Pastor's Spiritual Reflections

By Fr. Leo Schneider (12/30/2007)

Dear People of Holy Name,

Today many homilies will expound the virtues of the Holy Family, that idyllic trio who had wholesome and holy relationships and who stand as a model for all families. The familiar refrains will sound from the political and religious arena. “Family values” will be touted and anything contrary will be decried, especially adultery, divorce and homosexuality. The ironic thing is that Jesus was anything but a family man!

Jesus left his parents to teach in the temple. When they found him they were anything but happy. Jesus would later say that if you didn’t turn your back on mother, brother, sister, you could not be his follower, and when his family came looking for him and called for him from outside the temple they said he was crazy. Jesus’ beginnings in John the Baptist’s cult was radical, he left family completely behind and later claimed that those who were mother and brother and sister to him were the ones who knew the Lord.

For Jesus family wasn’t defined by shared genetics or blood line. Family for Jesus was those who heard the word of God and kept it. The bottom line for Jesus was a willingness to live in God, to love as he loved and to pick up the cross necessary to do so. At the end of the day, it is precisely that, that will make any family whole and holy. Our families can be the hardest place to start, but also the most rewarding. Hopefully we love gathering with our families because we trust in their love for us, that they will forgive our sins against them and will be there when we need them most.

For Jesus, family had no boundary. All who lived in God were his family and that is what we are called to embrace. The love we share with our immediate families is the same love we are called to bring into the world, that the presence of God may be known by all. To do so challenges us to make the same kind of sacrifices for others that we might make for a family member.

When Jesus died, he died for all. His goal was to remove all the false notions of religion and politics that keep people from living in the authentic spirit of God. In his kingdom, no one lords anything over others, but all regard the other as the home of the living God. It is this notion we are to embrace and it is the mentality that creates the Holy Family of all God’s children.

Just as God ultimately calls all people to the one table in heaven, we are to seek to build one table on earth and that is what our Eucharistic table is all about. We are all called to gather around that table, saint and sinner all, to be one family in the Lord Jesus Christ. To claim the Lord as our God, is to claim all people as our brothers and sisters. Not an easy thing to do, but a goal we take to heart with all the sincerity of the Christ who came to save all peoples.

God bless our family on this Feast of the Holy Family!

In Christ’s peace, Fr. Leo