Feast of the Holy Family Sunday in the Octave of Christmas
† Sunday, 31st December 2000

Theme: The holy family of God

The First Book of Samuel the Prophet 1 :20 -22, 24 - 28
To appreciate the value of this reading today, it helps to understand that Hannah is cast as the oppressed woman of Israel, childless, and scorned by her rivals in the household. Her child Samuel is truly a gift from God, and in return Hannah offers her child to the service of God. “This is the child I prayed for,” says Hannah, “now I make him over to the Lord for the whole of his life,” The Christian will understand the references to Mary and her son Jesus.

First Letter of John 3 :1 - 2, 21 - 24
The favour of God rests upon us, and so we are called the ‘children of God’.One of the consequences of this relationship with the Almighty, is that, “if we cannot be condemned by our own conscience, we need not be afraid in God’s presence.” But this special relationship requires that we keep the commandments of God, and live the kind of life that God wants. John summarises this, “that we believe in the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ, and that we love one another as he told us to.” Then John concludes, “We know that God lives in us by the Spirit that he has given us.”

Gospel according to Luke 2 : 41 - 52
There is an almost tantalising lack of information about the early home life of the child Jesus. But the visit by the twelve year old Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem, with Mary and Joseph, allows us a glimpse into the normal humanity of this family. There is a gentle tension between the authority of parents, and the right of the child, now grown in stature and wisdom, to be about his heavenly father’s business. Having searched for their lost child for three days, “they were overcome when they saw him and his mother said to him, ‘My child why have you done this to us? See how worried your father and I have been, looking for you’.” But as the years passed, “Mary stored up these things in her heart…while Jesus grew in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with both God and men.”

© Peter Harrison 2000