Luke 2:22-40; Feast of the Holy Family

The first 20 years of our life is the time of foundations and roots. We do not lay those foundations ourselves. We learn to eat and walk and talk from others. We are trained for toilet and manners and autonomy by someone else. This is the time we learn to go from helpless to helpful, hopefully.

On this feast of the Holy Family, we are reminded that our Lord did not just magically appear as a grown-up. From family, he had to grow up, grow strong, and grow in wisdom. Today’s feast is a good time for us to consider what these three growings, that is, growing up and strong and wise, might mean.

Up, growing up. This takes time, and therefore, patience. Up is never in an instant. Over time, we level up in language as we do in movies. We go from G to PG and on to R. We even have two levels for R: R-16 and R-18. Evidently, two years of growing up in adolescence are not the same as two years to a senior citizen.

Parents grow up when they try to steer us this way or that, until it dawns on them that they cannot control our being left or right-handed. Weaning is love letting go and it happens to both child and parent, and always over time. So much of our family shapes who we are but our identity is a lifelong endeavor, even as it is ultimately ours.

Our faith also grows up and grows with us. A pity then that for some of us, we remain stuck in grade school or cartoon pictures of God. We can grow to be sophisticated in our outlook on life but still remain childish or simplistic in our theology or even atheism.

Second, growing strong. My father used to arm-wrestle me from time to time. I was the only son in our family and so he could not do that with my sisters; neither could I. Of course, I always lost until I grew stronger, which had to happen even if I did not want it to happen. Who relishes winning over one’s father? I knew that my father arm-wrestled me only for me to grow stronger.

But we all know that strength is not in the arms. From family I learned that the only strength that matters is the one that comes from exercising love. Strong is the one who has experienced being loved and accepted, no matter what. From that kind of everyday love expressed in small things, we learn to make little offerings that grow to become commitments that last.

The person is strong who has also learned to ask for and give mercy. One can condone or condemn readily in the playground or workplace or elsewhere. But not in family. Family is one of the most difficult places to learn and practice forgiveness. And yet that difficult place is where we learn not to relish winning over someone we love. In family, we learn to grow strong.

Third, growing wise. Wisdom is not about intelligence or amassing knowledge. It has little to do with the what or how of things, and everything to do with the why and the painstaking paths we choose to come closer to the purpose, meaning, and value of life. Wisdom we receive from people, not from those who are adept at solving problems, but from those who have confronted mystery and have been silenced and seasoned by it.

Family is where we first learn to grow in wisdom. This is where we first come to appreciate the gift and mystery of our belonging. Loved by those who are our very own, we realize that we belong to them without ever possessing or being possessed by them. Over time we grow further in wisdom as we stretch our sense of belonging beyond the margins of family or tribe to include those outside who are also God’s very own.

The child Jesus knew that he belonged to Mary and Joseph but through them he also got to know that he belonged in the house of God his Father. From his own family, he must have learned about God as abba, father. By his life and Spirit in us, from the wisdom of his prayer and stories, we learn that God is his father and ours as well.

The Gospel tells us that while Jesus was with his family, “the favor of God was upon him”. Seeing that God’s favor does not really fall far from the tree, we trust that God’s love rests upon us too, his family.

We are God’s very own. For this alone, no matter the growing apart, we can always come home.

*image from the Internet