January 7, 2007
in
Holy Family/New Year’s Eve
Even while secular Christmas is all wrapped up so—to—speak— our Catholic Christmas season continues with today’s feast of the Holy Family. We’ve been considering those unexpected places where we may find grace. Certainly Nazareth was an unlikely place for the savior of the world to come from. The Son of God lived in a backwater town like that? Nor did Joseph and Mary expect to find twelve-year-old
Jesus in the Temple teaching the elders after he had gone missing for three days. Three Days! A bitter foretaste as his parents must have been tempted to give up for lost, just as his followers despaired when he was later placed in the tomb. Grace is always found in the tomb. Perhaps the only place it is found is in those little tombs of our lives — the disappointments, the less than perfect, the weaknesses, the sin.
Today is also New Year’s Eve, and many of us still make New Year’s resolutions of the self improvements variety. We want to be perfect on our terms. ONLY on our terms. We want our families to be perfect. We want safety and plenty and unconditional love, expressed exactly as we want it. Not chicken soup when we want flowers. No flowers when we want the dishes done and the garbage taken out. We definitely don’t want our children running off for three days without telling us where
they are.
Where can we find grace on this day we honor the Holy Family and look forward to the new year? Could we not look at the very conditions we want to be different? It is in these places where we are most needy, and it is where we are most needy that God moves in. Where we are weak. God provides the strength Where we lack willpower, God provides the power. When we find it difficult to love those placed on our path, God provides the love. Three days in the temple or in the tomb and God steps in and raises us to new life. But on God’s terms-not ours.
