Feast of Holy Family
See commentary on Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23 in Matthew 2:13-23.
Homily 1 – 2004
Matthew shapes his account of Jesus’ childhood in such a way as to highlight patterns that he will develop in detail as the story unfolds. In today’s Gospel, the dark cloud of political oppression forces the family of Jesus to get on the move, seeking asylum as refugees across the border in Egypt.
Political danger was later to overshadow the public life of Jesus. He began his ministry after his predecessor, John the Baptist, had been imprisoned – and eventually lost his life – on the altar of political expediency, of national security. It wasn’t long before a group of Pharisees colluded with agents of Herod’s secret service seeking ways to eliminate Jesus. Eventually they succeeded, again in the interests of national security.
Where was God while all this was going on? Doesn’t God look after those he loves? or does he make a few exceptions? What is God doing in my life? your life? the life of your family members? Does God look after us? He seems to have pulled no strings, no levers, to protect Jesus, either as child or as adult.
Certainly the Gospels delight in seeing precedents in the Hebrew Scriptures – that we can misinterpret as God kind of “writing a script” for Jesus’ life – predetermining things. But that is to miss the point of the phrase “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled”. God respects history. Causes have effects, and effects have their causes. People’s decisions have their inexorable consequences. God respects people’s freedom, their choices, even highly destructive choices.
Does that mean, then, that God sort of “washes his hands” of human history, of your and my history? I don’t believe so. God chooses to work with us from the inside, and without always necessarily identifying himself. God calls us, gently invites us, especially empowers us – though always with regard to our freedom – but never forces us. People can, and so often do, say NO.
So God starts again, continues to call, invite, to empower, orienting us constantly towards life, towards love. God does not seem to stop me doing something evil or destructive to others. I still sin. God does not seem to stop others doing something evil or destructive, to me. But even when I am victim of others’ actions, God still calls me, the victim, invites and empowers me to respond in ways that lead me to take firmer hold on life and on love – while leaving me free. Sometimes I shall respond and choose life; sometimes I shall retaliate and repeat the cycle of violence.
Some of Jesus’ opponents persuaded Pilate to execute Jesus. God did not stop them. Jesus became the helpless, unprotected, victim of their actions. But God still called, invited and empowered Jesus to respond in ways that led him to take a firmer hold on life and on love. He absorbed violence in his own flesh without returning violence for violence. He became perfect, in fact, through his suffering, and in the process became source of salvation to all who follow his way.
In his account of the flight of Jesus’ family as refugees across the border into Egypt, Matthew foreshadows the struggle with evil that will develop in Jesus’ public life. He shows us, in wonderful imagery, God at work within Joseph, calling, inviting, empowering.
In our lives, most of us can’t boast of dreams – but the quiet, almost unobservable call of God can echo just as effectively within us, especially those of us who try to sensitise ourselves to his voice.
Homily 2 – 2007
The Flight into Egypt is a strange little interlude, unique to Matthew. What was Matthew, the storyteller, up to? He gave a hint when he commented: This was to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: “I called my son out of Egypt. The prophet that Matthew alluded to was, in fact, Hosea; and the son to whom Hosea referred was the poetic personification of Israel
By having Jesus and his family, firstly, flee into Egypt, and, then, come out of Egypt, Matthew wanted to get his readers to make the connection between Israel’s experience of liberation from slavery in Egypt, under the leadership of Moses, and the Christian experience of an even deeper liberation under the leadership of Jesus.
Matthew wanted his readers to see that Christian life – following Jesus – would be a journey into freedom, and a journey of discovery of the God who sets us free from our own addictions and compulsions, and who sets society free from the irrelevance, the emptiness, the frantic distractions, and the power games that too often cripple and distort it. It would be Matthew’s purpose in the rest of his Gospel to fill in the detail that could help the reader to discover even more the heart and the mind of God, and, through wholehearted surrender to God, to taste the experience of freedom.
It is the Church’s hope that, as we reflect on Matthew’s Gospel during the Sundays of the year that lies ahead, we, too, journey further into the Mystery of God and find the freedom for which Christ has set us free.
And that is my wish for you, too, as we leave 2007 behind and brace ourselves for 2008. Happy New Year!
Homily 3 - 2013
Matthew’s infancy story is largely a story of darkness: Joseph’s discovery of Mary’s pregnancy [with, strangely, no communication between them]; his feelings of bewilderment, betrayal, and probably of public ridicule. This trauma was eventually relieved only by an insight learnt in a dream, which removed the pressure by providing some illumination for the present, but gave precious little clarity for the long term.
Following the child’s birth, Joseph learnt about Herod the Great’s determination to assassinate the child – with the consequent urgent need to escape with the family across the border into Egypt – no visa, no job, no contacts and no knowledge, probably, of the language. After Herod the Great’s death, the family felt free eventually to return to Judea – only to find the situation there as dangerous as before, with the equally violent, paranoid and incompetent Herod Archelaus [successor to Herod the Great, his father] in charge.
This time, for whatever reasons, the family did not go back to Egypt, but became internal refugees in their own country. They moved northwards into Galilee – which was under the jurisdiction of Hero Antipas, another of Herod the Great’s sons, but not quite so paranoid. There they settled and set up residence in Nazareth. Joseph found work, and the family was able to merge quietly into the local scene and escape official notice – and at last to find some peace.
Against this poignant Christmas background, our Bishop, Bishop Paul Bird, has asked the people of the diocese to pray with him for Australia’s Asylum Seekers, and particularly their children. I think we need to pray at the same time for the people of Australia and for our leaders, because it is our attitudes and the policies that reflect them that make it necessary that we pray for Asylum Seekers and their children. It is not just an Australian problem. Unfortunately, it seems to have become a problem infecting most wealthy Western nations.
Pope Francis had some quite disturbing words to say not long ago when he visited the Italian island of Lampedusa. Lampedusa is where boat loads of Asylum Seekers from North Africa first put foot on European soil, seeking refuge within the nations of Europe. Many of them have drowned at sea on their way across. Sounds familiar! This is what Pope Francis said in the homily he gave there: "Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters of ours? All of us respond: 'It wasn't me. I have nothing to do with it. It was others, certainly not me.' Today no one feels responsible for this. We have lost a sense of fraternal responsibility … The culture of well-being, which leads us to think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of others … The globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep."
What haunts me is Francis’s reference to the culture of well-being and the globalization of indifference that render us insensitive and take from us the ability to weep. They take from us the ability to weep! I can’t speak for you. But I know what he is saying; and I am ashamed of myself.
The pope suggested that we pray: "Let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty in the world, in ourselves, and in those who anonymously make socio-economic decisions that open the way to tragedies like this”.
I ask myself the further question: How do I need to cooperate with God to whom I pray? I want to look more deeply into myself to discover and to become alert to how much the culture of well-being has seeped into my soul, taking from me the ability to weep – and not just at our national cruelty towards Asylum Seekers but towards a whole lot of other groups and individuals that our culture consigns to the edges and chooses not to see?
I wonder if St Joseph the Refugee [indeed the whole family] might be good ones to pray to and to pray with at this time.