Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew Glory to you, O Lord.
When the Magi had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, rise. Take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you.
Here Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.
Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt.
He stayed there until the death of Herod that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled.
Out of Egypt I called my son when Herod had died, Behold, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead.
He rose, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.
But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there.
And because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee.
He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled.
He shall be called a Nazarene.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the things I enjoy most about ministry is that as time goes on, I don't just get to know you all as individuals, but I get to know your families as well.
And I've got to tell you, you've got some strange people in your families.
There are some real characters. There are some people that just a little different.
The reason why I know this to be a fact is because all of our families are like that.
Our families are made up of different characters who play different roles. Some of them are virtuous, some of them are not.
Some of them are kind.
Some of them are crabby. Some of them reach out to everybody with love.
Some are standoffish.
That's what a human family is like.
And on Christmas, if you recall, I mentioned that the beauty of the incarnation is that God fully understands us. Because God walked among us as one like ourselves.
And part of that knowledge in Christ is that he understands what it's like to be part of a family.
He understands what it's like to be loved and to love he understands what it's like to be annoyed.
He understands what it's like to grieve, to have joy and laughter, all of those things that make up our family life.
But it is not limited to that nuclear family we were born into.
And in fact, the church, when it is at its best, is a family.
Because what happens in a family, we acknowledge the needs of those members who are a part of us, and we care for one another, we welcome one another.
The thing about a family is they have to take you whether or not you're necessarily lovable at any particular moment.
And that's what a parish in the church is like.
Everybody is a part. Whether or not we are the most pleasant person to be around on any particular day, or when we're one of those folks everybody kind of wants to move away from, we're still here. We're still a part of this enterprise we call the church.
And the other thing a family does is it really, really is attuned to when one of its members is hurting and reaches out with compassion and with love.
And you all, in my observation over these years, do that very well.
You acknowledge when somebody is struggling, you acknowledge when someone is grieving and you offer them compassion.
The other thing you do is just like in a family, when somebody's not there, when it's Christmas or Thanksgiving and somebody is absent, you notice.
And I have heard more times than I can count, when somebody hasn't been here for a while, one of you will mention it to me. Do you know I haven't seen so and so in a while. Do you know anything about that?
And what it's about is the fact that you care.
This day, as we celebrate the Holy Family, we are reminded that their example isn't one that is just limited to what they did, but it's the ideal that we're called upon to live out.
And every parish, when it is at its best, is most definitely a family.
