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If we can experience God's love within our family, God's love and God's word can become a part of us
This Fr. Gerry Creedon homily was delivered at St. Charles on December 29, 2002
There is an old Irish story about a beleaguered mother with a lot of children who was too busy to go to the church for a mission. She sent her husband. When he came back he was silent. She asked what the missionary had to say. He told her that the missionary had preached about Joseph, Mary and the Holy Family and how we should act like the Holy Family. The wife said, "That was easy for Mary and her one." She dismissed the idealized image of the Holy Family. Yet this Feast is a time to recall the place family has in our lives.
I spent the last few days with my sister and family in Toronto. Together we saw the new Jack Nicholson movie about a retired executive [About Schmidt]. He gets up one morning before his wife does and wonders how he got tied up with this old woman, not recognizing his own aging process. The film is a search for connection with family. Without a real relationship there is sadness and alienation.
Suggestions for Your New Year's Resolutions
Let me offer a few suggestions to consider for the New Year.
The first is share affection. I often cannot put into words my deepest feelings or even put into gestures my true affection. For example, for years and years, whenever our family said goodbye to one another we would shake hands. That's it. At the airport in Toronto last night, my sister and I hugged one another and I managed to say, "Love you". I was sort of hoping she wouldn't hear it, but I noticed there were tears in her eyes. Perhaps a next step is for tears to come to my eyes.
We can be God's frozen people. Our feelings for one another sometimes stay locked up and we cannot seem to get the words out. Let us take the risk of expression.
The second suggestion is do not bury negative feelings. We have feelings of anger as well as love and affection. As a generalization, males may be mad as the devil but will not let anyone know. Often the last person who will know these inner feelings is a spouse. He thinks she would just fall apart if she knew how angry he was about something. He puts a cork on it and buries his anger. When one buries those negative feelings they come out sideways, or they build up to a dam and 30 years later are expressed in a destructive way. I think it is healthier if you love someone and you really trust them to share your anger or at least or your reasons for being angry. Don't wait.
Trust people enough to be honest. It will allow space and room to say you are sorry and be forgiven. Love does not mean never having to say you're sorry. Let us spit out all those reasons she or he bugs you or irritates you. It's healthier to clear the air and to begin all over again. Human beings are like that; we are not perfect.
The third suggestion is to carry the togetherness of Christmas through the entire year. It's wonderful that we have these days at Christmas time where we take time away from work. We are motivated by Christ's coming to join together as a family. Then what happens in the New Year? Geography or other things disconnect us and we go back into our own shells. Couldn't we allow the spirit of Christmas to somehow influence what happens all the way through 2003?
Keep in Touch Even After Christmas
How often do we communicate with family with whom we are separated? By phone? Letters can become a thing of the past. For those of us who don't make the time to make phone calls or can never get around to writing a letter, what about e-mail? We love people with whom we rarely if ever communicate. Might it not be a good thing to maintain those connections that are so vital in our lives and cultivate them as a priority as important as our work all through next year?
It's not an accident that we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family in the Christmas season. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us as part of a human family to demonstrate to us that we need to live not as isolated individuals but as part of a family. If we can somehow experience God's love in flesh in our human relationships within our family, God's love and God's word can become a part of us.
From our family experience we can learn to be a larger family of faith and church and go beyond that to a whole human family. Having learned to be family we can create an environment and a world that is like family.
The first readings tell the beautiful story of Abraham. Abraham is a father of faith not only for Catholics or Christians but also for Jews and Muslims. Abraham is the one story that unites these three major world religions whose followers experience so much violence.
Maybe we could become a family of faith when we recognize a common father to Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Moses and Abraham, and when we have learned to be sister, brother, daughter or son to someone
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or 2002
Homilies
Uploaded January 10, 2003