Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family
Dec. 26, 2021
1 Sam 1: 20-22, 24-28
Luke 2: 41-52
St. Thomas More, Hauppauge, N.Y.
“At the end of her term,
Hannah bore a son whom she called Samuel” (1 Sam 1: 20).
Our 1st reading comes from the 1st Book of Samuel, the 1st of 4 Old Testament books that narrate the history of the kings of Israel during a period of roughly 450 years. Samuel wasn’t one of those kings, but as God’s prophet he anointed the 1st 2 kings, Saul and David, whose reigns are reported in 1-2 Samuel.
Our reading, 8 verses from
the 1st chapter of Samuel’s story, seems to be a strange one for the feast of
the Holy Family, a family held up to us as a model of family life and love in
fulfillment of God’s plan. This reading,
instead, speaks of a family that appears to abandon their only child.
It’s not precisely
so. Before this passage, we read that
Hannah was childless and, according to the culture of Israel at that time, over
1,000 years B.C., she was regarded as disgraced because she was barren. So on one of her trips with her husband to
Shiloh, where the ark of the covenant was kept at that period, where God dwelt
in Israel’s midst, she prayed for a son and, should her prayer be heard and her
disgrace turned into grace, promised to dedicate that son to God’s service.
Her fulfillment of her
promise is what we read. What Hannah and
her husband Elkanah did was rare but not unusual in the ancient and medieval
worlds. A pious, non-historical
tradition holds that Sts. Joachim and Ann similarly dedicated their daughter
Mary at a tender age, so that she was raised in the Temple at Jerusalem until
her betrothal to St. Joseph. In the
Middle Ages it often happened that children were brought to monasteries or
convents—never an only or first-born, but younger ones—either because the
family couldn’t provide for them or as an act of devotion, really meaning to
give their child to God’s service. It’s
tragic to say that even today in some desperate Third World situations parents
will sell a child into slavery, or worse, to earn some cash to buy food for the
rest of the family. And in supposedly
civilized societies, millions of children are slaughtered before they’re even
born.
So Hannah and Elkanah
leave very young Samuel, just weaned, with the priest Eli and his family at Shiloh,
“dedicated to the Lord” (1:28).
Samuel’s service to the
Lord at Shiloh prefigures the service of Jesus, who accompanied his parents to
Jerusalem to worship the Lord in the Temple (Luke 2:41-42). Unlike Hannah and Elkanah they have no
intention of leaving the boy there.
Instead, he attempts to stay there on his own and begin his sacred
mission of handing on divine wisdom to the teachers of the Law, and makes a
wonderful start of it (2:43,46-47).
The 2 passages, Hannah’s story and Jesus’, convey to us messages of devotion and obedience.
Hannah places her
fertility entirely in God’s hands, trusting him for what her heart so earnestly
desires and respecting his lordship over human life. It’s an example for all who wish to be guided
by the Creator of life. If the Lord
rules our lives, and our fertility in particular, that rules out any attempts
to control our fertility thru abortion, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, and
contraception, not to mention sex outside marriage. Hannah presents her young son to the Lord
(1:24), acknowledging all that she owes to God.
The followers to Jesus Christ imitate her by entrusting their fertility
to the plans of God and by raising their children, if they’re so blessed, to
honor and worship God.
Young Jesus has his own
idea of what he should be doing to honor his Father. If you were in Mary’s or Joseph’s position,
how would you have handled that? Luke
doesn’t tell us much about their reaction, quoting 2 sentences from Mary,
nothing from Joseph. Maybe Joseph had a
private little man-to-man chat with his foster son during their long hike back
to Nazareth. Whatever the case, Jesus
“went down with them to Nazareth and was obedient to them” (2:51). The boy is a son of God’s Law, which commands
reverence toward our parents. For us, it
doesn’t matter how old we are. We may be
beyond having literally to obey mother and father; but we can never stop
honoring, respecting, and caring for them.
So we prayed in the
Collect (opening prayer) of the Mass that we might “practice the virtues of
family life in the bonds of charity” as we look forward from family life here
to family life in our Father’s eternal home.
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