Homily for Feast of Holy Family

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family

Col 3: 12-21
Dec. 28, 2025
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

“Brothers and sisters:  Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another” (Col 3: 12).

St. Paul winds up many of his letters with practical advice or admonitions for Christ’s faithful.  With scarcely any exception, his words are timely.  If you doubt that, just start reading advice columns like Dear Abby.

Family travails appear constantly in such columns.  Further, if you’ve been paying any attention to the world around us, you’re aware that family life in our country and in much of what’s called the western world is in trouble.  Generational discord, of course, isn’t new.  The divorce rates, tho, are shocking.  The proportion of couples living together without a marital commitment is huge.  The definition of family has been expanded to include a big variety of arrangements, some of which can’t be called godly.

At root, most family difficulties and challenges, I would say, come down to individualism, or to use other terms, self-centeredness or selfishness.  When we were tots, most of us probably thought the world revolved around us, and many of us (including me) still struggle at least a little bit with that misperception.  We’ve all met people like Professor Henry Higgins, to whom Eliza Doolittle sings resentfully in My Fair Lady:

What a fool I was, what a dominated fool,
to think that you were the earth and the sky,
What a fool I was,

What a mutton-headed dolt was I!
No, my reverberated friend,
you are not the beginning and the end.
There'll be spring every year without you.

England still will be here without you.
There'll be fruit on the tree.
And a shore by the sea.
There'll be crumpets and tea without you.

Without your pulling it the tide comes in,
without your twirling it the Earth can spin,
Without your pushing them, the clouds roll by,
If they can do without you, ducky, so can I.
I can stand on my own without you.[1]

What’s the solution to one’s self-centeredness?  What St. Paul advises:  that we strive to clothe ourselves in the virtues of Christ.  He listed compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, and forgiveness.  We could also remember the 3 keywords of family life that Pope Francis proposed: “please, thank you, and I’m sorry.”

St. Paul adds:  “Let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were called in one body.  And be thankful” (3:15).  “You were called” into Christ’s body, which is the Church.  You were called also into a family—not only Christ’s family but the particular blood family in which you were born and the one which you formed thru marriage and parenthood.  “You were called”; this is God’s doing, for it was he who chose you, called you, and designed for you a safe path toward eternity.

If it’s God’s doing, then Christ is in charge.  “Let the peace of Christ control your hearts.”  If he guides you, you won’t have room for selfishness.  You’ll be ready and willing to practice the virtues that make family life flourish and bring peace.  Your gratitude to God—and to your spouse, your parents, your children, your brothers and sisters—will strengthen your family life.

After that, “whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father thru him” (3:17).  He is Lord.  He’s in charge of your heart and your whole life.  Follow him, and thank God for redeeming you thru him.

One more point.  At the top, I said, “With scarcely any exception, Paul’s words are timely.”  One exception would be to read and obey literally what he says about wives and husbands.  Paul also said that in one’s standing with Christ there’s no longer a distinction between male or female, between slave or free person (Gal 3:28).  We don’t live in Paul’s 1st-century Greek and Roman culture.  Christian wives and husbands today are to subordinate themselves to each other, to love each other, to avoid bitterness toward each other (Col 3:18-19)—or rancor or harsh language.  Husbands and wives are teammates seeking sanctity with Christ’s help—like St. Louis and St. Zelie Martin, the canonized parents of St. Therese of Lisieux.  Marriage is a sacrament so that spouses will raise holy children and will help each other make their way to heaven.  Reaching heaven is the purpose our lives; this morning’s collect prayed that we might “delight one day in eternal rewards in the joy of God’s house.”

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[1] Some lines omitted.