Homily - Holy Family & Mary, the Holy Mother of God - 31st December 2023 & 1st January 2024

Homily

Holy Family & Mary, the Holy Mother of God

31st December 2023 & 1st January 2024

This weekend the theme is about keeping faith and trusting in the Lord. God is asking us to have no fear as he is our shield. He will protect us and by having faith in him we will be rewarded.

This time of year should be a time of celebration as we remember how Our Lord humbled himself to come into this world and to share the experiences we have as human beings. His mother was prepared to receive Our Lord as a purified vessel, without sin, to be able to carry such a blessed being.

As she visited her cousin Elizabeth, the child, who would be called John, leapt in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice. Elizabeth called Mary and her child blessed and was astounded that the mother of our Lord had come to visit her.

Mary proclaimed how great the lord is and how her spirit rejoiced in God our saviour. How all generations would call her blessed, because of the favours God had given to such a lowly person. As she finished, what we now call The Magnificat, she remembered God’s mercy and the promise made to Abraham and his descendants forever.

After John’s birth, he was taken by Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, to be circumcised. Zechariah had been without his voice since he had been visited by an angel who told him his wife would bear a child, even in her old age, and the child would be filled with the Holy Spirit. Zechariah had doubted this and lost his voice. When he was asked what the child’s name should be, his voice came back, and he said John.

Being filled with the Holy Spirit, Zechariah gave a prophecy about his son and blessed the Lord. He said how God had established a saving power, through the House of David, as promised to Abraham. How we will all be freed from fear, especially from our enemies. His son, John, would prepare the way. Today, what Zechariah said, we call The Benedictus. All this can be found in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph was also visited by an Angel, who told him not the fear marrying Mary, even though she was pregnant, as the child was conceived through the Holy Spirit, and that his name would be Jesus. Mary had been told the same by the Angel Gabriel before Jesus’s conception. Eight days after his birth, Jesus was given his name by his parents on the day of his circumcision.

When Jesus’s parents brought him to the temple to present him to the Lord, in accordance with the Jewish tradition that all first-born males must be consecrated to the Lord, two people were waiting to see the Lord in person. The Holy Spirit rested on Simeon, and he blessed Jesus, as he had been told he would not die until he saw his Saviour. The 84-year-old prophetess, Anna, who had devoted her life to God, also was filled with the Holy Spirit and was able to praise God and tell everyone about the child.

In our own lives, especially when things seem to be hard, we are encouraged to have faith and trust in God to bring us through. We live in troubled times, with much confusion. We hear stories that challenge our beliefs. For some, what they hear may influence them to consider leaving the church, but who does this benefit?

Jesus said in Luke’s Gospel “every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste”. He was referring to the accusations that he was casting out demons through the power of Satan. In this day and age, is it not the wish of Satan to divide God’s people in the hope that we will fall away from God. Therefore, we too are encouraged not to be fearful, but to trust in Our Lord, because he will be our shield against the deceptions and lies promoted by the Devil’s hand.

If we find that our pride is getting the better of us, when disputes arise within our homes, it is better to hold our tongue, as the words we say may cause more destruction. It is better to hold our peace especially when we feel hurt. By showing love and patience, we can bring our families closer together.

In Joseph and Mary’s relationship, in the early stages, there was much that could have driven them apart. Their society endorsed such actions as divorce and would have judged a young woman pregnant outside of marriage as sinful. Yet, both Mary and Joseph were asked to trust and have no fear, that they were following God’s plan.

If the urge within us is to run away and reject what God has to offer us because we think that independently we can make things better, then all we need to do is look around ourselves at how the world is going. Now more than ever we need to trust in Our Lord and God, he will be our shield and his blessings will be upon us.

We are a family, we are the church, everyone of us. All we are asked to do is to accept that Jesus came into this world to die for us on a cross, three days later he rose again from the dead, cleansing us from our sins with the blood and water that flowed from his side. He is our Saviour and by our faith, we are blessed.

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