and the third world, heir only of misery, does not know them yet, as they are not yet known to those worlds that are ignoring the gospel.

Joseph and Mary are living together for love of Jesus who has just been born. When they had been promised to each other, they did not know anything yet, but while they were waiting for the wedding day they have discovered God's will for them. They have welcomed it, dedicating to it their whole life. Mary offers herself in order for the Father’s Word to be fulfilled in her, and Joseph wants to obey each passing day His instructions. In this way they become a family, the ideal environment to welcome the Son of God in! Jesus’ presence does not solve their problems with poverty, on the contrary, it generates new ones: the need to look for a house, fleeing by night, arrival in Egypt, coming back to Israel, looking again for a hidden village. An ideal family? Yes, this is the family based on God's Word! It is the family where everyone is centered around Jesus!

 Saint Paul, in his letters, is suggesting new behaviours to the single members of families, different from those men are usually using. The Christian members of a family need to show through their living together God's face, the God who is love. Christians live first of all in their family the different aspects of the love they can notice while looking at the Father, therefore heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, mutual forgiveness and bearing with one another. They get strength for this life, beautiful indeed, but tiresome, from the never-ceasing listening to Christ's Word, from a joyful response, that is expressed by singing psalms and hymns, from living in an eucharistic way, that is to say thankful to God for everything. When in a family there is this atmosphere, then you can recommend to the wife to be subordinate to her husband, because you can order the husband to love the wife like the Lord Jesus has loved the Church, to the point He sacrificed Himself for it! You can recommend the children to obey the parents in everything, because the parents obey God! The apostle’s recommendations are summarising those the Sirach has given us in the first reading.

 A holy family is the family where Jesus lives and grows, holy family is your family, because in it they try to love the Lord together and therefore to be a small Church!

“Blessed are those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways”, says the Psalm. We, who want life and to become carriers of blessings, welcome Jesus as the centre of our family: we love Him with the continuous effort to listen to His word, to pray offering the prayer together with our family members, with a charity careful to the spiritual, affective and material needs of the people we live with every day. This in fact is the place God has given us so our spiritual life might grow and bear fruit!