Bound in Love

Today is the Sunday in the Octave of Christmas, which means it is the Feast of the Holy Family, and it’s also the memorial of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents because Sunday is December 28th.

The readings we just had do not relate the story of the Holy Innocents, but that story has much to teach us about our faith. In the story, King Herod is fearful that a new king has been born and that new king represents a threat to his power. He knows the king is still just a toddler but he doesn’t know which little child is the king. He decides that he will simply have to kill all the toddlers to be sure to have killed this potential threat to his throne.

Moral philosophers call this “the ends justify the means.” You might have heard someone say, “you have to break some eggs if you want to eat an omelette.” Military leaders explain to the news reporter that there can be “collateral damage” in military operations, which to hide the fact that in war the soldiers sometimes kill civilians. 

The ends justify the means is how the world works. Take any impressive achievement, from the Egyptian pyramids to Google’s search engine. We are encouraged to focus on the milestone, the end result, rather than the process, the actions that led to the end result. Our global financial economy makes many compromises with the process because the end product is so attractive. We love our Nike shoes, and we do not ask about the working conditions in East Asia where they are made. Dr. Pepper is delicious, but none of those 23 flavors is natural. We love our iPhones and other technology gadgets, but we do not want to hear about how rare Earth metals are mined. From clothes to food, even in our schools, the world emphasizes the end, not the journey.

None of this is how our Christian faith works. None of this is how we can grow into being holy families. This is because Christianity is a process religion, not an outcome religion. We care about the journey because we know how we walk will determine where we will go.

We are in the Christmas Octave today, that eight-day period in which we celebrate as a single day the day our Lord took on human nature and was incarnate by the Virgin Mary. We rejoice because God is with us: Emmanuel. God is with us today on Christmas because he is starting his walk to the victory of the Cross on Good Friday. His journey is the means of our salvation. Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God, showed us what a truly Christian human person does with his life. He walked for thirty years in humility and obedience and obscurity, teaching and leading his disciples in the way of life. St. Peter and the others knew how to live after the Resurrection because they had watched Jesus live. They knew to pray because he went away to pray. They knew to be generous to strangers because they had watched Jesus be generous with his blessings. They knew to be merciful because he was merciful. They knew how to live out the Beatitudes because he had shown them during the journey of his life. And they passed that to their successors, to teach the following generations how to live a life of prayer, generosity, and mercy.

If we wish to be holy families today, we must have the humility to accept the deposit of faith handed down over the centuries through Sacred Tradition and the Holy Scriptures. We cannot be holy in our families if we do not step away from the busyness of the day and commit to a quiet time of mental prayer. We cannot be holy in our families if we do not treat our income and wealth as a gift from God who insists that we share part of that gift with others. We cannot be holy in our families if we remain judgmental and competitive, refusing to forgive and forget past faults and injustices we have suffered.

There are two ways before the human person when he is born. The default way is the way to destruction, the way to Hell. Born separated from God, we are destined to eternal separation from God if we do not change our process and begin our journey. The way of holiness is the way of life. Reborn through Baptism into God’s family, we are offered the help of his grace through the sacramental life to walk our personal journey to our own Good Friday end. It is only from there that we can join God in Heaven and come to a just and glorious end.

To be holy in our families and in the world, we choose interior freedom over exterior presentation and conformity. We choose the means over the ends. We refuse to commit an evil act in order to have a good final outcome. We don’t look around for our validation; we look up to our Father. We don’t keep score; we keep going. We live today, not worrying about tomorrow and not regretting yesterday. We go to God in the confessional when we stumble, and we humbly accept the gift of absolution. We gratefully receive God in the Eucharist, acknowledging our unworthiness even as we do so.

Let us thank God for the Incarnation. Let us thank him for his journey on Earth. Let us imitate him in our own lives and come closer to being holy in our families.