On this Feast of the Holy Family, my
family feels anything but. That is all. Care to comment?
My sister
gave me a Christmas card this year that said (front) “Tis the season, full of
good friends, cozy fires, delicious treats, heartburn, bankruptcy, and bursts
of extreme anger. (inside) Let’s get through this together.”
The holidays
are indeed “upon us,” as we often say and sometimes they can feel pretty heavy.
Especially when are face-to-face with our slightly more distant relatives who
often hold religious or political views different than our own. Did someone say
holiday cheer? Yes, some more please!
Most of us
think of Mary, Jesus and Joseph when we think of a “Holy” family, especially
during this Christmas season, as is appropriate. It is unlikely that in the wake of this week
of non-stop holiday gatherings, still a bit weary from this intense season of
interaction, that “holy” would be the first word to roll off our tongues when
talking about our families.
Our families are much too messy, dysfunctional and quirky to be
truly thought of as “holy” yet our tradition invites us to take a deeper look. Many
of our family gatherings mimic this scene (my own little riff on a piece from
Rolheiser).
The family is home for Christmas, but your spouse is in a sulk,
you are fighting tiredness and anger, the little ones are hopped up on red pop
and tearing around the house breaking things, your teenager is restless, doesn’t
want to be there and you are afraid her eyes might stay permanently rolled back
into her head if she is forced to stay. Your Uncle Joe persists in telling
loud, off color jokes despite your begging him not to. His wife, Aunt Betty,
embarassed, is knitting a sweater for her cat, ferociously. Everyone else is
either watching reality television or are lost in their devices and too lazy or
selfish to help you prepare the dinner. Old wounds raise their ugly heads and
new wounds are created, reminders of past stupidities and infidelities are peppered
into the awkward conversations throughout the day, but, somehow, after all the
dishes are done and the house is quiet, you know that something sacred has
happened. Despite everything that has been wrong and still is wrong, we were
together – and God was present in that togetherness.
Buckminster
Fuller once said, “God is a verb, not a noun”
‘God is not, first of all, a formula, a dogma, a creedal statement or a
set of ethical standards that demand our assent. Rather, God is the love, the
glue that is in between each of us and holds us together. God is the verb, the
action between us and those we love, the bond of relationship. All that connects us...
1 John 4:16
reads “God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in
them.” My guess is that this kind of love – the very
“stuff of God” - is not the easy,
perfect, idyllic kind of love we see in Hallmark movies and romance novels, but
rather is the hearty variety of love that keeps a couple married for decades
and families together through sickness, financial troubles and other of life’s
woes…the kind of love that kept Jesus loving and forgiving us even when we spat
in his face. Perhaps we are not far from the truth if this scripture were to read
“God is community, family, parish, friendship, hospitality, forgiveness and
whoever abides in these, abides in God..and God in them.”
The very last
sentence that Thomas Merton spoke in this world, according to the testimony of
one of his closest companions, was “What we are asked to do today is not so
much to speak about Christ as to let him live in us so that people may find him
by feeling how he lives in us.”
Send your
Crazy Catholic Question to Lisa Brown at dre@ctredeemer.org or read past columns at www.crazycatholicquestions.blogspot.com
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