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.
