Obedience, the antidote to pride

Solemnity of the Holy Family

The readings for this feast provide us with a three-pronged meditation on the common theme of family. The first reading takes a hard honest look at our own respective human families. While the second reminds us that we are children of God and therefore, part of God’s great big family. Lastly, the gospel focuses on the one family which stands out today - the Holy Family of Nazareth, the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Although, these are three different contexts to consider the theme of family, they are all united by something in common - the relationship of each member to God. The love of God is the glue that keeps families together and the family is the glue that holds the fabric of society together.

There is no doubt until times recent, that families matter to society and to individuals. But we Christians also believe that families matter to God. At the beginning of the Bible, God states, “It is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2.18). God, therefore, instituted the first marriage and founded the first family. Throughout the Bible, God seeks to strengthen families. Husbands are encouraged to love their wives, children to obey parents, and parents to train up their children in the right paths. The fourth commandment demands that we honour our parents. The Bible also contains many real-life examples of both happy and divided families. Before placing the Lord Saviour into the loving arms of His human mother and foster father, the Bible traces Abraham’s family line to Him. It was not enough for Jesus to be born into this specific family but to see His connexion with the whole human family.

The first reading taken from Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach) is an expansion of the fourth commandment to honour one’s parents but the passage also serves to link this obligation to the first three commandments which are due to God. Importantly, the Fourth Commandment is the only one with a promise attached: “…that you may have a long life in the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you” (Exod 20:12). Sirach reminds us of this promise and expands it to include atonement for sin. So, honouring one’s parents is not just an act of filial piety but also an expression of religious piety, one’s filial obedience to God. They are inseparable. By showing such respect to parents, especially to old and infirm parents, the sins of children are pardoned. Failure to honour father and mother is blasphemy and merits a curse from God.

The passage helps us to see that filial piety is not blind and slavish compliance, but due deference and respect, a love that shows itself in obedience. Sirach encourages us to embrace the way of obedience, the way of humility, so that we may obtain wisdom not by seeking our own path of self-realisation, but by humbly submitting ourselves to our fathers and mothers. Obedience is foundational for a moral life, a wise life, a life lived in praise of God. That is why obedience is one of the three evangelical counsels which are prerequisites to the life of one who wishes to grow in holiness. While poverty is the antidote to greed and chastity is the antidote to lust, obedience is the perfect antidote to the poison of pride. Sirach encourages us to embrace the way of obedience, so that we may obtain wisdom not by seeking our own path of self-realisation, but by humbly submitting ourselves to our parents.

The second reading reminds us that though each of us have a set of earthly parents and an earthly home, we should never forget that we are members of a much bigger family, the family of God. St John in the second reading thus highlights the amazing love God has for us. Not only is He willing to call us His children, we actually are His children. To become “children of God” is not simply a metaphor for the creator-creature relationship. This is a literal statement. Through Baptism, we have received the Holy Spirit, which works an essential or ontological change—a change of our nature—conferring on us a likeness to God which makes us His children. True childhood is to share in nature of the Father. It is not that spiritual childhood through the Holy Spirit is similar to real childhood which is biological. Rather, biological childhood is similar to real childhood which consists in partaking of the Father’s nature through His Spirit. This is a unique truth of the Catholic faith—other religions do not teach that we are the children of God, or else they mean it only in a metaphorical way. And as children of God, we must learn to love one another and keep God’s commandments.

Finally, we come to the gospel story which is popularly known by the title given to it by the Joyful Mystery of the Rosary - the finding of the Lord in the Temple. One of the obvious themes in this gospel is the true origin of Jesus, or in other words, the true Fatherhood of Jesus. Though Joseph is (rightly) called Jesus’ “father” by Our Blessed Mother (“your father and I have been looking for you”), nonetheless our Lord responds with this revealing question: “Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father’s affairs?” He is reminding His earthly parents and us of His divine origin, and that Joseph was in the end only His adopted father.

At first, we are tempted to say that for most of us, this is the difference between Jesus and ourselves. We have natural biological fathers, but Jesus had God as His Father. But again on further reflexion, we have to admit that there is not so much difference—or better said, there is a closer analogy between our origin and Jesus’. Like Jesus, those of us who have been baptised have been “born of God,” born in a supernatural way from a Heavenly Father. This is the point of the second reading. All fatherhood has its origin in God (Eph 3:15). As we contemplate the Holy Family this Sunday, we need to ponder the fact that, like Jesus, we have a supernatural origin from God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. Having God as our Father makes it possible for us to break out of patterns of sin that we may have learned, consciously or unconsciously, from our human fathers—good men though they may have been—and live in “the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:21).

As Luke’s story unfolds, St Joseph fades from the picture. Mary lives in the reflective way we are all called to live, “storing all these things in her heart”. Sometimes God’s call to children is in tension with parents’ wishes or hopes. Children are first of all “children of God”. Much as we might want to, we cannot hold on to them. We try to understand their choices, we do everything we can to nurture their uniqueness, and we pray that they too will grow in wisdom and stature and in favour with God as responsible members of the whole human family, but ultimately, we have to accept that they are God’s children first and foremost.

Likewise, as children, we must watch our hearts and remember that the natural respect that sons and daughters should have for their fathers and mothers is something the Lord set up to orient us toward Himself. If we honour our parents, our hearts will be in a great place to honour God. If we honour our parents, then we too can obtain by grace the “long life in the land which the Lord our God is giving us.” That land, of course, is heaven, the inheritance prepared by our Father in heaven.