Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph: God revealed to us

What does God offer to us in our Scripture and in this Feast? What invitation comes to us from God?

To be Christian means to believe that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Trinity. Community and Relationship for the very nature of God. God is three and God is one. The Trinity is NOT three separate deities who got together and formed a strong bond, like three good friends. The Trinity is one, always with no beginning and no end.

God communicates God’s self to us through the Trinity, therefore through relationships and community, and God invites into that community. Even from the beginning God created Humanity, through Adam and Eve; a relationship in which God offered God’s self to them. God continued this because this is God’s way. God calls out to Abram and Sara and gives to them descendants, family, through whom God wants to show the rest of the world God and what God offers.

Jesus, the Son of God and descendent of Abraham, fully reveals all who God is, as Father in the Holy Spirit. Jesus reveals what God offers to us, the fullness of life; both here and now, as well in heaven. Jesus, born into a human family, Mary and Joseph, born into a community of Israel with its own history and traditions, born into a world ready for that invitation of the Father to live better, live more fully. Jesus, we are told, will grow in wisdom and understanding through his relationships with Mary, Joseph and the community around him. And when Jesus matures, his first acts of ministry will be to form a community around himself; not based on family DNA, but on faith.

And Jesus will reveal God through his relationships to others; in his healing and feeding, through forgiving and welcoming; through his outreach, kindness, generosity; ultimately through the giving of self upon the cross so that all generations forward will know the extent to which the Father loves us and invites us to fullness of life.

And today it is the same. Our fullest experiences of God, our growth in understanding of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always comes within our relationships; within our community; our family of birth, our family of choice, our parish. And people experience God through Jesus Christ, through his body, the Church.

We want to know and learn how God forgives us; we need to consider how we forgive others and accept their forgiveness…and if we can’t then we need to grow in that.

We want to know and learn how kind God is to us; consider how kind we are to others…and if we are not, we need to grow in that.

We want to experience God’s love, consider how well or how poorly we extend our love to others; and if poorly we can grow in that too.

A trap for us is to think of God and our faith as a subject to be learned; like math or chemistry. Theology and knowledge are crucial,  it becomes a solid foundation upon which we interact with God and others. I have experienced very knowledgeable and smart people in our church. Some are real jerks because they never allow that knowledge to become wisdom, to reside in their hearts. The saints are those in which that wisdom resided in their hearts.

Ministry forms the core mission of a parish. Ministry opens us and others to experience God; whether it is Youth Ministry, Young Adult Ministry, feeding the poor, taking communion to those isolated in homes and hospitals, helping those grieving, and to families…

Ministry means to open ourselves as a community to God; and to grow as disciples of Jesus.

  

The parish becomes a place, a community, a family, in which we are invited to go deeper into our discipleship of Jesus Christ, so that we can know and experience God at more and more deeper levels.  Families come to a parish to be nourished, to be challenged and comforted; to walk together to experience how God sustains them and helps each person become the best versions of themselves; to help us engage in life. One of the joys of parish life is to watch people grow in that wisdom; whether they be a little child excited about God, to a more senior person finding new understanding about life. The joys here at OLS are the little communities that support one another. 

We have a thriving Young Adult community who gather almost each week to pray, to share faith, to have fun, to serve a community. We have an older Young Adult community (ARC) who offer the same. Our School too offers a community in which there is Bible Study and faith sharing. We have a Men’s Bible Study, women’s bible study, book clubs, as well, SWA, the Knights of Columbus. We do have a Youth Ministry too, but often under-utilized. All of which centers around our family meal, the Eucharist. The Father’s offer to us of a better life, and the invitation to be a part of it in his Son, all through the love poured out in the Holy Spirit.

God comes to us, God speaks to us, God loves us; all within the community, the family that lives around us. If we be open ourselves.