Mt 2: 13-15, 19-23
Dear Friends.
Now that we are past the onslaught of the commercial mandate to “shop until we drop”, we are more likely to be open to the true message of the Christmas mystery.
The fundament message is that “the word was made flesh” (Jn 1:14). The emphasis is not the baby story of Jesus. It is about the humanity unveiling the divinity. The paradoxes of the Gospel penetrate the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew. The divine becoming human exposes the incessant pull of birth and death, innocence and suffering and the continual call to journey in pursuit of stability in our search for God.
The stuff of every family, regardless of the vast cultural differences of the relations of spouses and that of parents to children, is found in the Holy Family. It was through the institution of the family that God chose to relate to humanity. Jesus learned to live and to love in his relations to Mary and Joseph. In spite of the rootedness of being refugees and immigrants and the context of unimaginable violence in the Holy Innocents, love prevailed.
Matthew had an additional message beyond the family relationship of the three. He intended a prologue of the Gospel. Jesus was to summarize in his experience the saving history of Israel. In this way Jesus was modeling the Messianic expectations of Israel.
The three stories in Matthew are the escape to Egypt, the massacre of the Holy Innocents and the return from Egypt to Nazareth. They all relate to the experience of the Chosen People and Moses.
In his role as savior, Jesus learned how to respond to life and its many mysteries of good and evil in the warmth and acceptance of his loving parents, Mary and Joseph. It was in the context of these family relations that Jesus learned who God intended him to be.
The message for us today is clear. No matter what the cultural variations and limits, the family is the school of love. All our fundamental relations and responsibilities are filtered through the basic foundation of a family experience. Our task is to eliminate the elements of selfishness and entitlement to let love flow openly in spite of all the inherent conflicts. Privilege and power in family life have to give way to acceptance, service and humility if we expect to continue to create a joyful and meaningful life for all.
