The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
A short time after my wife and I announced to my parents that we were pregnant, I remember my dad and I chatting about parenthood. As is typical of conversations with this man, it was casual and lighthearted, until he nonchalantly dropped a truth bomb: “You're about to join in something that billions of people in the world have done.” My father has never been a man of many words; the rare moments he shares about his experiences or his sentiments on a particular subject are often simple statements and matters-of-fact. However, they’re also the type of remarks that catch you off guard with their profundity and candor. Of course the percentage of people in the world who become parents of any kind must be rather high. But thinking about this obvious fact in terms of uniting myself with them in an experience that billions of people have gone through struck me heavily that day, and still does even now.
Woven throughout all of today’s readings are themes of obedience, respect, trust, and love. Each of these notions are not just what hold together holy marriages and families, but must be the substance of holy marriages and families, and must be dependent on one another. Whether our personal experience of marriage and family has been good or bad, we all recognize that it is hard work to cultivate them. Each of us, as individuals with our own strengths and weaknesses, our own histories and ambitions, have more than likely come to know the give-and-take required to make a marriage and family work; after all, compromise (ultimately dying to ourselves) is necessary to live for The Other. Yet, these self-sacrificing actions are precisely what facilitate the cornerstones of trust, respect, obedience, and love, leading us deeper into holiness. Otherwise, if we all had the same talents and shortcomings and we were able to agree on everything, these selfless efforts would be meaningless.
In other words: it is our differences that make marriages and families not just holy (when we choose to respond to these differences with sacrificial love), but whole.
With this in mind, we can see more clearly our roles within the Body of Christ here on earth, among the Church and all its people. The universality of our faith unites us as One Body; yet our cultural, geographical, political, and economical diversity are what reveal to us if we are perhaps the hands or the feet of this One Body. Regardless of where we fit in, we are united in this experience that billions of people have gone through, and must acknowledge that what sets us apart is also what brings us together.
Lord, as we continue to experience the Joyful Hope of the Christmas season, we ask that you help us to understand where we fit into the Body of Christ, and how we can best serve the Church and all its people - our brothers and sisters here and around the world. Remind us of the Cross, and the sacrificial action we must partake in to be united to Jesus, to be made holy, and to be made whole.
Matt Lewis is the Director of Publishing for NOVUM PUBLISHING, the project lead for Liturgy Resources, a worship leader, singer-songwriter, and a husband and father based in Houston, TX. You can find his music and social channels here.