Freeing Your Family for God - Bishop Barron

Freeing Your Family for God - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon
Posted on 12/29/2024
Bishop BarronFriends, I always love preaching on the Feast of the Holy Family because I think the biblical message here is very surprising. We say the Bible is associated with family values, and indeed it is, but they're probably not the ones we would automatically think of. We see this in the two stories that the Church brings to our attention today: the story of Hannah leaving Samuel at the temple in Shiloh, and the story of Mary and Joseph finding Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem.

Watch Freeing Your Family for God - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon here

GOSPEL

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Luke 2:41-52
Friends, today’s Gospel tells the familiar story of Mary and Joseph finding twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. When they find him, they—with understandable exasperation—upbraid him: “Son, why have you done this to us?” But Jesus responds, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

The story conveys a truth that runs sharply counter to our sensibilities: even the most powerful familial emotions must, in the end, give way to mission. Though she felt an enormous pull in the opposite direction, Mary let her son go, allowing him to find his vocation in the temple. Legitimate sentiment devolves into sentimentality precisely when it comes to supersede the call of God. 

On a biblical reading, the family is, above all, the forum in which both parents and children are able to discern their missions. It is perfectly good, of course, if deep bonds and rich emotions are cultivated within the family, but those relationships and passions must cede to something that is more fundamental, more enduring, more spiritually focused. 

The paradox is this: precisely in the measure that everyone in the family focuses on God’s call for one another, the family becomes more loving and peaceful.