Homily

Meekness in the Bosom of the Home

Sunday, December 90, 2007, Sunday in Christmas Octave, Holy Family Sunday
Assumption Grotto Parish, Detroit

            (Note: My commentary on the Pope’s Encyclical will continue at a later date. Today is my first Sunday homily at my new parish assignment, Assumption Grotto in Detroit.)

            On this feast of the Holy Family, the Sunday of the Octave of Christmas, I wish to follow up on the suggestion of one of you, that I address the question of charity in the family. How often it is with our own family members where we most grievously fail in the spirit of charity, and how unlike that is to the Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

            I wish to focus particularly on the question of anger which often does so much damage to families, and also to parishes; indeed, there are some who allow this passion to consume and ruin their spiritual lives. To which the Lord teaches, “I am meek and humble of heart.” It is not rare that wives tell me they are or were angry with their husbands, and husbands with their wives, and parents with their kids, and kids with their parents, and siblings with one another, and even adult siblings are or were angry with one another. My dear children, put aside this anger, and love one another, because love is of God.

            Could any of us dare imagine that Mary was angry with Joseph, or Joseph with Mary, or either of these with the Redeemer or He with they? Far from our minds be such unbecoming thoughts of the perfect family. For every failure against charity stems from our pride, our disordered self love, the brutal hardness of our hearts, and all such things were alien to the Holy Family. They were three who lived only for the will of the Father, and they did not use the members of their family to exert their petty self-will.

In today’s Gospel passage, when Joseph was told by the angel to go to Egypt, he did not pause to ask, “But what about my career.” Rather, he obeyed with love. When Mary was told by Joseph that she had to Egypt, she didn’t protest with vanity, “Why didn’t the angel just tell me directly?” Nor did she say, “But I don’t want to move away, my family is here.” She simply obeyed, with love, no matter what the cost. Joseph bent his will, Mary bent her will, and not with bitterness, but with happiness, and so this mutual bending of the wills made their love for one another perfect, as strings bent on a violin which are different yet in perfect harmony one with the other.

So what is this anger that afflicts so many families? Anger can be defined in three different ways: the sin, the force of just punishment, or the passion. (St. Thomas Aquinas, S. Th., IIaIIae, 158, 8.) And they are different. Anger can be according to reason, as in the case of holy zeal, or it can be against reason, as when we sin against charity to our neighbor.

Sometimes the feeling or passion of anger swells up, and, like all the feelings or passions, it can either happen to us without our trying to feel that way, or we can cultivate that feeling by certain thoughts or desires or deeds. It is a normal feeling all sensate things seem to have, even animals, by which one rejects that which is perceived as an evil; it includes a feeling of sadness at the evil which is presented to us, and a feeling of desire by which we desire to overcome the evil or experience the opposite good. Yet sometimes our anger arises when our concupiscence is not satisfied. It can become sinful if we are unjust in our anger, disproportionate in our expression of anger, or if we sin by omission to make our anger wane by the virtue of meekness. It can be good when it moves us towards excellence or to defend ourselves in time of need.

Like all the passions, anger is blind. It only knows how to feed itself. It doesn’t think, it doesn’t measure, it doesn’t deliberate. Left to itself, it only explodes. And like all the passions, if it is fed beyond all measure, it will consume a person and ruin them. And so I exhort you, do not be a slave of passions, but make your passions, all of them, slaves of your soul, so they help you, instead of hindering you, in your service to God.

It happens in families, as mentioned earlier, that family members get angry with one another. This means that one of the following scenarios has taken place: either one’s concupiscence was not satisfied, and so he’s angry; or one became aroused to anger over nothing of importance; or one was completely exaggerated in expressing his anger; or one was dwelling on some unpleasant thought which stirred him to anger against one whom he should love. Or still more, the saddest possibility is that one spouse sees the other spouse, or a child his parent, as some sort of evil. This can happen when one of the adults is completely rude and offensive; or when he uses his wife, or she her husband, or the parents the children, for use is the opposite of true love; or when there is sin threatens the chastity of conjugal relations; or when there is abuse of spouse or children; or when there is infidelity; or when someone has totally handed himself over to one form of selfishness or the other. And do such wicked persons think they will escape the judgment of God, at the hour of their deaths? Yet the victims need to forgive, yet without calling evil good.

In lesser situations, there are minor offenses, hypersensitivity, greediness with possessions, pride and arrogance, vanity in appearances, disordered competitiveness, laziness in household chores, interest in “myself and in no one else,” and a general lack of the spirit of self sacrifice. These are problems which are less grave, but which eat away continually at the joy and peace of the home.

So my dear children, renounce anger, and love one another. Let everyone in each family make sacrifices every day for each member of the family: real sacrifices, and for each one by name. Let each remove whatever reason it is which might cause his beloved, his children, his family to become angry with him, and not worry about whether their spouse or sibling is doing the same. As the Lord emptied himself in the incarnation, and gave his life for us on the cross, so too you imitate him, empty yourself in your families, and die to yourself daily for those of your own home.

The family is under siege in our day. Divorce and remarriage, internet impurity, pictures and movies and music, infidelity in every place, promiscuity taught as a virtue to innocent children in school, the militant homosexual movement, governments who strive to intervene in intimate affairs of family decisions, advertizing based on eroticism, and a commercial world that teaches not selflessness but selfishness. If these and more are the attacks which assail your homes daily from without, what are you to do if you are divided from within?

My children, love one another! This is the teaching of St. John, this is the teaching of the Lord, love one another! For to do so is to be like God, who loved us in blood and tears and fire. Let today be the end of anger in the home, and let us all imitate the Holy Family, with the help of the angels, and to the glory of the Holy Trinity forever. Amen.