Nativity set. In the early years of familyhood, we decided to invest in a nice Nativity that we would collect piece-by-piece over the years. That plan quickly changed to two pieces per year after Caitlin and Annie began to fight, as only sisters can, over who owned each new piece. To this day they refuse to accept that Mom and Dad own everything. Aside from our history of collecting the pieces together over the years, what I love the most about our Nativity is that it allows me to step out of the messiness of this world, even if for a moment, into the “heavenly peace” where “All is calm, all is bright!” Today’s readings challenge that image for me, though. It seems that the scene into which Jesus was born may not have been as idyllic as my Nativity suggests. It seems like that first Christmas was a Messy Christmas.
Today’s Gospel gives us important insight into Jesus’ life. The fact that his parents presented him in the Temple forty days after his birth tells us that Mary and Joseph were devout Jews committed to raising their child under the law of Moses. Their sacrificial offering of two pigeons tells us that they were poor, as only the poor were dispensed from the customary tribute of a year-old lamb and a turtledove. And the prophecies of Simeon and Anna tell us not just that Jesus is a “special” child, to say the least, but also that his family’s life would be marked by both triumph and tribulation. In other words, our Gospel tells us that Jesus was born into an ordinary home, “a home where there were no luxuries, a home where the cost of everything had to be considered carefully, a home where the members of the family knew all about the difficulties of making a living and the haunting insecurity of life.”[1] It tells us that Jesus was born into a home just like ours, a messy home.
Taken together on this Solemnity of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, our readings emphasize the importance of family and community in dealing with the messiness of the world in which we live. “Today’s readings are reminders that the family is a foundational relationship that must be nurtured, and the community is an extension of the family.”[2] You’ll recall that the family is the domestic Church. That phrase, which we find in Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, captures beautifully the vital role that the family plays in building up the Kingdom of God here on earth. As Saint John Paul II said in 1995 not too far from here at Aqueduct Racetrack, “parents must learn to form their family as a domestic church, a church in the home as it were, where God is honored, his law is respected, prayer is a normal event, virtue is transmitted by word and example, and everyone shares the hopes, the problems and sufferings of everyone else.”[3]
This image of the family as domestic church is exactly what today’s readings call us to be. Our first reading from Sirach is all about strengthening our relationship with God by fostering strong relationships at home. It makes clear that “bettering relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, the young and the old, the rich and the poor ultimately leads to an improvement in the reverence paid to God and to God’s will.”[4] Our second reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Colossians turns to relationships within our community. He calls us to holiness through heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and gratitude. Simply put, Saint Paul challenges us to love God by loving each other, just like Jesus does.
You may be thinking that this all sounds lovely, but it’s easier said than done. Life is difficult, it’s messy, and our relationships with one another can be messy, too. I couldn’t agree more. The nature of our society and economy drives us to spend more time working and less time building the ties that bind us. Add COVID to the mix, and we become even more isolated from each other and more challenged to build and sustain family and community relationships. Our relationships become strained, and we don’t always treat each other the way we should.
I’d argue, then, that the message from today’s readings is all the more important. It isn’t a call to return to days gone by, to a way of life that’s no longer possible; it’s a call “to return to the roots of human development and human happiness!”[5] Loving relationships are our best protection against the challenges of this messy world. Jesus calls us, then, to look the messiness of life in the eye, and prioritize God, family, and community above it all. That’s what he did. Jesus didn’t choose to stay in the perfect comfort and peace of heaven; he didn’t pick a palace loaded with servants as his earthly home; he didn’t shun suffering or even death; he made his dwelling among us, among real people with real joys, and real sorrows, with the real messiness that a very real human family life brings. Jesus chose our life as his life to show us how to live the Kingdom of Heaven right now, no matter what messiness life may throw at us.
How do we do this? Start small. When dinner time rolls around, but there’s one more thing to finish for work, eat dinner with the family instead. When our children, our spouses, our relatives, or friends scratch our last nerve or wrong us and invoke our right to retribution, forgive them instead. When our sufferings and sadness pile up and overwhelm us, count our blessings instead. Every act of charity, kindness, humility, forbearance, forgiveness, and gratitude slowly but surely builds loving, lasting relationships in our families, in our community, and with God, relationships that build up the Body of Christ, that bring heaven to earth, and that will lead us into the fullness of God’s Kingdom at the end of time.
You know, when I look at our Nativity set at home, I realize that it isn’t perfect. The wise man bearing gold is scowling, as if he’s thinking that he must have overspent if the other two could get away with frankincense and myrrh. Saint Joseph has a “What in the world did I get myself into?” look on his face, and one of the dogs falls over like a drunkard if it’s not propped up next to the manger. I love it, anyway. It reminds me that Jesus didn’t choose to live in a perfect world; he chose to live in our messy world perfectly. It reminds me that God really knows what it’s like to live in our messy world because he did it himself. It reminds me that that first messy Christmas in Bethlehem brought heavenly peace into this messy world, and that’s what makes our messy Christmas a Merry Christmas.
Readings: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14; Psalm 128; Colossians 3:12-17; Luke 2:22-40
[1] William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 30.
[2] James L. Waters, “Family and Community,” America 223, no. 7 (December 2020), 69.
[3] John Paul II, Homily for the Mass at Aqueduct Raceway, Queens, NY (October 6, 1995).
[4] Catherine Coy, et al., Workbook for Lectors, Gospel Readers, and Proclaimers of the Word, 2021 Year B (Chicago, Liturgical Training Publications, 2020), 37.
[5] John Paul II.
A tabby cat will always encourage messiness and bring the family together. Happy Christmas to the Meyer farm.
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