HOLY FAMILY

 INTRODUCTION

Today is the feast of the Holy Family.

Let’s be honest, the word “family” means a lot more to  us  than many of the words we use for other feasts. The word “family” has more impact and more energy and more meaning, more power, more depth to us than words like, “Transfiguration”, “Immaculate Conception”, “Assumption” or most other feasts in the Church year.

So the word “family” means a lot to us.

And the Church is asking us today to look at ourselves and our family.

MAYOR KOCH

Many of us remember Mayor Koch – the mayor of New York City - who said during his mayorship, “How am I doing?”

The question today, “How am I doing in my family and as a family?”

JOSEPH DONDERS

It’s interesting as Joseph Donders points out commenting on today’s gospel, that Jesus spent 90% of his life in Nazareth. And that 90% is private. 90% is ordinary. 90% is non-newsworthy. 90% is private family life stuff. And only 10% is his public life.  And the public life obviously gets the play. Just as is our ordinary lives, the ordinary 90% does not get the play.

When someone asks, “How was your day?” or “How were things today?” or “What’s new?”, we don’t tell about the 90%. We don’t tell about the 3 times we brushed our teeth and the 2 times we flossed. We don’t tell about the times we picked up a paper in the corner or clicked a ballpoint pen or I ate a cookie at 3:47 this afternoon. We do the 90% in the family system. That’s that. These are the things that nobody notices, but without which we can’t survive. They are the little stuff that are the important stuff. They are the  90%- which we don’t make a big deal. 

In other words, take cleaning. It's not noticed till someone doesn’t do it.  So too getting the mail. Getting the garbage out. Shooting out to the store to get milk or bread when we notice we're almost out of it. 

STEPPING BACK: LOOKING AT IT ALL

So today we step back and look at that and realize that’s life on the home front. That’s real life.

And to ask, “How am I doing?” Am I doing my best to make family life good and healthy?

Ezra Pound or one of his disciples made a great comment once. He must have seen it in translating Confucius. “I did not understand, until I read Confucius, the impact of one person upon another.”

The impact of one person on another.

The impact of one person on another person is often non-verbal.

LIBRARY

To prepare for this homily I went to our local library I saw a whole shelf of books on family therapy.

It struck me how valuable it is to step back and look at family from apart.

SCENES FROM A MOUNTAIN

To see as from a mountain. 

To see family clusters. To see family milieu. To see networking. To see open and closed circles. To see vicious circles. To see triangles. To see the dances, the choreography, to see who’s who in our family. To see how each effects each and all. To see power struggles. To see boundaries. To see systems. To see fields of interest. To hear the language we use. To hear silence and communication and systems. To see buried issues, “We don’t talk about that here.” Tempest in a teapot stuff. To see what families look like with one and two alcoholic parents -- how each effects each and all. To see how an angry person effects all, black sheep, white sheep, or someone who cant’ sleep. To see family split ups. To see what’s going on. To see what a family looks like when  someone in it has Down Syndrome.

5 WAYS OF COMMUNICATING

I noticed in one book 5 ways of communicating:

1) Placating: the one who is always agreeing, Yes, Yes, Whatever you want. Always.

2) Blaming: the one who is always blaming something on someone or something. The car. The job. The boss. The alarm clock. The parents. The newspapers. The media. The politicians.

3) Super-responsibilty: Not smiling. But without feeling outward. drying up within, energy buried.

4) The Irrelevant: denying problems, bring up issues off the point, humor

5) Congruent: good communication, talking, timing, saying what we have to deal with and doing this correctly and in truth, with love.

EZRA POUND

To return to Ezra Pound ....

Do I see that I have an impact on others, that my actions have an impact on others. 90% of the time it’s the little stuff.

Isn't there a book out there that says, "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff"?

Well, sometimes we do.

I need to step back and see all this.

WHOOPING CRANE

I remember seeing a segment on the news about the Whooping Crane. They are becoming extinct.

So 4 guys, two in a plane, and 2 in a truck, were tracking the birds from Arkansas down into Mexico. I missed the first part, where they started in Northern Canada. Using telephones and short wave, the 4 communicate back and forth. They are studying how to improve the situation of whooping cranes. To make sure there is food along the way. To make sure there are places for nesting.  They tracked them to Northern Canada where wolves attack and eat the eggs. And so they have a place in Patuxent, Laurel, Maryland. The place has a big screen around it. Zoos don’t work. And by doing all this they are trying to increase the number of whooping cranes. They also showed a guy in a blind, who spends lots of time peering down on the birds and has a tape recorder studying crane’s habits.

I thought it was a good example for showing the value of stepping back once and a while to study and look at one’s family systems -- to see its habits, so that the family will not be extinct.

We can learn a lot by stepping back and looking and listening.

CATHOLIC NEWSPAPER

I once saw on the cover or first page of a Catholic newspaper pictures of a family. It had a whole series of pictures.

Picture One showed the father of the family up close and big and the mother, 3 kids, and the TV as small.

Picture Two showed the mother as prominent and father, 3 kids, and    TV as small.

Picture Three showed the parents and small, one kid as big and the TV as small.

Picture Four showed all kids as large and the TV and parents as small.

Picture Five showed the TV as enormous and the parents and kids as all small.

What is our family like?

Step back and look.

We can be so close to a situation that 90% of the time we don’t see what’s happening.

Step back and see what’s happening. Go into a blind so that we can see. See the impact we have on each other. See the family. See the community. See how we operate in our family structure. See how bird families operate. See how we can use that information to improve.  Use our eyes and our brains to track. To see. To see how I’m doing. To see what’s going on.

CONCLUSION

Why do this?

Answer: to grow. To know what needs to be changed. Jesus called this conversion. Jesus calls this healing.

Let’s close with the shorter form of today's second reading from Colossians 3: 12-17 

Brothers and sisters:
Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved,
heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another,
if one has a grievance against another;
as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.
And over all these put on love,
that is, the bond of perfection.
And let the peace of Christ control your hearts,
the peace into which you were also called in one body.
And be thankful.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,
as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another,
singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs
with gratitude in your hearts to God.
And whatever you do, in word or in deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,giving thanks to God the Father through him.