Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

Holy Family Sunday – Year B

1st reading: Genesis 15,1-6; 21, 1-3

Psalm: 104 (105),1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9

2rd reading: Hebrews 11,8.11-12.17-19

Gospel: Luke 2,22:40-XNUMX

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On this Holy Family Sunday, we are told about faith: the faith of Abraham and Sarah. “Abraham had faith in the Lord, and the Lord judged him to be righteous. » And in his commentary on chapter 11 of the Letter to the Hebrews we hear: “Thanks to faith, Sarah […] was enabled to be the origin of descendants. […] Through faith, […] Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice. […] He believed that God is capable even of resurrecting the dead.”

But it is also by faith that Joseph and Mary come to present the Child Jesus in the Temple. They conform to the Law of God, by performing the prescribed rites, by an act of faith in the fact that what God requires is right and good, and that they want to do the will of God, that they want to do what that God says. And Mary and Joseph know what God wants through the mediation of the people of God, through the mediation of Israel who received from Moses the holy Law of God.

It is by faith that we live our lives following Jesus. This faith which consists of believing what he has experienced, and believing it himself. So much so that the life of a Christian, which is a life of discipleship, consists of on the one hand listening to Jesus and seeking to put into practice, to do what he says, to put his words into practice, and on the other leaves to receive from Jesus the grace which enables us to do what he says. It is by faith that we must act.

On this feast of the Holy Family, it is good for us to contemplate this mystery of the human family that God willed. Remember: it is in the very first pages of the Bible, in the book of Genesis which opens the five books of the Law, that it is revealed to us that the human being is created male and female with a view to indissoluble union of man and woman, husband and wife (Cf. Gen 1,26:28-XNUMX). “ Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they will be two to one flesh.” (Gen 2,24:19,12). It’s about accepting this by faith. It is through faith in God the Creator that we can each receive ourselves from God in the state in which we were born, as a vocation. Being born a man or a woman is a vocation, a word from God in our lives which expresses the call of God and which expresses the meaning of our existence. It is also God who reveals to us what he wanted in creating the human being, man or woman, and who reveals to us how we are all made for the meeting of the husband or the wife. Unless, Jesus will tell us, life makes it impossible for us, in any case we experience it this way, or unless, for the kingdom of Heaven, we receive a particular vocation to dedicate our life to celibacy. for the Kingdom (Cf. Mt XNUMX:XNUMX).

A recent text from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has come out and is making a bit of noise; but I don't hear many comments on what is recalled at the beginning, in number 4, where we are reminded that "what constitutes marriage is an exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children.” And it is recalled a little further: "the perennial Catholic doctrine of marriage: - I quote in quotation marks - "It is only in this context that sexual relations find their natural, proper and fully human meaning. The doctrine of the Church on this point remains firm” (Fiducia supplicans §4).And I am always happy as a priest – I was in any case as a parish priest – to bless the engagements of people who freely choose to live out these engagements in chaste continence.

The family that God wanted, we could say that it is designed like a school. A school of life. We can clearly see how generations have succeeded one another, for millennia, and these generations which succeed one another receive a whole inheritance, complete this heritage and sometimes lose parts of this heritage. But in any case, there is a long apprenticeship, a long time of training of this new generation to whom we transmit a language, a culture, customs, a know-how, to whom we transmit the faith, hope and charity. The family, particularly the Christian family founded on the sacrament of marriage, is a place where we learn faith, where we learn God, where we learn to live from Christ. I am struck by how, when Saint Thérèse entered Carmel at the age of fifteen years and three months, she already had all the combat equipment for spiritual combat. She received it in her early years in Alençon, then with her father and older sisters in Lisieux. It was within the framework of the family that she truly learned to put her faith in God, to love Jesus, and to seek to please him in everything. The family is a school of faith, not firstly through teaching, but firstly through the way of living... and the way of living in the faith that the parents have.

The family is also a place of learning about charity. This is where marital love is experienced, then parental love and in return filial love, then brotherly love. This is where we learn to love ourselves without having chosen ourselves: parents do not choose their children, children do not choose parents, brothers and sisters did not choose each other. All this may seem natural to us, but in fact it is about learning to love strangers. When a child is born, it is a great mystery! Thérèse is fascinated by Jesus, and she really wants to love him. She understands that to love him, she has no other solution than to concretely love those among whom she lives. And she writes this: "Yes my Beloved, this is how my life will be consumed... I have no other way to prove my love to you than to throw flowers, that is to say, not to let escape no small sacrifice, no look, no words, to enjoy all the smallest things and do them out of love…” (Ms B 4)

This is what we must learn in our families: to do everything out of love. Out of love for Jesus, but out of love for each other. All the little gestures of service rendered, all the somewhat harsh words we say, all the bad jokes, all the ironic remarks... It is in the little things that concrete love of neighbor is lived. It is in the family that we learn it.

And then the family as a place, as a school of hope and in particular when we live there, mourning where the pain and sadness that we experience can, even must, be carried by this hope which is that we know that life does not end there, that there is Heaven, that there is a Kingdom and that mysteriously, and particularly in the Eucharistic celebration, we experience this communion with the Church of Heaven.

Finally, to finish, I would also like to give the floor to Thérèse on pedagogy, because what Thérèse will experience as assistant novice mistress — Thérèse will always remain in the novitiate and she will still be chosen by Mother Marie de Gonzague to help her in the novitiate; but in fact, it is Thérèse who will actually fulfill the task of mistress of novices - and Thérèse writes this which, I think, can also shed light on all pedagogy, in particular of parents towards their children, but also the pedagogy of catechists, of facilitators, teachers, whatever you want, as long as we have a responsibility towards the youngest. Thérèse therefore writes this in manuscript C, in folios 22-23. :

From a distance it seems rosy to do good to souls, to make them love God more, finally to model them according to one's views and personal thoughts. Up close it's quite the opposite, the pink has disappeared... we feel that doing good is as impossible without the help of God as making the sun shine in the night... We feel that we absolutely must forget our tastes , his personal conceptions and guide souls along the path that Jesus traced for them, without trying to make them walk his own path. […] I saw first of all that all souls have approximately the same struggles, but that they are so different in another way that I have no difficulty in understanding what Father Pichon was saying : “There is much more difference between souls than there is between faces. » So it is impossible to act with everyone in the same way. With certain souls, I feel that I must make myself small, not fear humiliating myself by admitting my struggles, my defeats; seeing that I have the same weaknesses as them, my little sisters in turn admit to me the faults they blame themselves for and are delighted that I understand them through experience. With others I have seen that, on the contrary, in order to do them good, it is necessary to have a lot of firmness and never go back on something said. To lower oneself would not then be humility, but weakness. The good Lord has given me the grace not to fear war, at all costs I must do my duty. (Ms C 22v°-23v°)

Well let us ask for this grace, through the intercession of Saint Thérèse and her holy parents, Louis and Zélie, to know how to love Jesus in such a way that the delicacy of our fraternal love towards one another grows.

Amen