A Homily for the Sunday within the Octave of the Epiphany

+ As we know only too well, even the best of families has problems. Indeed, on this variously named first Sunday after the Epiphany, or the Sunday within its Octave where that is kept, we consider that famous incident in the Holy Family related by Saint Luke wherein Our Lord, as a young boy of twelve, becomes lost from his parents. Their distress is real, if perhaps somewhat understated in the Gospel. He was missing for days on end in times when travel and communication were laborious at best.

The anguish of which Our Blessed Lady complained was more than real as any parent—let alone a mother—can bear witness. A son who has gone missing for any period of time is a reality that pierces the heart and exhausts the mind. “Anguish” is, perhaps, only the beginning of what is felt. Distress and fear quickly add to the bitter cocktail that includes the questioning of one’s own responsibility. “How could I have allowed this to come about?” we castigate ourselves. “How naïve I have been to trust that he would be safe!” we fret.

Of course, in the incident related in this morning’s Gospel Our Lord’s parents were not guilty of any such negligence. Their precocious twelve-year-old divine Son insists that He had to be about His heavenly Father’s business in the Temple and wonders why they could not understand this. This explanation—which in all truth sounds more like an impertinent rebuke for which a boy could deserve a good slap—was indeed “beyond their understanding” the Gospel tells us. For whilst twelve-year-olds were much ‘older,’ as it were, in ancient society than they are today, they are nonetheless boys under their parents’ authority with much yet to learn. The Gospel happily relates that the boy-Jesus ‘calmed down somewhat’ afterwards and went down to Nazareth and lived as a docile and obedient son, with Our Blessed Lady all the while remembering what had happened as only a mother does.

This incident certainly teaches us much about the divine nature and mission of Jesus of Nazareth, and the Church appositely places it before us as we continue to contemplate the mysteries revealed in the feasts of Christmas and the Epiphany. The child Jesus, tiny in the manger, the infant taken to refuge in Egypt and the boy audaciously teaching in the Temple is God made man for our salvation as the many wonders that surrounded His birth and His growth in which the Sacred Liturgy immers us attest.

And yet, the Eternal Son of God made man for our salvation is also truly human. He was born as is any man or woman. He grew up like any child. And, as this morning’s Gospel attests, He is capable of causing much distress in His human family even when, as it were, it was for the very best of motives. Such is family life, with the differing understandings and expectations and perspectives of its various members, and with all the anxiety they produce, most particularly when we are growing up.

We are not necessarily talking about right or wrong or any sin here. Rather, we are talking about the reality that even children—and most certainly young adults—can have very different approaches to, and follow quite different yet legitimate paths from, those which their parents or other siblings may have foreseen. We are talking about the growth of that trust and of the maturing of love as the infant grows into a child and then emerges into young adulthood—of that love of which Our Blessed Lady kneeling in sorrow at the foot of the Cross of her Son, deeply sorrowing yet still full of faith, is perhaps the most powerful witness.

Yes, even the Holy Family had its misunderstandings and knew profound suffering in this life. Yet their particular sufferings won us the grace to live in Christ—to deal with our own inadequacies and frailty and anxieties in that supernatural perspective which changes everything. Hence Saint Paul can insist to the ecclesial family in Colossia in this morning’s Epistle that they must “put on…compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

Whatever problems our families have—be our family natural, extended, ecclesial, monastic, etc.—Saint Paul has much to teach us here. Soo to does the Holy Family. For it is true: the very best of families do have problems. But in Christ, they too can not only be overcome, and they can also become Providential moments of the ever more fruitful growth of the life and love of God in each of us. For the grace to be open to such workings of His Providence in our lives, let us beg Almighty God now at His altar. +