December 26, 2021: Feast of the Holy Family
Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 or 1 Samuel 1:20-22, 24-28
Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
Colossians 3:12-21 or 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24
Luke 2:41-52
A reflection by L F Ranner
- This reflection is dedicated to the memory of Peter Rogers, S.J. (1944-2021)
In the novel I am currently writing, there’s a scene where an elderly priest sits in a friend’s bookshop, tutoring a little girl.
“Paul had grown up in a house of four-to-a-bed and so many siblings that individual rivalry seemed somewhat beside the point. The cozy funky smell of little children was something of home he missed from the very beginning, when seminary life had felt cold and antiseptic by comparison.
Thus, the French hour with Léonie beside him on the velvet couch, Eduard fussing in the background over the sweet tea, over the dogs, over the record player that kept on skipping - it was for Paul a Nazareth way of being, time filtered through the domestic, sacred glow. He could forgive himself for thinking,
this too, a Holy Family.”
Like Father Paul, many of us find our families in the most unconventional places. We grow up being taught to carve the world into a neat dichotomy of us and them: the place where we belong, and the places that belong to others. Most often these categories are pre-defined on our behalf by the determinant of blood relations and legal guardianship, but for many reasons - not least among them time, emotional or physical distance - sometimes the us ceases to feel like a home and becomes more and more of a foreign country.
The quandary plays out most pressingly in the holiday season: do I spend this precious time where I truly belong? Do I consent to feeling like an alien in order to keep up this illusion of us? How much is that illusion worth, and to whom? How many times have we left a family gathering exhausted, dissatisfied, and irritated with everyone - most of all with ourselves - wondering what, exactly, of that us is real: if we are all presenting cultivated façades to each other, is there really such a thing as family here, after all?
In Latin, the word familia is a little more forgiving than its counterpart in contemporary English: it includes all the members of a household, dependents, and servants, as well as immediate kin. It speaks to a wider concept built not just on shared bloodlines but shared interests, interwoven bonds of obligation and duty, investments in a common endeavor. Although the analogy is imperfect, in this expansiveness, at least, it is somewhat closer to the current notion of chosen family - that bond of elective affinity which bears such historical significance for the LGBTQ+ community. As such, it becomes particularly relevant to today’s readings, and the feast which they commemorate.
The readings from Samuel and Luke are a perfect pairing: each tracing the complicated relationship of a mother, her God, and an unexpected child; each a poignant meditation on one of humanity’s most pressing questions: where and to whom do we belong?
How long does Hannah keep Samuel? In those times, children were weaned much later than they are now; she probably had a chance to see him walk, and speak, and (hopefully) potty-trained before bringing him to the Temple. The reading focuses on the piety of the woman and the grandeur of her gesture, but as a mother it is hard not to imagine the sickening feeling that must have haunted her, that last night together at home: at the last supper they shared, the last time she sang to him and tucked him into bed. Did they visit, after Samuel went to the Temple? Did he forget his mother, and come to think of her as someone from the distant past? Perhaps their relationship evolved into something different than that of a typical mother and child - perhaps a relationship built on a greater parity, of two people serving the same God, bound by the same ideals, and seeking that God in, and through, each other.
Why does she give him up to God? Does it make her a better mother than all the others, or worse? It is a question with no easy answer. What can be said with a fair amount of certainty is that her decision reflects an understanding - conscious or not - of one of the very harshest truths of parenthood: the moment a child enters the world is the same moment that the goodbyes begin.
Ownership would imply that we must be what others require of us; it is determined by forces outside ourselves. Belonging, on the other hand, is determined by our interior reality. The necessity of I decides how and where and when that I may enter into us. At first, necessity is mere survival. As time passes, however, who I am at any moment on the way to becoming my fullest self acquires different nuances and dimensions which may pull me in new directions, and may seek fulfillment among new faces, new thoughts, and ways of being. This is perhaps what Hannah perceives, and which impels her to let her child go - although in this case, she is not sending him to strangers but to his origin; that is to say, his truest home.
Samuel belongs to God, as we do. It takes Mary and Joseph a little while longer than Hannah to arrive at this understanding - and in Luke’s telling, it is Jesus, not his parents, who makes the first move.
The Finding in the Temple is a classic adolescence narrative. Like the story of Hannah and Samuel, it is founded in one of the most visceral and dreaded traumas of parenthood: the lost child. As parents we are always looking, always aware with at least a part of our brain: where are they? Are they in trouble? Are they making trouble?
And then one day, just as with Mary and Joseph: they are no longer where we expect to find them, the safe place is empty, and they are gone. Hannah knew this day would come to her as it comes to all parents; she chooses, rather than being chosen by, the moment of not-there.
Three days lost? It is hard to fathom that horror, especially in an ancient world where enslavement was legal and child prostitution was commonplace. There must have been very little food or sleep for Jesus’ parents those three days. When they finally trace Jesus to the Temple, Mary’s first question makes clear the torment of unknowing that they have passed through: “Son, why have you done this to us?” Why have you gone missing? Why could we no longer see you? “Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” This is about what Jesus’ lostness has done to them: the little child is no longer in any of the places he is supposed to be; the place he belongs has become wider and less exclusive than his childhood. It is this wider sense of belonging that the parent instinctively fears: there, in the places we can’t quite follow, they can go missing and perhaps never be found again.
Jesus is unfazed. “Why were you looking for me?” he asks. “Didn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?” Luke tells us quite plainly that this argument does not fly with his parents. Perhaps it was too soon for the truth Hannah had apprehended so painfully early; Mary and Joseph weren’t ready to let Jesus go.
Taken together, the two readings have a melancholy flavor, for at first glance they are as much about loss as discovery. If anywhere, the hope here is to be found in Jesus’ answer to his parents - the one which they did not yet understand. My Father’s house: this is the place where Jesus belongs, as do all God’s children. Where else would Jesus be, indeed? We don’t know that Jesus has been there the whole three days; there may have been lostness and wandering and his own anxieties along the way. Where is my place? Where do I fit? Where and with whom am I meant to be? By the time Mary and Joseph find Jesus, these questions have been answered, although maybe not the way that they might have wished.
Jesus’ answer is amplified in the letter of John, who tells us that “if our hearts do not condemn us” - when we love one another and are faithful to God’s truths - we remain in God, and God in us. That is to say, we belong to each other no matter how wide and divers our circles; we become the children who can never be lost. We are, as Jesus tried to explain to Mary and Joseph, right where we’re supposed to be.
Finally, it is good to remember that in choosing God’s house, Jesus chooses all of us - for it is the place of our most intimate belonging.
It is where we become a holy family.
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